Review of IMDb Top 250 Films - Glory (1989)

I intend to conduct a review of the top 250 films on the IMDb database. At a rate of two per month this will still take forever as the list constantly changes. I don't claim to be a very knowledgeable or intellectual film critic but have tremendous confidence in my ability to discern good direction, script and acting, and to expose films which have enjoyed / endured an undeserved reputation in my perhaps arrogant opinion. There may be a few minor spoilers in my reviews.

Glory - Rating: 3.5 out of 6

The powerful first scene shows effectively the futility of civil war to today’s unified America and things improve from here. The first scene exclusively with the black soldiers is excellent: good, smooth, unstilted dialogue. Great turn too from John Finn as the interesting and genuinely three-dimensional seargent-major. More good scenes follow: where Major Forbes (Cary Elwes) challenges the Captain over harsh treatment, the latter tells us why he took on this role and why the black soldiers are to be so respected and encouraged to do well, perversely by very harsh treatment if necessary; contrast this view with the excellent scene-stealing Denzel Washington’s Pvt. Trip’s apparent opinion that they are just being used by the Whites. Following on from this is the engrossing scene when Thomas (Andre Braugher) is knocked down by the Seargent-Major; the fall-out expresses some of the tensions within the company.

Not all is promising: music is used to accentuate the drama which is always a bad sign; as a rule a good film needs music to complement, not enhance it. An example is when the Captain asks “how many are left?” the morning after telling his soldiers the Confederacy will make any captured negroes slaves and kill any caught in uniform: the music becomes louder and more evocative to enhance what a good film should make us feel already.

It can be difficult to assess Matthew Broderick’s performance as the Captain as it is so understated and, with a few exceptions, devoid of any passion. In this respect it can be thought of as being true to the time and to his rather undecisive character, and he is certainly intriguing to watch, but there is something about his performance that irritates: perhaps because such a method of acting in a leading character is out of place in an ‘epic’ Hollywood film such as this.

As 1862 turns to 1863 we enter the second half of the film which maintains momentum at first as the newly-uniformed soldiers start to see limited action under the captain’s corrupt and racist superiors. After this subplot is resolved, the film loosens up noticeably as we prepare for a big battle; there are poignant and interesting scenes here, but the Hollywoodisation starts to jar and ultimately the film just doesn’t have the tools to deliver the genuine depth and feeling it tries so hard to evoke at this stage of the film.

And then we get to the last 20 minutes which are by far the least entertaining: the earnestness of the build-up to the imposing battle is spurious, not least the music, and the battle itself seems to take an age to get going, such is the air of importance. Perhaps it exposes weaknesses in the film: that it did not make us empathise with the characters enough for us to really care what happens to them (Broderick‘s uncharismatic performance just one example); standard, unoriginal direction may have played a part here. And yet we reflect on the light and enjoyable earlier scenes and realise that inevitably this is where we had to come. The film as a whole becomes forgettable as a result which is a shame as the sum of its parts up to the final battle is worthy of considerable merit.

Review of IMDb Top 250 Films - The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

I intend to conduct a review of the top 250 films on the IMDb database. At a rate of two per month this will still take forever as the list constantly changes. I don't claim to be a very knowledgeable or intellectual film critic but have tremendous confidence in my ability to discern good direction, script and acting, and to expose films which have enjoyed / endured an undeserved reputation in my perhaps arrogant opinion. There may be a few minor spoilers in my reviews.

The Day the Earth Stood Still - Rating: 3 out of 6

The appeal of this film is obvious, both to the contemporary audience of 1951 (robots, aliens, wow!) and to today's film historians and sci-fi afficionados who may twitter on about how groundbreaking and unusual it was, and how it was of its time, by which is meant of course how it reflected the world's political climate, specifically the threat of nuclear war. And how this "brave little film" rejected the current state of world acrimony, advocating peace and co-operation. All of which is of course completely true.

