JULIE AND JULIA: Meryl triumphs in culinary smackdown

JULIE AND JULIA pits "old" Hollywood against one of cinema's hottest up and coming actresses but the final result is never in doubt. Meryl Streep easily wipes the floor with perky newcomer Amy Adams.
The film's not intended to be an intergenerational boxing match but it's difficult to avoid making the comparisons. It's not often that we get to see a film with two strong female leads given equal screen time and acting in their own spaces. 
JULIE AND JULIA is about the relationship which develops between 30 year old New Yorker Julie Powell (Adams) and legendary tv chef Julia Child (Streep) although the two never meet. Separated by space and time the connection is Childs' famous cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" which inspires Julie to attempt to create all 524 recipes in one year while writing a blog charting her efforts.
Julie's progress is mirrored by Julia's, from bored wife of an American diplomat (Stanley Tucci) in late 40s Paris through her apprenticeship in cordon bleu to the final publication of her book.
Streep effortlessly dominates as the warbly-voiced, slightly bohemian and definitely tall Childs. Hers is a character which lends itself to easy parody but it's a measure of Streep's talent and experience that while her jaws may occasionally lock on the scenery she never resorts to gnawing it. She keeps Childs' real while also expressing her unrestrained uniqueness.
Julie by comparison is small and mousey and ordinary. The story unconsciously suggests that modern day living has sucked all of the individuality out of us. Perhaps it's just a severe case of rose-tinted glasses syndrome but life and people were more vibrant, more alive, 60 years ago. Julia is irrepressibly optimistic while Julie is weighed down by the burdens of the world.

Perhaps it's not entirely fair to compare the two as equals. Julia was living the relatively privileged life of a diplomat's wife, while Julie is a government worker, trapped in a cubicle in downtown Manhattan taking phone calls all day from relatives of those killed and injured in the Twin Towers attack on 9/11. Perhaps the deck was stacked in Streep's favour before a single foot of film had ever been shot, but she's not an star given to scene-stealing or diva demands. She did her thing while Adams did hers, and experience won out.
Just as Gena Rowlands blew Kate Hudson off the screen in the otherwise eminently forgettable "The Skeleton Key" so does the 60 year old Streep demonstrate how age and a few wrinkles can make for a more satisfying performance than the youth and a perfect figure which Hollywood studios believe we want to see all the time.

 

THE INVENTION OF LYING: the honest truth

THE INVENTION OF LYING is a very good idea for a one hour tv romantic comedy. It's considerably less effective as a 99 minute movie. There's just not enough story to sustain the concept, and the acting and direction are flat and unfocussed.
British comedy wunderkid Ricky Gervais must take the lion's share of the blame for this. He not only stars in but also produced and co-wrote and co-directed the film with newcomer Matthew Robinson, and it all seems to have gone to his head. Gervais is undoubtedly a very talented comedy writer and actor but he's not Orson Welles. THE INVENTION OF LYING shows him very clearly in over his head.
He plays Mark Bellison, an overweight loser in a world where everyone always tells the truth about everything. The idea of lying just doesn't exist until Bellison finds himself in a particularly stressful situation and tells an untruth. The result is miraculous. It gets him exactly what he wants because no one can conceive that he is being anything less than honest, and this initial success inspires Mark to reshape his entire life into what he wants it to be rather than what it is. At the top of his list is winning the love of Anne McDoogles (Jennifer Garner), a highly desirable young lady who, by mutual consent, is out of his league.
This is where everything in the story starts to lose focus. 
Mark decides he's not going to lie to Anne to get what he wants from her, although he does lie to her about plenty of other things including the existence of "the man in the sky" who controls everything in the world.
Although it's never explicitly confirmed, it's obvious that the Man in the Sky is God, and Mark finds himself cast in the role of God's messenger by a public fanatically eager to learn more. But the story isn't very clear on whether it's suggesting that Mark invents religion as well as lying, or whether there's an inherent connection between the two.
At more or less the same time as the focus fades the same thing happens to the comedy. THE INVENTION OF LYING is never laugh out loud funny but once the apparent invention of religion is added to the mix it ceases to be anything more than very intermittently slightly mildly amusing. The situation's not helped by the oddball cast who fail to gell or demonstrate the slightest talent for genuinely funny comedy. Cameos from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ed Norton, Tina Fey, Christopher Guest, Justin Bateman, and Rob Lowe all add nothing to the proceedings, and a brief scene between Gervais's "Extras" co-stars Stephen Marchant and Shaun Williamson only serves to suggest what might have been.
The film's an even bigger disappointment because it was so badly missold by the cinema trailers. They promised a sharp, witty and very dry comedy but what we get is a stillborn mish-mash of comedy styles with barely a hearty laugh to be had and even less of a story. 
Extremely unsatisfying. 

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT: the dream factory has Christmas all wrapped up

A word of caution about CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT - don't watch this film on an empty stomach. There's so much talk about juicy steaks, roasted chickens and chocolate cakes topped with ice cream, that it'll send you running to the kitchen to raid the fridge.

Food is the thread that pulls together the disparate elements of this World War II comedy - a shipwrecked sailor, a magazine columnist, a pompous architect, an overweight publisher, and an equally rotund Hungarian restaurateur with a knack for mangling the English language.

The sailor is Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), hailed as a hero by the newspapers for surviving 18 days on a life-raft after his destroyer is torpedoed by a German U-boat. Recuperating in hospital, Jones reveals he's never had a real family and dreams of spending a traditional Christmas surrounded by loved ones and large amounts of delicious home cooking.

Spotting a golden opportunity for publicity, Alexander Yardley (the wonderful Sydney Greenstreet), publisher of the bestselling magazine "Smart Housekeeping", bullies his star columnist Elizabeth Lane (the equally wonderful Barbara Stanwyck), into inviting the sailor to join her and her perfect family for the holidays at their perfect farmhouse in Connecticut.

Lane is the Martha Stewart of 1940s magazine cookery writing. Her weekly column with its gushing references to her husband, infant son, and their idyllic home, is read and admired by millions of Americans. But Elizabeth is hiding a very guilty secret. She has no husband, child or farmhouse and - even worse - she can't cook. All her recipes are created by a Hungarian restaurant owner called Felix (S.Z.Sakall).

Yardley's edict, and his decision to join the Lanes for Christmas himself, sets in motion a comedy of errors which keeps the story bubbling merrily for the ensuing 90 minutes.

Originally released by Warner Brothers in mid 1945, CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT is a superb example of the Hollywood studio system's ability to create entertainment that was both escapist and rooted in the reality of a world coming to the end of a devastating world war.

The film taps into the hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of families looking forward to a reunion with husbands, sons and fathers after four Christmases apart while they were away fighting for their country and for freedom. Jones' story reminds audiences just why the sacrifices were necessary, and anticipates to a brighter future when the grimness of war would be banished to history, and people could concentrate on the simple human pleasures of friendship, love and food.

