THE PARTY: I wish the dog had eaten my invitation

THE PARTY (1968) is a single, not particularly funny joke stretched out over 99 increasingly excruciating minutes.
Peter Sellers plays a bumbling bit-part actor from India, Hrundi V.Bakshi, who is accidentally invited to an exclusive Hollywood party at the home of a producer whose film he has just wrecked.
The joke involves Bakshi inadvertently causing mounting mayhem as the evening wears on, but in order to keep the gag going for an hour and forty minutes director Blake Edwards serves it up sparingly and leaves Sellers to his own devices to fill in the downtime. It doesn't work.
The humour is spread way too thin and climaxes in an orgy of destruction which is only fun in a you-really-have-to-be-there kind of way.
THE PARTY was Sellers and Edwards only non-Pink Panther collaboration, and even the worst of those is better than this.

VICTIM: a brave performance from a star with much to hide

The decision by Dirk Bogarde to play the part of a repressed homosexual who fights back against his blackmailers looks even more daring today than it did when VICTIM was first released in 1961. Forty eight years ago Bogarde was one of the biggest stars in British cinema with a following that owed as much to his good looks as it did to his undeniable talent as an actor. He'd graduated from "tortured youth in a trenchcoat" roles to light comedy to serious drama but the role of barrister Melville Farr was potential career suicide.
In 1961 homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK, regarded by many as an unspeakable perversion, "the weak rotten part of nature" as one character describes it, practiced by men who'd chosen not to live a "normal" life. VICTIM addresses these prejudices head-on and makes a powerful case for the legalising of homosexuality by showing these "unfortunate devils" to be everyday ordinary folk who might be a barber, a car salesman, a businessman, or even a leading barrister with a beautiful wife and a glittering career within his grasp.
Bogarde is to be admired for risking his reputation in a film which was so far ahead of its time (homosexuality was finally legalised in the UK in 1967)but it's only with hindsight that we can appreciate the real courage involved in his decision. Although Bogarde always denied he was gay towards the end of his life he did confirm that he'd been in a long term relationship with the man who was his manager. He had to have known what public exposure of his sexuality would have done to his career so to invite attention by taking on the starring role in a film addressing such a controversial issue takes balls.
Bogarde and director Basil Dearden deserve praise for their refusal to dilute the character of Farr to make him more palatable to mass audiences. The story remains true to it's original intent right to the very end. Flagwaving aside VICTIM is also a gripping drama, verging on film noir, filled with characters that defy convention to hold the attention until the last. This is a 5 out of 5 film. If you can find it - buy it!

STARLIFT: considerably fewer stars than there are in heaven

It's nothing more than a weird coincidence that I decided to watch STARLIFT on the 59th anniversary of the day in June 1950 when President Truman's ordered US forces into the Korean War.
STARLIFT, you see, is set largely at Travis Air Force base in California in the years when it was being used as a staging post for soldiers being shipped out to fight in Korea.
But you'd need to do your own research to know this because not once during the film is the name 'Korea' mentioned. We see transport aircraft flying out fresh troops and returning with wounded soldiers but there's no mention of where these men will be fighting or getting injured.
Which is kind of weird for a film designed to wave the flag and salute America's men in uniform.
Released in December 1951 by Warner Brothers, STARLIFT is a very obvious effort to replicate the success of the studio's star-studded World War Two homefront morale booster "Hollywood Canteen." This 1944 crowd-pleaser told the story of two soldiers spending their last three nights of leave hanging out at the famous armed forces nightclub in LA hoping to get a date with Joan Leslie. But really it was just an excuse for Warners to trot out every star under contract, from Joan Crawford, John Garfield, and Barbara Stanwyck to Peter Lorre, Bette Davis, Sydney Greenstreet and more.
STARLIFT features two Air Force soldiers hoping to meet fictional starlet Nell Wayne (a mask-like Janice Rule) and persuading a bunch of Warner Bros stars to put on a show for the departing troops. But in place of Crawford, Garfield et al the best the brothers Warner could scrape up in 1951 were Doris Day, Ruth Roman, Gordon MacRae, Virginia Mayo, Gene Nelson and Phil Harris with fleeting appearances by James Cagney, Randolph Scott, and a clearly embarrassed looking Gary Cooper.
This threadbare cast, whose combined starpower would struggle to illuminate a standard lamp, is perfectly matched by the crummy production values. Presumably in an effort to save money several long scenes were shot using really really bad back projection. How bad is it? You can see the join where the screen meets the floor of the soundstage!
To describe STARLIFT as a sloppy, lazy and third rate movie is to do a disservice to films which are sloppy, lazy and third rate. It's just terrible. Avoid it.