But people seem to realise all too seldom that a groundbreaking film does not by definition equal a great one. And this film is not great. Once today's audience satisfies its postmodernistic intellectual excitement through seeing robots zapping people before the age of dishwashers we take off our kiddy glasses and see a rather staid film, generally uninspired in both direction and script, the latter containing too many examples of the worst type of contemporary-style dialogue: "This is the toughest material I ever saw. For hardness and strength it's out of this world". "I can tell you officially that's where it came from!"(end of scene).

That said the film is definitely watchable and, on the right day, enjoyable. The pace is adequate - the film often threatens to drag but never quite does - and although none of the adult cast deliver more than servicable performances the little 1950s-world boy does have a couple of great moments: after the mother finds out the boy was telling the truth after all about following the alien to the spaceship, she remarks on the state of his shoes: "yeah, the grass was kinda wet" he replies in an understated way, thus making her feel even more silly! Delivered so freshly and spontaneously, that line underlines the stiltedness of the adults' scenes. Another well-delivered line by the boy to his mum: "I'd never call you a liar!"and the hilarious comment from the portly lady at the family table: "Well if you want my opinion he comes from right here on Earth! And you know where I mean...!" When it's suggested to her he'd use an aeroplane not a spaceship she remarks in all seriousness: "I wouldn't be too sure about that!" Excellent! These nuggets liven up the earnestness, fearful contemporary politics, social graces and Uncle-Sam-conventionality that are the hallmarks of the film: of course the spaceship lands in the USA, the professor looks like the stereotypical mad professor and after the robot appears to restores life, we are told this is just temporary because power to restore life "is reserved to the almighty spirit". Mandatory for the 1950s of course but political platitudes by film-makers do not sit well with any audience.

At the end of the film we are not told if 'the world' accepts the alien's ultimatum and so really there is nothing for today's audience to take away from the film; all they can do is boast to everyone they had spent a rainy afternoon seeing a 'classic' sci-fi film. But I think they would rather have not bothered.

Review of IMDb Top 250 films - The Red Shoes (1948)

I intend to conduct a review of the top 250 films on the IMDb database. At a rate of two per month this will still take forever as the list constantly changes. I don't claim to be a very knowledgeable or intellectual film critic but have tremendous confidence in my ability to discern good direction, script and acting, and to expose films which have enjoyed / endured an undeserved reputation in my perhaps arrogant opinion. There may be a few minor spoilers in my reviews.

The Red Shoes - Rating: 4 out of 6

This film looks good! Stylishly directed by Powell and Pressburger, the team behind the equally gorgeous Black Narcissus, it is arguably one of the most visually attractive films ever made. This film is a whole lot less melodramatic than Narcissus and makes much better (less heavy-handed) use of technicolor. Whereas the lipstick of Kathleen Bryan (Sister Ruth) stood out self-consciously in Narcissus, The Red Shoes looks stunning throughout, never even flirting with ostentatiousness. And whereas the tense script and intense performances mirrored the extreme climatic conditions of a convent high up in the Himalayas, P&P show their versatility in their follow-up film by infusing it with sheer joy and exuberance (not seen in Narcissus) while toning everything else down! This includes the actors' looks: markedly plain by leading actor standards, Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook and Moira Shearer do not compare with Deborah Kerr and David Farrar. Walbrook steals the show: a brooding, intensely charismatic presence, he acts superbly and his stern, subtle performance gives free reign to the wonderful overblown eccentrics which surround him, some of which are hilarious, and it is the scenes involving these characters which are more dramatic and more memorable than the love affair between Goring and Shearer's characters, which seems to be deliberately underplayed! This is an ensemble effort and the situations are so low-key that there is never any need to play to the camera. Whereas Narcissus would make wonderful theatre, this film has no theatrical qualities at all bar the theatrics of the eccentrics.

The loose, naturalistic flow of the film starts to become mildly irritating midway when we realise there is no real plot to speak of - although the colour / elegance / visual beauty keeps our attention from wondering, and the script's exuberance and witticisms as well as the excellent character acting add substance to the style. This was a time when men were gentlemen, women were ladies, and people were characters, and any educated, historically-aware and/or fun-loving person will surely sit through and like this film.