Even if a traditional Christmas is not in your plans this film is guaranteed to lift your spirits, and that is due in very large part to the wonderful and extraordinarily talented cast of actors who have since become Hollywood legends.

Stanwyck is an absolute delight as Elizabeth Lane. One of the most versatile female stars of the 30s and 40s she was as deft at comedy as she was at film noir. In fact CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT was her first film since starring as cold-hearted femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in "Double Indemnity."

The same is true of Sydney Greenstreet. Typecast as the sinister heavy is films like "The Maltese Falcon", "Casablanca", and "Passage to Marseille," he reveals an unexpected talent for light comedy as the overbearing boss who's really a giant teddy bear.

Acting alongside these two powerhouses could have easily overwhelmed the lightweight and non-descript Morgan so it's to his credit that he more than holds his own and succeeds in making Jones likeable and credible as the everyman who is naive yet also charismatic enough to seduce the leading lady.

Warmhearted, funny and full of affection, CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT simply oozes Yuletide cheer.

It's a film to fall in love with.

GOODBYE LENIN: communism's never been so much fun!

The words comedy and German cinema are rarely seen in close proximity to each other, but the two concepts collide head on in GOODBYE LENIN.

Although it opens in East Berlin in 1989 and spans the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the reunification of Germany, this is most definitely not a history lesson. Instead, it’s a funny, sad, heart-string tugging family story, using the collapse of the East German communist state as a backdrop.

The family are Alex (Daniel Bruhl), his sister, and their mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), who’s a dedicated socialist. She slips into a coma just days before the fall of the Wall and when she awakens 8 months later, her doctors warn Alex her health is so fragile that any shock could kill her.

So he embarks on an ambitious and increasingly ludicrous scheme to prevent her from learning of the monumental changes that have occurred by pretending not only that the GDR still exists but that it has actually triumphed over capitalism. This involves shutting her off from the outside world, then creating fake tv news programmes on video to persuade mum that West Germans have become so disillusioned with the excesses of free enterprise that they’re swarming east in their thousands. He also bribes friends and family, and even a former cosmonaut, to participate in the charade.

It sounds like the set up for one of those farcical comedies where the audience is asked to suspend disbelief in the quest for an easy laugh, but its to director Wolfgang Becker’s credit that the story is anything but that. He skilfully blends the comic potential of a ridiculous premise with the sadness of seeing an entire culture swept away in the space of a few months to create what he describes as “a sad comedy” of ordinary folk caught up in the whirlwind of uncontrollable change.

GOODBYE LENIN picked up 9 awards, including Best European film, on its release in 2003, and became the most successful German film to date, but that's not why it's worth seeing. You should watch it because it's a damn good story very well told.

MILDRED PIERCE: solid gold entertainment with so much to say

MILDRED PIERCE is the golden age of Hollywood at it's very best - a compelling story beautifully told.

Joan Crawford deservedly won the Best Actress Oscar as the abandoned housewife and mother who claws her way to business success by sheer force of personality only to discover that money doesn't bring happiness. 
The film's subtext is that women who succeed in a man's world must be punished for their audacity. In Mildred's case she's cursed with the most ungrateful daughter (Ann Blyth) in the history of cinema and dragged down by the weak-willed, sponging and greedy men she chooses to surround herself with.
Bruce Bennett, an actor who exuded solidity and terminal dullness, is perfectly cast as Bert Pierce, Mildred's bland, weak, philandering husband whose abandonment of her for a woman who'll service his needs sets her off on the path to material success and emotional meltdown.

Mildred replaces him with Wally Fay (a bravura performance by the underrated Jack Carson), Bert's former business partner and a grade-A sleaze who literally drools at the mouth as he gropes her while describing what her wants to do to her. Unsurprisingly (to everyone except Wally) Mildred gives him the heave-ho when he introduces her to handsome, suave but impoverished playboy Monte Baragon (Zachary Scott), a man with little self respect and even less spine.Mildred's ambition emasculates Monte, consigning him to the role of the female in the relationship, dependent on handouts from Mildred to keep him in the style to which he is accustomed. Mildred meanwhile assumes an increasingly masculine attire. 

It's a message that would not have been lost on audiences when the film was first released in October 1945. Millions of men were returning home after service in World War Two expecting that the millions of women who'd taken their place in factories and many other traditionally male domains for the duration would now revert to their former status as wives, mothers and homemakers.

Even if we put aside the social context of the film's creation, MILDRED PIERCE remains a powerhouse production. Crawford is magnificent under the direction of the superbly talented Michael Curtiz. The film relaunched her career after she'd been ignominiously dumped by MGM and recast her as a woman destined to suffer for daring to believe she was the equal of any man. 
With so much to offer on so many different levels, MILDRED PIERCE is a must see film for anyone who is serious about cinema.

NEW MOON: all filler, no killer

For anyone over the age of 16 NEW MOON is the dreariest possible experience. This second installment in the Twilight triology is a hundred and thirty painful minutes of teenage moping and mumbling interspersed with unfeasibly pumped-up shirtless adolescents (one of whom also appears to have pumped up - or least pumped out - his nose) running around in the rain.

Time slows to an agonising crawl over broken glass as Bella (Kristen Stewart) moons and mopes for scene after scene over her lost vampire love Edward (Robert Pattinson). Almost anyone who's ever been a teenager can identify with the heightened emotions which make separation feel like the end of the world but NEW MOON wallows in the misery with the same demented delight of a pig in you know what. 
By thirty minutes in I was ready to scream out "for god's sake get over it!" but I didn't because I didn't fancy being lynched by the mostly female, softly sniffling audience around me. 
NEW MOON is devoid of the sense of adventure and discovery which made "Twilight" such an enjoyable watch. That film had a beginning, middle and end and looks like "Citizen Kane" in comparison. NEW MOON is all middle. 
Granted there are a couple of moments where the pace drags itself up a notch beyond comatose but these flurries of excitement are so brief and unrewarding that they completely fail to scratch the itch that the film has created. 
Just as Bella and Edward are fated never to get it on, so was I destined for total frustration in my hopes for a satisfying cinematic climax.