TWILIGHT: vampire love doesn't have to be a pain in the neck

Dating a vampire is an experience fraught with problems. Just imagine that awkward first visit to his house to meet his parents. Are they going to serve up a delicious dinner to warmly welcome you as a new member of the family, or are you going to be the dinner?
This is just one of the understandable concerns facing 17 year old Bella Swan (the delicious Kirsten Stewart) in TWILIGHT, a surprisingly serious and adult twist on the well-worn vampire theme.
As the new girl in school in the small town of Forks in Washington State, Bella is attracting plenty of attention from the boys. But she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the only one who ignores her.
The handsome but strangely pale Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) has eyebrows so impressive they deserve to have their credit in the film's opening titles. With his ice-cold skin, red rimmed eyes, superhuman strength and speed, and an aversion to direct sunlight, he's also quite obviously a vampire, although it takes Bella almost a third of the movie to figure this out.
By then it's too late to back out. She's hopelessly in love with him and her ardour isn't dampened by his frank admission that he's fantasised about tasting her blood.
Luckily Edward and his large family of fellow vampires are what they call "vegetarians." They've trained themselves to drink only the blood of animals although it can still be a struggle to resist the old urges when someone as fragrant and appealing as Bella insists on ignoring all their warnings.
While TWILIGHT avoids the camp gothic theatricality of many previous vampire films it's not without a fair amount of humour. Much of it comes out in the conversations between Bella and Edward as she asks those questions we'd want to know the answers to when confronted with a vampire who's not trying to gnaw on our neck.
The result is an interesting combination of teen drama and thriller with just a smattering of horror. The concept of committing oneself unconditionally to a partner despite knowing they're fighting a constant internal battle with the urge to kill you is scary enough without the need for coffins, bats, and stakes through the heart.
Bella and Edward's unconventional love story more than off-sets the tired subplot of Bella the outsider at a new school wrestling with the dilemma of whether to go to the prom. During these scenes my mind kept wandering back to "Pretty in Pink" which for me is the definitive text on the subject.
TWILIGHT rapidly developed a huge female following on its cinema release largely it appears on the basis of the "dreamy" Mr Pattinson and his spectacular eyebrows but it's unfair to pigeonhole the film as a chickflick or teen drama. This story will appeal to anyone who enjoys the nostalgic tingle of remembering the excitement, fear and uncertainty of first love.
TWILIGHT is neither great art nor a particularly great movie. A formulaic third act reveals a story rapidly running out of original ideas but it is nevertheless an entertaining and stylish piece of work with relatively new faces Stewart and Pattinson making a convincing couple.
But I'm not convinced that TWILIGHT will stand up to repeated viewings. Just like first love the magic happens only once. This is a film to rent or borrow not buy.

CARRY ON CABBY: Carry On Crappy

Let CARRY ON CABBY act as a stark reminder to anyone who believes that the entire Carry On series of movies contains nothing but unadulterated end-of-the-pier style British comedy gold.
This 1963 entry is a real clunker. It's so dull it's 90 minute running time feels like a 3 hour ordeal. It's got most of the regulars - Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey et al - in the regular places but precious few jokes and even fewer laughs.

OLD SCHOOL: Everything New is Old

If "Animal House" had a more sensible, less cool, older brother it would be OLD SCHOOL. This 2003 Luke Wilson-Will Ferrell-Vince Vaughn comedy is funny enough in places but it pales in comparison to the 1978 John Belushi classic. Bluto rules!!