But a rating of 5 out of 6 is under most circumstances too generous for a film without an involving plot (Gosford Park is one notable exception); that and a regrettably poor ending means it gets a 4.

Review of IMDb Top 250 Films - Bringing Up Baby (1938)

I intend to conduct a review of the top 250 films on the IMDb database. At a rate of two per month this will still take forever as the list constantly changes. I don't claim to be a very knowledgeable or intellectual film critic but have tremendous confidence in my ability to discern good direction, script and acting, and to expose films which have enjoyed / endured an undeserved reputation in my perhaps arrogant opinion. There may be a few minor spoilers in my reviews.

Bringing Up Baby - Rating: 4 out of 6

Bringing Up Baby starts off superbly. A serious, upright but hapless museum curator Dr David Huxley (Cary Grant) is engaged to an unsuitable fiancee, but is pursued by a madcap, fast-talking and fun-loving young woman Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn), ostensibly Cary’s opposite and nemesis. Hepburn is wonderful and looks lovely, and the first 2/3 of the picture has a lively flow to it with fast pace, plenty of comic but not overly unrealistic situations, and extremely funny dialogue. Grant may look a touch staged / wooden but still well within the realms of realism and his uptight performance is a marvellous foil to Hepburn’s “life and soul“. The scene early on in the restaurant is nothing short of a masterpiece, and when Hepburn is talking on the ‘phone to Grant about the leopard unexpectedly given to her by her brother and the leopard meanders into camerashot just when it does.…well, that’s priceless!

They then travel to Connecticut to Susan’s aunt's home to drop off the leopard via some more funny little adventures; the battleaxe aunt and her easygoing fuddy-duddy male friend, completely oblivious to the leopard situation, add to the fun, and although the film loses its theatrical, scene-specific tightness, the script loses none of its wit! So far, so 5 out of 6. Then the leopard is lost and from then on the situations become a trifle more laboured and confusing (a new leopard is introduced) and the film continues much more on the strength of its screwball comedy than any viable plot. Even the Grant/Hepburn comedy act takes a back seat. It's still mostly pleasant to watch but eventually tedium sets in, the screwball element starts to jar, Hepburn's liveliness turns to screeching, everything becomes too noisy and farcical and we are no longer so involved.

So the madcap situations start to take over from the burgeoning relationship between Susan and David rather than act as a vehicle for it, and when everyone ends up in jail we feel the film has lost it. Thankfully the last two short scenes are entertaining enough to save the film from shame but not enough to re-obtain the lost star from this review!

Memorable quotes: “Susan, when a man is wrestling a leopard in the middle of a pond, he’s in no position to run!”
To enquiring shopkeeper and customer after buying 60 lb of raw meat for the leopard: “Oh, this isn’t for me, it’s for Baby!” Cue shocked faces!
"Oh poor darling Susan: she's helpless without me"!!

On Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction

I watched Pulp Fiction last night, the second time I have seen it. I was struck by how loose it was compared with tight theatrical Reservoir Dogs. Pulp Fiction could be seen to be the equivalent of Chopin's Preludes or a tapas dish in that each scene is by itself a work of art, greater than the whole. So characterisation is not of great importance: the differences between Samuel L Jackson's and John Travolta's characters not nearly as important as those of Harvey Keitel's and Steve Buscemi's (let alone Michael Masden's, the psychotic Mr Blonde). In Pulp Fiction, gangsters get screwed (one literally) as well as screw and their responses are invariably predictable: so what counts is situation not character. In Reservoir Dogs the gangsters are in the same kinds of situation to each other but find very different and contradictory ways to deal with them. Reservoir Dogs, along with Gosford Park, is perhaps the best film I have ever seen, partly because there is no slack and partly because the script and acting are uniformly brilliant; of particular merit is Harvey Keitel's performance when his character explains to Mr Pink at the warehouse why he told his name to Tim Roth's character(strangely it is the pauses that do it), and Lawrence Tierney's performance throughout the film which I learnt last night was him being pretty much how he is off-screen (grouchy, intimidating, and by all accounts too annoying and even downright malignant to be called a lovable old rogue).