MANPOWER: Eddie G blows a fuse over glamorous German

MANPOWER's most impressive achievement is in making the marriage of squat ugly Edward G Robinson to glamorous over-sexed Marlene Dietrich appear almost plausible - almost.
Otherwise this 1941 Warner Brothers drama is pure hokum, but hokum of the solid gold variety.
Robinson plays Hank McHenry, a lineman on a power company road crew  who earns the nickname 'Gimpy' after his foot touches a live wire while 100 feet up a pylon fixing a break during a torrential thunderstorm. Hank's also got a hot temper and short fuse and relies on his best mate Johnny (George Raft) to extricate him from the barroom bust-ups he's constantly getting into, usually over some dame who's given him the brush-off.
Enter Dietrich as the improbably named Fay, a hard-as-nails clip joint hostess and daughter of Hank's terminally dull (and soon to be terminally dead) pal 'Pop' Duval. The quintessentially American Pop talks so slowly and deliberately that he never gets around to explaining how his daughter came to speak with a strong German accent before he pops his clogs leaving Hank to console the not particularly distraught Fay. Hank pursues her with the relentless vigor of a terrier chasing a rabbit down a hole, finally convincing her to yield to his proposal of marriage when he makes it clear that he doesn't expect her to love him in return. 

So what is Johnny doing while all this unlikely wooing is going on? After all if it's a choice between Robinson and Raft one might reasonable expect a woman of Dietrich's stature to opt for Raft who at least looks like he might have some idea how to make her happy even if he can't act. But Robinson clearly had a smarter agent and got it written it his contract that he got the girl while Raft is relegated to the role of hero's loyal best friend whose job it is to give Fay the stinkeye because he knows she's no good. 
The whole implausible menage-a-trois builds up to a fairly predictable climax but there's plenty of enjoyment to be had getting there, starting with Robinson's no-holds-barred performance and Dietrich gamely giving it her all despite being completely wrong for the part (Ann Sheridan would have been a better bet). There's added lustre courtesy of Warner Bros stock company members Alan Hale, Barton MacLane, and Ward Bond which more than offsets Frank McHugh's irritating schtick and trademark asthmatic laugh, while action specialist Raoul Walsh directs with the total conviction of a man determined to prove he can turn a B-picture script into an A-grade movie.
He can't but it's fun watching him try.

ACT OF VIOLENCE: a thriller more taut than something really taut

The name and the face of Robert Ryan should be familiar to any self-respecting admirer of film noir. If you are and they're not you should be ashamed of yourself. Ryan is one of the finest actors ever to grace the genre. He made dozens of movies big and small in the 1940s and 50s in a range of genres and he gave a great performance in everyone one of them but he was never better than when he was prowling the dark streets of film noir-town.
Ryan had a face that was perfect for expressing a tightly coiled anger, bitterness and frustration which could explode into violence at any moment. His expression told us his character's backstory without the need for lengthy exposition - here is a man with a cynical mistrust of anyone who wants to do good; who believes that everyone has a price, and the only way to get ahead is to disregard emotions like compassion, love and consideration for others.
ACT OF VIOLENCE from 1948 is a superb example of his work. Ryan plays Joe Parkson, an embittered ex-soldier out for murderous revenge against his former commanding officer who betrayed an escape attempt by his men to their German captors, resulting in their deaths. Parkson is relentless in his quest and his complete lack of concern for his own welfare makes him an even more unnerving figure.
Van Heflin is equally impressive as the increasingly terrified object of Parkson's obsession. His Frank Enley is a family man, community leader and war hero, hiding a guilty secret from everyone including his naive young wife, played by Janet Leigh. Parkson's reappearance causes a nervous breakdown which takes Enley on a bizarre and disturbing detour through LA's skid row and an encounter with an unrecognisable Mary Astor in a performance so devoid of glamour or beauty that it's disturbing.
Director Fred Zinneman doesn't waste a minute of screen time on unnecessary or self indulgent story-telling. ACT OF VIOLENCE is as taut as a drumskin and totally compelling. In the context of the late 1940s it's also a brave piece of mainstream cinema. At a time when any criticism of the American way of life was increasingly being viewed as unpatriotic and even treasonable, this film dares to suggest that not every American performed nobly and heroically while in uniform; that the pressures of war pushed some to acts of cowardice and treachery, and deformed others mentally as well as physically.
What's even more surprising is that ACT OF VIOLENCE was made by MGM, that flagwaving bastion of patriotic conservatism and home to wholesome stars like Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner.
Tension, terror, a gripping tale, and standout performances - this film has it all. ACT OF VIOLENCE is essential viewing for anyone who claims they're serious about cinema.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER: 500 reasons why global warming is a bad thing

500 DAYS OF SUMMER is 450 days too long. 
A Chavy-looking young man called Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) falls in love with beautiful co-worker Summer (Zooey Deschanel). She makes it clear from the start that she's not looking for anything serious but then appears to lead him on before abruptly dumping him. Tom's life goes to hell in a handbasket.
Is she a bitch or is he a deluded fool?
Director Marc Webb jumps backwards and forwards in time across a span of 500 days offering us snapshots of the relationship's peaks and troughs which seem to confirm both assessments.
But Tom and Summer and their "relationship" are all so boringly normal that it's very difficult to summon up any emotional response beyond yawning.
It's a who cares, so what kind of film which desperately wants to be an off-beat rom-com but only succeeds in being dull.

2012: John Cusack gets his Shelley Winters moment

I had to check the date on my cellphone on leaving the cinema just to make sure it wasn't actually 2012. This film goes on an awfully long time without offering one single original idea on the subject of the end of the world but, really, should I have expected anything else from the director of previous end-of-civilisation blockbusters "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow"?
All of the genre's crucial cliches are present and correct. The story opens wide with heads of state and scientists grappling in secret with the impending end before zooming in to make the political personal in the form of a fractured American family. John Cusack is Jackson Curtis, a self-absorbed writer turned chauffeur whose lack of attention to his nearest and dearest - wife Amanda Peet, son Noah and Daughter Lily - has resulted in him losing them to nerdy, unlikeable but wealthy plastic surgeon Gordon. Noah, of course, resents his dad for not being there, while Lily expresses her distress by wearing silly hats and wetting the bed. Believe me, I'm not giving anything away when I suggest that, given this premise, the odds are really pretty good that it'll fall to Jackson to save the world and in the process prove to his disfunctional family that he's worth a second chance.
The story is more predictable than the plot of a pantomime.
Great cities fall in spectacular orgies of CGI destruction, famous landmarks crumble before our eyes, the US President (Danny Glover) demonstrates the kind of selflessness we rarely see in real politicians, and the Curtis family (plus Gordon) enjoy the kind of miraculous good luck that sees them survive countless brushes with death while those all around them succumb to collapsing skyscrapers, earthquakes, car crashes, tsunamis, and stampeding crowds. The only element missing is New York City. 
In an astonishing display of self control director Roland Emmerich deviates from the tried and tested apocalypse movie formula and resists the urge to include scenes of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Times Square disappearing beneath a monstrous tidal wave. This unspoken acknowledgment that the graphic dismemberment of Manhattan has been done to death by disaster movies is however his only deviation from the formula.  
That means that while the story is about the destruction of the entire world, the only country that really matters is the United States. Aside from a token nod towards an Indian scientist and his family, the only people who are given anything approaching a rounded character are American. Other nationalities are portrayed as rioting, praying, or hysterical masses devoid of individuality and, therefore, not in need of our sympathy.  
The strict adherence to formula aside, my main gripes are the blatantly in-your-face product placements for Sony's widescreen tvs and Vaio laptops, and Woody Harrelson's scenery chewing performance as an end-of-the-world prophet. Thankfully he's the first one to get smacked in the head by a house-sized chunk of rock proving that justice can prevail even in an apocalypse.