THE PROPOSAL: Bullock bares all but it's not quite enough

Sandra Bullock's latest rom-com THE PROPOSAL is no "Two Weeks Notice" but thankfully it's not "Miss Congeniality 2" either. Her character, Margaret Tate is a variation on the part she's played in every other one of her romantic comedies although here there's less of the uncoordinated klutz and more of the outwardly self-assured and independent career woman.
Tate is a powerful Manhattan book editor, hated by her staff for her demanding and ruthless behaviour. Facing deportation back to Canada because her US work visa has expired she impulsively tells her bosses that everything's going to be ok because she's engaged to be married to her long-suffering, henpecked executive assistant Andrew, played by an uncharacteristically subservient Ryan Reynolds.
This is news to him, not least because he's one of those who hates her guts. He agrees to go along with her scheme but only if she accompanies him on a trip home to Alaska to meet his family. Anyone familiar with Miss Bullock's comedy oeuvre will have no trouble in guessing the rest of the story.
Reynolds and Bullock are an enjoyable screen couple but neither fulfills their full rom-com potential. I sense that each feels subconsciously held back by the presence of the other. Margaret and Andrew are rather faded variations on characters each has played before in earlier romantic comedies. The closest they come to creating a classic moment is a scene when both inadvertently find themselves naked together in the bedroom (with Bullock displaying a fantastic body) but it doesn't quite sparkle like it should.
Too much of the humour feels forced and contrived, particularly everything relating to ex Golden Girl Betty White as Andrew's blunt speaking slightly nutty 90 year old grandmother. The only thing less funny than White is the montage over the closing credits which comes close to inflicting pain comparable to major organ failure.
Being a longtime ardent admirer of Ms Bullock (I'd pay to watch her iron shirts) it pains me to criticise her work, but I'd be less than honest if I didn't say that while THE PROPOSAL is pleasant, undemanding and even genuinely funny in places it falls short of what she's demonstrated she is capable of.

A TOWN LIKE ALICE: looks more like Drabsville

The passage of time has not been kind to A TOWN LIKE ALICE.
A huge success on its release in 1956, the emotional impact of this World War Two drama is completely undermined by the decision to save a few quid and shoot large parts of the film on soundstages at Pinewood Studios in England rather than the tropical jungle landscapes of Malaya.
This in itself is not automatically fatal to a film's chances of success. After all until the late 1940s Hollywood routinely recreated its own version of the world on soundstages and produced some of the greatest films in cinema history.
It's not the unreality I object to, it's the cheapness. The studio sets with their obviously painted backdrops are so unconvincing I half expected the cast of "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" to appear at any moment. The effect is only highlighted by jarring cuts to scenes actually shot on location in Malaya.
The other major weakness is the casting. Virginia McKenna is nice to look at but she's hardly a charismatic presence and she's in practically every scene putting the "stiff" into the British stiff upper lip and most other connected body parts.
Peter Finch, whom I rate as one of the finest actors of his generation, is criminally underused in the role of Ms McKenna's love interest. He gets co-star billing but he's too seldom on-screen to rescue the story.
Director Jack Lee's intention may have been to portray the resilience of the human spirit in a docu-drama style but the result is just plain dull.

CORALINE is stop motion magnificence!

Imagine a perfect day at Disneyworld without the endless lines and aching feet.CORALINE is an equally pleasurable experience at a fraction of the cost.
But pleasure isn't the only thing that these two have in common. Both Uncle Walt's Magic Kingdom and this film have the power to transform ever the most serious and sober adult into a wide-eyed kid again.
Words like enchanting, magical, delightful, and exciting seem somehow inadequate to describe the experience of watching the story unfold.
The effect would be no less spellbinding if CORALINE were devoid of speech, and relied solely on images and music to recount its tale because the film is a visual masterpiece, lush with colour, movement and imagination.
What makes CORALINE even more amazing is that it's been achieved not with computer generated trickery but old fashioned stop motion animation. This is a process dating back to the earliest days of cinema whereby clay models are posed, photographed, ever-so-slightly repositioned and photographed again with the process repeated thousands of times to give the impression of movement. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is the best known example of this technique.
Although it's Tim Burton's name that's most closely associated with "Nightmare" it was actually directed by Henry Selick, and he's also the man responsible for writing, producing and directing CORALINE.
Stop motion technology has clearly advanced since 1993 because there's none of the jerkiness traditionally associated with the process. There's such fluidity to the movement of the characters and inanimate objects that it's hard to believe they're not computer generated. There's a depth and solidity to them which even animators as talented as Pixar ("Wall e, "Toy Story" etc) can't reproduce. The cast of CORALINE are most definitely puppets even though there's not a string in sight.
CORALINE (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is a young girl left to her own devices by her busy parents when they move to an apartment inside a rambling old house in rural Oregon. She discovers an alternate version of her life in a mirror image world concealed behind a hidden door in the house. In this parallel reality she is lavished with love and affection by her "other" parents, and life is bright and colourful.
The only slightly disturbing difference is that everyone has buttons for eyes. But that's a minor consideration, easily overlooked, compared to CORALINE's joy at being the centre of her own universe.
What keeps us gripped as viewers is the subtle way in which the dark side of her perfect world is gradually revealed. Selick has created a story which is genuinely scary yet never goes beyond what is appropriate to a PG rated movie. It's also a story laced with plenty of humour. The other apartments in CORALINE's new home are peopled by a mix of bizarre characters who are laugh out loud funny.
British comediennes Jennifer Saunders ("Absolutely Fabulous") and Dawn French provide the voices of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, a pair of theatrical grotesques living with their multiple stuffed Scottie dogs in the basement, while Ian McShane ("Deadwood") gives life to Mr Bobinsky, the circus ringmaster who trains mice in his attic apartment.
Fantastical, funny, frightening, and phenomenally creative, CORALINE is life affirming family entertainment and thoroughly deserves permanent shelf space in your dvd collection. Buy it!