My nasty conjunctivitis has spread to the other eye but the virus has lost its venom so healthwise I feel fine. I bemoan the lack of time to do everything I want to do. So many books to read, films to see on cinema and dvd, Radio 4 programmes to listen to and, oh yes, time should be spent with friends I guess. These fortnightly wednesdays off work are wonderful but the compressed hours mean more time at work. Work is bearable but I have pertinent and potent information to get into my head and sensuous beauty to experience. I shall be old in 40 years and dead in 60 so no time to waste.

Yesterday evening started well. I took the music drug, listening to a cassette I recorded my favourite music on in my teens. I'm prepared to be very very candid in blogs - partly because nobody is likely to read them! - but that does not extend to revealing some of the songs on that cassette, songs which I love to this day. The wildest of the bunch is undoubtedly "Everybody wants to rule the world" by Tears for Fears!

But then disaster. I will explain...

I would guess that all reasonably intelligent and clued-up people are savvy enough not to fall for common computer scams - usually the "Dear Friend" and broken english make them stand out a mile off - but I confess that last night I fell victim to one. What's this? My laptop is corrupted by trojan worm number 3145? It's critical???! Oh but wait, now I see a pop-up with a soothing official-looking logo informing me that this "critical" virus can and should be fixed straight away using that reassuring software. Just $59.99 would crush this worm (just the word makes one flinch). It was late, I was tired, my internet had stopped working - as it does periodically - so I couldn't check the saviour's reputation, and besides I was shit scared and wanted peace of mind: no nightmares about serpents devouring my laptop.

So I paid the money and when the internet eventually started to work I decided to see what this "Personal Antivirus" as it styled itself actually was. Google it now and you will see.

After buying some genuine spyware, I finally got rid of it but by then it was 3am which no doubt accounts for my extreme tiredness tonight.

Where has that gorgeous jazz gone?

I will never forget it. The night of 31 August 1997, the night Princess Di died. It didn't inspire me to do what I did - in fact I felt curiously unmoved by the whole incident - but I listened to Jazz FM late at night, something not done before or since for any length of time. The songs they played were divine, I felt moved to my core, yet I did not have the presence of mind to write down the names of the songs that were played. A letter and phone call to Jazz FM asking them for the playlist were both fruitless and so now I have lost that night forever.

Periodically, like this afternoon, I listen to Spotify in an effort to find jazz similar to that which so melted me. I type in "cool jazz", "piano jazz", "smooth jazz", I have heard much but much tat and no jewels save for a pearl called Blue Harlem by Ike Quebec. No diamonds. The songs I heard that night were diamonds. It is a certain type of jazz which means anything to me, the rest to me is worthless. A solo instrument evoking soul and, importantly, a melody - not the randomness of so much jazz which ordinarily precludes me wasting my time listening to Jazz FM. I am extremely discerning with my music. At the Hard Rock Calling event on 27th June, Neil Young (my favourite artist bar Beethoven) I loved; the first two acts, some of the Pretenders and Seasick Steve I thought were very good, but the others I couldn't stand. Yet there were people smiling and bopping away to all the songs by all the acts. What is their mentality? Do they do it because all the music sounds equally good to them or do they feel they should be seen to be continually singing and dancing? Maybe it is a symptom of the prevailing attitude that what is currently cool should be enjoyed, a social thing. Individual tastes when experiencing art are secondary. Maybe. But if so I myself could never compromise on aesthetics. I experience near-ecstasy when I listen to some of Chopin's nocturnes but cannot abide Beethoven's 9th - and this despite my earlier comment about the guy.

And with jazz: the "classic" album by Miles Davis, I forget its name, I have listened to twice out of courtesy to the artist and his reputation but never again. Instead I will continue to mine for diamonds.