Emmerich deserves credit for stirring this stale collection of ingredients so vigorously that it never has time to congeal into the offensively smelly lump it deserves to be. 2012 hurls He hurls Jackson from one near death experience to the next at the breakneck speed of a themepark rollercoaster ride generating something akin to genuine excitement in the process. Meanwhile US scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who's seen the whole thing coming, runs around saving humanity (the faceless mass variety) while falling in love with the President's daughter (Thandie Newton). Yes it's patently ridiculous but so brazenly so that it's fun.

Emmerich saves the best for last, giving Cusack his Shelley Winters moment just when you thought it couldn't possibly get anymore implausible. If you've seen "The Poseidon Adventure" you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't it's worth digging out a copy of this 35 year old disaster blockbuster to see how Hollywood did it before they had computers to do it for them.
I can't see 2012 being as fondly remembered 35 years from now. It's undemanding escapist fare - and the $65 million opening weekend box office take would suggest there's a big demand for such fare - but there's nothing memorable about it. Fun but forgettable.

CITY OF GOD: hell on Earth

CITY OF GOD is the ironic name given to a housing project built by the Brazilian Government on the outskirts of Rio in the early 60s to house thousands of poor families. It rapidly became a breeding ground for organized crime and drugs, as its younger inhabitants discovered the only way to make something of themselves was with a gun in their hand.

Fernando Meirelles stunning directorial debut takes us through three decades in the life of this real life slum, as seen through the eyes of Rocket, a poor black kid too scared to embark on a life of crime, but too bright to accept his lot.

Through him we follow the rise and fall of his friends and enemies as they struggle to survive. In particular, the film charts the spectacular ascent of L’il Dice from pre-pubescent murderer to city ganglord.

As Rocket battles against fate to stay on the right side of the law, L’il Dice revels in the power of the gun. What starts as something to do to relieve the boredom rapidly becomes a way of life when he discovers it’s the quickest way to win respect and become a man.

But once he’s won that respect the only way to keep it is to carry on killing. One of the film’s most disturbing aspects is the casual attitude to violent death – L’il Dice isn’t the only child who executes gang rivals with the same amount of thought we give to changing our socks.

CITY OF GOD is a bleak, disturbing film, but not without hope or flashes of humour. After watching a newspaper photographer in action at a murder scene, Rocket decides that’s what he wants to do, and he sets about realizing that dream by delivering the papers he hopes one day will print his pictures.

Shot on location in and around the actual City of God, Meirelles has created what big budget American movies like "Traffic" failed to achieve – a genuine sense of realism. There are no big name stars hogging the screen desperate to showcase their acting chops here. Most of the cast were discovered in the slum’s community centers and required little coaching to learn their parts.

Powerful, moving, and emotionally draining, the Rio Convention and Visitors Bureau certainly won’t be a fan of this sprawling epic, but you will.

WICKED AS THEY COME: Arlene's been a very naughty girl

The entire premise of this 1956 melodrama depends on convincing the viewer that Arlene Dahl is so irresistibly beautiful that the briefest glimpse of her will turn grown men as solid, dependable and dull as Herbert Marshall into dribbling fools totally unable to control their baser instincts.

Measured by this self-imposed yardstick WICKED AS THEY COME falls at the first hurdle.
Miss Dahl is differentiated from the hundreds of other bottle blondes that Hollywood has tried to foist on us over the decades as the next Jean Harlow or the next Marilyn Monroe solely by the very prominent mole clinging to her upper lip.
Even minus the mole she's just another averagely attractive actress with few outstanding assets in the physical or talent departments and that averageness is just compounded by her character's lack of personality.
Dahl plays Kathy Allen, a poor but beautiful factory worker living in the slums of Boston, MA, who wins a rigged beauty contest (having bewitched the judges) and uses the prize of $1000 and a trip to Europe to reinvent herself and snare a man with the money to keep in the style she believes she deserves. 
You'll guess from the film's 95 minute running time that she doesn't snare him the moment she steps off the plane in London. She has to work her way through several other men first, including the dull and dependable Marshall before she reaches the man with the really big wad. But all the while that she's wrecking careers and marriages she keeps returning to tough-guy advertising exec Tim O'Bannion, played like a send-up of an actual tough guy by a perpetually trenchcoat-clad Phil Carey.
Kathy Allen is like Barbara Stanwyck in "Babyface" without any of Stanwyck's charisma or style. Her paucity of allure simply makes the men who fall for her look like even bigger fools than they're supposed to be.
The film, however, does offer plenty of other distractions to keep us occupied and entertained. They start with the attempt by Sid James to sound like an American, which is slightly more convincing than director Ken Hughes' efforts to pass off the suburbs of south west London as Boston, Massachusetts. Add to that the aircraft which changes model in mid-flight (the stock footage of the plane taking off and landing doesn't match the film of the aircraft in flight), and the beauty competition organised by a very smalltime fashionware trade magazine run by a dad and his son out of a basement but which manages to get its grand final shown live on tv. That might explain why the trip to Europe part of the big prize only goes as far as London and doesn't include paying for stay in a swanky Mayfair hotel. And did I mention the cast of British actors who can't sustain an American accent for the duration of an entire sentence? 
Shoehorning big name American stars on the slide into British made movies was all the rage in the 1950s. For the waning stars it offered the kind of paycheck they were no longer being offered in the States, and their name above the title helped British studios to sell their product in the US. But the two elements rarely fitted together comfortably. The American stars were just too big and too Hollywood to be convincing in small, cheap, drab British made stories with their low production values.  
There is a perverse pleasure in watching this mismatch in action. WICKED AS THEY COME has it by the bucketload and it's that which kept me watching.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS: almost as much fun as it sounds

The plot of THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is as bizarre as its title.
Briefly put, it involves Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a smalltown newspaper journalist who travels to Iraq in search of adventure and an opportunity to prove his worth to his cheating wife. There he hooks up with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) a mysterious special ops guy on a mission who regales Bob with tall tales about a secret US army battalion trained to fight using paranormal powers instead of guns.
The plot though is less important than the way in which it unfolds. It's Clooney's deadpan delivery of ridiculous explanations and McGregor's understandably bewildered reaction, together with the numerous slyly humorous flashbacks which illustrate Clooney's story which make THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS worth watching. Getting there is more fun than arriving because the climax is distinctly anti-climactic. 
All the air goes out of the story when the two finally reach the end of their quest. The quirky sense of humour is replaced with a deadening seriousness. It's as if director Grant Heslov and producer Clooney have decided it's not enough simply for their film to entertain; it must have a message as well. The abrupt shift in mood and pace is not just unsettling, it ruins the whole party, erasing the memories of the good time I was having just a few minutes earlier.
GOATS is a minor entry in the Clooney canon. It bears all the hallmarks of his slightly subversive sense of humour but it's not in the same league as "Burn After Reading" or "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" although it will definitely remind you of them. Cassady is yet another Clooney character who may or may not be all that he claims to be, but is most certainly not the hero of the story despite Clooney's star billing. That role goes to Jeff Bridges as a most unconventional US Army officer who recruits and trains the battalion of psychic warriors.
Amusing rather than laugh out loud funny with a decidedly off-beat sense of humour that some will find off-putting, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is an acquired taste which may find more success at the art house than the multiplex. 

MALAYA: one swansong and one very odd couple

I had one reason only to watch MALAYA - Sydney Greenstreet. This 1949 MGM War World Two drama (known as "East of the Rising Sun" in the UK) features the final screen appearance of my all-time favourite character actor, and I wanted to see how he signs off.
I have no idea whether he knew at the time that this would be his last movie, but he goes out in a reasonable amount of style. Playing a character called "The Dutchman" even though there's nothing remotely Dutch about him, he effortlessly dominates every scene he's in, which is no small accomplishment given that he sharing the screen with co-stars of the calibre of Spencer Tracy and James Stewart. 
Despite this it's certainly not an outstanding performance. The Dutchman is little more than a watery retread of his Senor Ferrari in "Casablanca" and Greenstreet seems rather listless. It was illness which prompted his retirement and it's possible that he was unwell at the time of shooting, although it's hard to be sure since the tropical setting requires that he look sweaty all the time.  
Aside from Greenstreet's swansong, the only other element of any interest in MALAYA is the unusual pairing of Tracy and Stewart. The two stars get equal billing in the opening titles and it's Stewart who does the early running as a journalist with a plan to steal a large amount of desperately needed rubber from under the noses of the Japanese forces occupying Malaya.
To close the deal Stewart needs the help of a con called Carnaghan, played by Tracy. 
This is where the only other item of interest comes in, because the moment he first appears on screen he grabs the film off Stewart and never hands it back. Stewart wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders to begin with but when Tracy appears he simply gives up completely, relegating himself to a colourless supporting role which could have been played by any number of lesser lights in MGM's sizeable stable of star names.
What makes this situation even more bizarre is that the character of Carnaghan is not even a comfortable fit for Tracy. Carnaghan's a supremely confident, two-fisted ladies man with no conception of danger. He treats the Japanese military like a bunch of third rate punks who just need to have their collective ass whupped a couple of times to understand who's boss. While everyone around him's focusing on the deadly serious subject of trying to win World War Two, Tracy's playing the whole thing for laughs.
To add insult to Stewart's injury it's also Tracy who gets to get the girl, even though he looks more like Valentina Cortese's grandfather than her lover. 
MALAYA really is a bad deal all round for Stewart. 

THIS IS IT: the way he made me feel

I must beg to differ with Dame Elizabeth Taylor's tweeted review of THIS IS IT. It is not "the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking" I have ever seen. Nor is it worthy of Oscar nominations "in every conceivable category." It is however an engrossing and entertaining tribute to Michael Jackson's incredible talent as a performer.
THIS IS IT is the show we never got to see. Culled from more than a hundred hours of video footage of the Los Angeles rehearsals earlier this year for his planned farewell show in London, it portrays Jackson as an entertainer still at the top of game despite having turning fifty and endured years of ridicule for his off-stage behaviour. Rightly or wrongly those lurid stories of his private life suddenly seem small and irrelevant when watching him on stage breathing new life into classics like "Billie Jean", "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Black or White", "Beat It" and, of course, "Thriller." It's impossible to top the John Landis directed 1983 video for the latter and wisely Jackson and show director Kenny Ortega don't try, opting instead for a reimagining which combines 3D video with live action.
Lavish though the new "Thriller" routine is, for me the highlight of THIS IS IT is "Smooth Criminal" which blends a film noir mini-movie starring Jackson alongside Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson with punchy on-stage choreography.
Cut through all of the speculation about Jackson's motivations for his comeback and whether he was fit enough to handle the demands of a 50 show run and one thing is very clear; "This Is It" (the show) certainly wouldn't have been a cynical minimum effort maximum profit stroll through Jackson's greatest hits. THIS IS IT (the film) proves that Jackson intended it to be bigger and more spectacular than anything he'd done before and that he was completely involved in aspect of the production, and the music in particular. He's polite but demanding with the musicians as he directs them to create exactly the same sounds that he's imagining.
Much has been written since Jackson's death about the state of his health during these rehearsals with some claiming he was obviously unwell and others countering that he was in excellent health. From the evidence presented in THIS IS IT he looks thin, particularly when compared with the lithe and muscular dancers surrounding him, most of whom are 25 - 30 years younger, but he doesn't display any problems in matching them move for move. Admittedly he doesn't participate in their pirouettes and backflips but that's not his job. He sings and dances his way through numerous routines without appearing out of breath which is considerably more than most 50 year old men can manage.
It would be wrong to suggest that THIS IS IT offers irrefutable evidence that all the bad things that have been said about Jackson's final days are wrong. This is a carefully crafted tribute to a recently departed superstar by those who were working with him at the very end and who very obviously revered him. It is not a warts n'all or fly on the wall documentary. Jackson is always "on" and, consequently, there's nothing which even approaches an unguarded moment. It's not a concert movie either but rather a valuable record of a work-in-progress. It's fascinating to watch Jackson and Ortega putting together the routines and I enjoyed the opportunity to hear the songs performed live without interruption from screaming fans, and without endless shots of besotted fans waving their arms in the air and singing along.

I admit that Jackson's death in June left me largely unmoved. I liked his music and I'd been lucky enough to see him live in concert in London in 1997, but I found the outpouring of grief overblown and hysterical. People seem to have lost all sense of proportion and forgotten all the bad stuff, I thought. THIS IS IT reminded me of just how much great music he created, and in the long run, that is what we will remember when we think of Michael Jackson. 

ROPE OF SAND: ever so slightly ropey

I remember a late night three or four years ago, slumped in front of the tv, feeling too lazy to turn it off, get up and go to bed. I'd channel surfed my way to QVC where a super-smiley woman was coming to what was clearly the end of a long stint trying to flog Diamonique jewelry. Having exhausted every other reason why our life would not be complete without at least one piece of  this overpriced fake diamond tat she tried to convince us that it really was impossible to tell the 'ique' from the 'ond' because the 'ique' was made by the same craftsmen who created the 'ond'  jewelry. She explained that they'd work on the Diamonique jewelry after they'd finished polishing and setting their daily workload of diamonds. Without intending to, she painted a mental picture of craftsmen carelessly knocking out a couple of dozen diamonique necklaces in the final five minutes of their shift while they waited for the factory whistle to blow.
I was reminded of this moment while watching ROPE OF SAND, not because the object of lust was diamonds buried in the burning sands of southern Africa, but because the film is a very obvious and cut price effort to emulate the success of 'Casablanca' released six years earlier. 
It's not the story which prompts the comparisons but the cast and the settings. Bogie and Bergman are missing but her long-suffering screen husband Paul Henreid is second billed as the sadistic commandant of a private police force; the unflappably urbane Claude Rains is third billed as his urbane, cynical witticisms spouting boss, while a whiny, seedy Peter Lorre plays the appropriately named Toady. But the 'Casablanca' connections don't end there.
The film's decidedly anti-heroic hero Mike, played by Burt Lancaster, has a black sidekick called John who performs much the same kind of role as Sam did for Rick, minus the piano playing. Mike does the right thing by the heroine, Suzanne, although he insists his passion for her is not the reason why he's doing the right thing, and much of the action takes place in a very exotically dressed cafe-bar-nightclub which resembles 'Rick's Cafe Americain' in everything but name, and where the headwaiter is also called Carl.
And if all that weren't enough,  ROPE OF SAND is produced by Hal Wallis, the genius who brought all of the elements together to create the dazzling diamond that is 'Casablanca'!
So why, with so much going for it, does ROPE OF SAND turn out to be such a glaringly cheap Diamonique-dressed trinket?
Perhaps most importantly, the script has none of the subtlety, intelligence or humour of 'Casablanca.' That film beautifully articulated a moment in time when the world needed a hero like Rick Blaine who could put selfish apathy aside to do the right thing, recognising that his problems didn't amount to a hill of beans. ROPE's story is small, self-centred and unimaginatively written and, frankly there's a limit to what even actors of the calibre of Rains and Lorre can do to rescue a a weak script and direction. 

A consequence of the poor script is a pair of leading characters who are hard to care about. Lancaster's Mike Davis is handsome and athletic but not particularly likable, while Corinne Calvert in her American film debut fails to convince as the streetwise slut who discovers true love the instant she claps eyes on Davis. She has none of Bergman's allure and her character's backstory is not exactly one to elicit much sympathy.
Henreid tries his best to be a convincing bad guy but his heart's just not in it. Maybe that's because he was uncomfortable playing a character other than a suave continental lover, or perhaps it's because he was simply embarrassed at his character's many inconsistencies. 
Lorre is completely wasted in a nonsensical part which is completely superfluous to the story. He may have had an even smaller role in 'Casablanca' but that was an essential one. Without Ugarte's theft of the letters of transit Rick would never have had an opportunity to discover just how noble he could be. 
Ultimately though, the blame lies not with the cast, director or the scriptwriter, but with the producer, Hal Wallis. By 1949 he was a very powerful man in Hollywood with the power to choose his own projects and cast them. He oversaw every aspect of the film's production and he blew it. He was the master crafter of diamond jewelry who thought he could fob us off with a piece of QVC diamonique. 

JIMMY THE GENT: more plot than there's space for

JIMMY THE GENT left me dazed and more than a little confused. Director Michael Curtiz packs more plot into the film's 67 minute running time than I could keep up with. Breakneck hardly begins to describe the pace at which this story moves.
As best as I could understand it, James Cagney is a geneologist (yes, a geneologist!) who earns his living by "finding" the heirs to industrialists, playboys and other assorted super-rich who've died without leaving a will. His main rival is the upright and erudite Charles Wallingham (Alan Dinehart) who also tracks down surviving relatives, but does it the honest way. His second in command is Joan Martin, played by Bette Davis, who used to work for Cagney and still has a secret crush on him  although she'll slap your face and call you a liar if you're to suggest such a thing. 
Now I know that genealogist is not the first occupation that comes to mind when thinking of James Cagney but the good news is that the profession has been adapted to fit his screen persona, rather than the other way around. Cagney plays the part just like he would a newspaper journalist, bookmaker, Broadway show producer, or gangster. Genealogy is just  another racket and Cagney makes no concessions to the part in his acting. If anything he's more manic than usual, bellowing away at his employees, conjuring up at least a hundred different angles to every situation, and stomping around with that stiff-legged strut so beloved by impersonators every since. The whole performance is topped off by a truly bizarre haircut more at home on the head of a World War One-era Prussian officer.
Davis by contrast had yet to make the jump from Warner Bros A-list contract player to bona fide film star replete with her own collection of highly imitatable mannerisms. Here, in the third of six films she was to make for the studio in 1934, she's a heavily made-up peroxide blonde in a part that could just as easily have been played by Joan Blondell or Ginger Rogers.
JIMMY THE GENT is by no means a classic, but it is a fine example of the kind of product that rolled off the Warner Brothers production line at the rate of almost one a week during the period when Hollywood fully lived up to both words in the descriptor "dream factory."

VILLAIN: dis geezer is an' all big fer da part. Know what I mean?

Gor blimey! What would Lizzie say? Richard Burton's playing a Julian Ray - a bit of a Perry Como - a baahmeville sailor, a bale of hay. Kna wot I'm sayin!
Ok so I'm not a native speaker of Cockney but neither is Richard Burton and it hampers his performance in this gritty, British made gangster thriller from 1971. Burton had a beautiful speaking voice and it keeps breaking through as he struggles to sound convincing as East End gangland boss Vic Dakin.

Loosely modelled on real-life London gangster Ronnie Kray, Dakin is a psychotic sadist and closet homosexual whose idea of foreplay is punching lover Ian McShane in the gut. Dakin's also devoted to his mostly bedridden old mum (Cathleen Nesbitt) dutifully bringing her a cup of tea and the Sunday paper after returning from slicing up an informer with a cut-throat razor.
While it's interesting to watch Burton trying something different, his superstar persona overwhelms what is essentially a small scale, low budget project.  By 1971 there was so much extravagant baggage attached to him that it can't be contained by a character like Dakin. Burton tries his best but he's just too big for the part.
It's to the credit of the supporting cast that Burton's miscasting doesn't sink the film. McShane is cool and understated as the quintessential ducker and diver, doing whatever it takes to survive, while Nigel Davenport and a very young Colin Welland succeed in avoiding the cliches as the coppers focused on bringing Dakin down. 
VILLAIN is a movie that's hard to find but it's worth seeking it out because it's a fascinating example of how a really big film star can become boxed in by his own legend.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - a love that passeth all understanding

Michael Moore's latest assault on the establishment isn't going to win him any new friends. His expose of how the cosy relationship between politicians and big financial institutions (Goldman Sachs in particular) lead to last year's meltdown on Wall Street willl reinforce the opinion of those who paint him as an anti-American muckraker. He doesn't pussyfoot around in blaming deregulated capitalism for the recession which has cost millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of Americans their homes.
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY certainly made my blood boil, but not for the same reasons that enrage the Dittoheads. Moore cuts through the almost impenetrable thicket that is the modern financial market to spell out in very simple terms how the American dream was hijacked by a few big institutions to benefit themselves at considerable expense to the rest of us.
He explains how the belief that hard work will be rewarded with financial and material success has been corrupted by capitalism into naked greed, encouraging millions to live beyond their means with easy credit and loans, the terms for which almost no ordinary person could understand. While the carrot of wealth was dangled in front of us - seemingly attainable but in reality always just out of reach - a few people did get rich quick, and they were the creators of these complicated financial instruments. When their creations finally careered out of control in the fall of 2008 and, like Frankenstein's Monster, destroyed the castles of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns et al, the Barons of these ruined establishments escaped with not just their lives but also a huge stash of loot. It was us ordinary folk who were the real victims.
While Moore is rightly angry at this state of affairs he hasn't lost his sense of humour. This film will make you laugh and seethe, unless of course you're someone who still believes the sun shone out of Reagan's wrinkly rear end in which case you'll simply spit blood at Moore's effrontery in criticising St Ron and his Gospel of Trickle Down Economics.
I'll admit I was a little wary about parting with cash to see this film. Economics was never my strong point in school and - let's be honest - the subject does have the potential to be considerably duller than dishwater. But Moore has created a film which not only got my dander up but which also held me almost spellbound until the absolute end. Whatever your political persuasion CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY will not leave you unmoved.

ANNA KARENINA: Garbo schmarbo!

In all my decades of movie-buffdom I've somehow managed to see a grand total of one Greta Garbo film. I've read acres of copy about her and enjoyed those stories of her being stalked by paparazzi on the sidewalks of Manhattan during her declining years but I've never felt the urge to actually see her in action.
It's a state of affairs I felt I really should rectify so tonight I sat down to watch her 1935 effort ANNA KARENINA. I expected to be dazzled by her beauty and beguiled by her goddess-like aura, but I wasn't. Garbo distinctly underwhelmed me. She was neither an ethereal beauty nor a magnetic screen presence. She came across as just another well dressed, overly made-up MGM leading lady of the 1930s.
The film itself is a lavish visual spectacle. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes beautiful and the camerawork creative. Early on, during a banquet scene, director Clarence Brown draws his camera down the middle of an incredibly long table laden with food. Candelabra swish by on either side as the camera travels backwards seemingly forever. The shot is spectacular yet so subtle that it takes a moment to recognise just how impressive it is.
The cast is star-studded, as one would expect of a prestige MGM production. Basil Rathbone is malevolently magnificent as Anna's manipulative husband, May Robson fusses and clucks as Vronsky's mother, and Fredric March is suitably dashing, if a little dull, as Vronsky.
I've never read Tolstoy's novel but it's clear from the way in which the film's ending suddenly arrives that the original text has been severely compressed, presumably to cut out the "boring bits." Sure enough, a quick check on Amazon.com reveals the novel to be a weighty 830 plus pages long, while the film clocks in at just 90 minutes.
ANNA KARENINA is not really my kind of movie. It's too worthy and too lavish for my taste, but at least I can now say, should anyone care to ask, that I've seen two Garbo films, and maybe in a decade or so I'll be ready for a third.

AMELIE: picture perfect entertainment

It's not too often that I get a warm glow of enjoyment while watching a film these days, but the atmosphere on my couch grew positively tropical as AMELIE played out, and chances are you’ll experience exactly the same sensation.

This French film has restored my faith in cinema to produce films that are heartwarming without being mushily sentimental, funny without resorting to slapstick comedy, and entertaining without the need for car chases, sex scenes, explosions or punch ups.

Over-protected by her cold and distant parents, AMELIE has led a sheltered existence, working as a waitress in a café in the Montmatre district of Paris, and living in her own fantasy world.

Then she finds a 40 year old tin box containing a schoolboy’s long forgotten toys. She tracks down the now middle aged owner, and discovers her true vocation – solving other people’s problems and helping them to find love and happiness.

AMELIE’s world is peopled by ordinary folk with fascinating quirks. They’re all entirely believable, but also funny without realising it.There’s the hypochondriac tobacconist, the intolerant greengrocer, and the solitary young man who collects discarded pictures from passport photo booths, and it’s their lives that give this film so much of its charm.We become AMELIE's co-conspirator as she moves among them, invisibly sorting out their problems and punishing their transgressions.

Audrey Tautou is just fantastic in the title role, conveying a beguiling mix of innocence, craftiness, and steely determination to do the right thing, until it comes to her own love life.

Flora Guiet, who plays the 8 year old Amelie, is also superb, acting her white ankle socks off while making it look like the most natural thing in the world.

The other star of this film is Paris. Set mostly in 1997, but drenched in 50s style Technicolor, the city looks so picture-book beautiful, it’ll have you firing up your laptop as the final credits roll to book a long weekend there.

Words like charming, delightful, and life-affirming are so rarely used to describe films these days that they seem rather old fashioned, but they describe AMELIE perfectly.

If you’re looking for an extremely good time and a warm glow of deep satisfaction, spend a couple of hours in the company of this young lady. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

OLD ACQUAINTANCE: a scenery chewing spectacular!

There weren't many actresses who could hold their own against Bette Davis but Miriam Hopkins was one of them.
Miriam who?
She was the Faye Dunaway of the 1930s appearing in a number of critical and box office successes ("Trouble in Paradise", "These Three", "The Old Maid") before fading from sight and memory. OLD ACQUAINTANCE, released in 1943, was Hopkins final film as a big star and she certainly went out in style.
She and Davis had worked together four years earlier in "THE OLD MAID" during which Davis had an affair with Hopkins husband, so there was little love lost between the two of them by the time Warner Bros reunited them for this overheated melodrama.
Knowing this backstory makes watching the film an even more pleasurable experience. Here are two big, temperamental stars, both accustomed to being queen of their domain, and with a history of mutual dislike, being asked to play a couple of lifelong friends who fall out over men and success.
Davis was the bigger star by 1943 but Hopkins refuses to yield. Where Davis is content to chew at the scenery Hopkins rips out large chunks and swallows them whole. To counter the by now familiar Davis mannerisms - the clipped speech, the vigorous sucking on cigarettes etc - all of which are on display here, Hopkins resorts to the sort of histrionics for which the word overacting is an inadequate descriptor.
Faced with two such forces of nature it's not surprising that the men in the story come off like potted plants. Both John Loder and Gig Young are so dull and colorless that it's difficult to understand how they avoid getting simply chewed up and spat out. 
To the best of my recollection OLD ACQUAINTANCE was the first Hollywood film to deliberately cast two such mutually antagonistic stars in order to record the sparks that would inevitably fly. Their barely masked on-screen contempt for each other would not be seen again until Davis was pitted against arch rival Joan Crawford almost twenty years later in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" The acidic bitchy energy generated by their rivalry contributed greatly to "Baby Jane's" status as a cult classic. OLD ACQUAINTANCE deserves similar consideration.

ACROSS THE PACIFIC: Bogart begins to bloom

First released in 1942, ACROSS THE PACIFIC is a fascinating film because it portrays a superstar in the making – not yet fully formed but about to blossom from a caterpillar into a butterfly.

With "The Maltese Falcon" the previous year, Humphrey Bogart demonstrated he had the star quality to carry a film. His rather slapdash performance here indicates that confidence had possibly gone to his head a little (or maybe more accurately to the heads of Warner Bros who controlled Bogie's career), but by the time he made "Casablanca" (immediately after PACIFIC) all the components were in place to create the legend he became.

Set in November 1941, ACROSS THE PACIFIC sees him playing disgraced US Army officer Rick Leland. Dishonorably discharged from the service, he boards a Japanese freighter bound for the Orient, hoping to start a new life.

The only other passengers are his "Maltese Falcon" co-stars Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet.  and Dr Lorenz.

Astor is Alberta Marlow,  a breathless and excitable department store worker from Medicine Hat, Canada, taking her first big vacation. Greenstreet is Dr Lorenz, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manila. He’s also a vocal admirer of the Japanese at a time when the Empire of the Rising Sun is edging towards war with the United States.

Rick wastes little time in romancing Alberta, while also making plain to Dr Lorenz his disillusionment with America.

It gives nothing away to reveal that this is a story about espionage and romance, themes that Warner Brothers were to blend time and time again during the early1940s. ACROSS THE PACIFIC is an enjoyable, but not classic example of the genre.

Bogart’s Rick Leland lacks the depth to make him a fully rounded character. After the progress he made the previous year with "The Maltese Falcon" and "High Sierra", Leland is a disappointing throwback to the one dimensional roles he’d been typecast in since the mid 30s.

Bogart rushes from one incident to the next without ever really convincing us he’s doing more than playing a part, while his rapid romancing of Astor comes across as a horny teenager who’s inexplicably got lucky.

His womanising as Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" was credible in the context of the character. Here it isn’t.

Astor played the femme fatale in Falcon, and again portrays a woman who’s clearly not as naïve as she would have everyone believe. Marlow is a class turn, trading sexual banter with Leland within minutes of their first meeting. It's these barely disguised sexual double entendres which give this story its spark. They’re genuinely witty, which makes it more surprising that she’s also so compliant at yielding to Leland’s desires.

Dr Lorenz is a variation on Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman in "Falcon", malevolent, deceptive and ruthless, but lacking the depth he brought to his screen debut.

The overall impression is of a talented cast and director (John Huston) having fun with an undistinguished script.

If Warner Brothers had stuck with their plans to cast Ronald Reagan instead of Bogart in the lead role in "Casablanca" ACROSS THE PACIFIC would have sunk without trace decades ago. Thankfully they came to their senses and PACIFIC assumed an important place in Bogart’s rise from actor to superstar. An interesting and entertaining minor thriller, the film's serves to increase our appreciation of the films Bogart made immediately before and after it.

LONELYHEARTS: more hot air than the Hindenburg

What a cast! - Montgomery Clift, Myrna Loy and Robert Ryan - and what a drag! LONELYHEARTS (1958) is so overloaded with grandiloquent, mind-numbingly boring dialogue that it's a real struggle to stay awake for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.
This who-cares? tale of Adam White, an ambitious young journalist whose youthfully innocent (Adam = first man, White = pure, get it?) aspirations are shattered by the cynical reality of his first bigtime newspaper job is a totally yawnfest. It pained me to see three such talented actors drowning in a sea of overly wordy metaphors, allusions and similes. They talk like characters in a really badly written stage play with pretensions to serious "adult" drama (sample; "Has anyone ever tried to figure out how many tears you cry in a lifetime?")
The worst offender is Ryan's verbally vicious newspaper editor. Not once does he actually say what he means, preferring instead to blather on like a man who's swallowed not only a dictionary but also "The Dummy's Guide to Philosophy." No wonder his wife (Loy) has become an alcoholic.
Clift is miscast as the reluctant "Miss Lonelyheart" agony-aunt/uncle columnist. He's wide-eyed enough (possibly the result of the plastic surgery on his face after a bad car smash 18 months earlier) but too old for the part, and his constant twitching is distracting. Presumably Clift's intent is to convey his character's discomfort in his own skin but it comes across like some kind of musclar control disorder.
Windy and pretentious in the extreme,  screenwriter and producer Dore Schary may have believed he was creating high art but the result is totally arse.

ZOMBIELAND: they're dead and Woody's loving it

Ruben Fleischer's directorial debut is a reasonably satisfying blend of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead" with a smidgin of John Hughes-esque coming of age angst thrown in for good measure.
ZOMBIELAND's rather thin storyline isn't going to win any wards for originality but it is fun in a very undemanding kind of way. Jesse Eisenberg plays Columbus, a geeky, virginal, neurotic loner in his early 20s whose hermit-like existence has contributed to his surviving a virus which has turned the human race into flesh eating zombies.
Fate throws him together with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a gun-totin' "bring 'em on" kind of tough guy who just loves killing the undead. Heading east from California they team up with a couple of crafty sisters, Witchita (Emma Stone) and the younger Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The presence of female company - and Witchita in particular - gives Columbus a belated opportunity to discover his inner hero and start acting like a man.
It's something Eisenberg should be a pro at by now, having already experienced this particular rite of passage in "Adventureland." I'm not sure if there's any significance in this but theme parks provide the backdrop for his transition from boy to man in both films, although in the former he has the luxury of wrestling solely with his own insecurities uninterrupted by the living dead.
Part horror, part roadtrip and mostly comedy, the film's weak point is it's lack of focus. There's too many sub themes and subplots (Harrelson's quest for a Twinkie, for example) which kill some time but don't really go anywhere worthwhile. There's a sense of certain lines being spoken and certain events taking place solely to provide a quick laugh rather than develop the storyline. The film's biggest "what-was-that-all-about?" moment comes when the gang encounters a real life movie star, playing himself, hiding out in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. 
For me the biggest downside to ZOMBIELAND is Woody Harrelson. I just don't like looking at him or listening to him. His thin high pitched voice and the way his jaw makes his lower lip stick out further than his upper lip makes me feel somehow unclean. 
Irrational I know but I can't help it and I've just got to learn to live with it.