ISLAND IN THE SKY: The Duke's aviation drama fails to clear the runway

If you ever find yourself a passenger aboard a US Air Force freighter that's forced to make an emergency landing on a frozen lake in the icy wilds of uncharted northern Canada you better pray like hell that John Wayne's in the cockpit wrestling with the joystick.
Because if he ain't you can bet that his fellow pilots won't get out of bed and risk their own lives to come looking for you and your fellow passengers.
Sounds selfish? Not at all. It's the Hollywood star system at work. John Wayne is not only the sole name above the title of ISLAND IN THE SKY but he's also the producer of this dreary 1953 boy's own adventure and that entitles him to hog all the attention goddamit!
Mac McMullen, Captain Stutz, Willie Moon and the other flyboys almost tear up when they learn of Captain Dooley (Wayne)'s predicament. The other four guys with Wayne they couldn't care less about. They love Dooley more than their wives for heaven's sake. You can always get another wife but there's only one Captain Dooley.
Okay, so male-bonding is a standard theme in many Wayne movies but it's rarely been as badly expressed by such a group of lumpen men. Director William Wellman has clearly spent so much energy trying to get Wayne to emote that he has no energy left for the rest of the cast.
Wayne makes a brave stab at animating his facial muscles to express vulnerability and fear but, really, its not his strong suite. There's a classic moment about twenty five minutes into the story when the camera stays on Wayne's face as he crash-lands his plane on the ice (it's cheaper than showing the actual crash). The Duke's face locks into an expression supposed to convey abject terror which is worth freeze-framing the dvd to study in detail. I'd like it printed on a t-shirt. I'm already imagining a limited edition clothing collection titled "The Many Expressions of John Wayne" and it would be very limited.
Why this film is called ISLAND IN THE SKY confuses me. Sure it's a snappier title than "I'm Waiting for Andy Devine to Find Me" but it's also misleading when most of the action happens on the ground. The rest of it is Dooley's man-crushees flying around looking out of the window trying to find him. If they weren't so infatuated with him they'd split up and each search a different section of the hundreds of square miles of snowy nothingness instead of flying in formation four abreast to ensure no one pilot can claim the honour of having found him.
All of this subtext is, of course, unspoken. Wayne would probably punch in the mouth if he returned from the dead to read what I've written here but he really only has himself to blame. If he hadn't made such a damn boring film I'd have been too preoccupied with the surface action to dig any deeper.

THE HANGOVER shows Rogen and Ferrell how less is more

THE HANGOVER is the cinematic equivalent of one of those miracle cures for alcoholic overindulgence which promises to wipe away the painful consequences of last night's excesses.
It's the long overdue antidote to the surfeit of increasingly repetitive comedies focussing on the social and sexual ineptness and/or boorishness of twenty-something men to which the names Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd are customarily attached.
While many of the elements are reassuringly familiar, director Todd Phillips has succeeded in making them feel fresh and somehow different. His trick (although the word suggests some kind of stunt which this certainly isn't) is to treat his three lead actors as equals on screen. Where Ferrell and Rogen tend to hog the story and force the rest of the cast to play off of them, there's no such hierarchy in THE HANGOVER. The story is constructed as an ensemble piece which also allows Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis to take the lead in individual scenes without diminishing the importance of the other two.
Fired up by the promise implicit in the slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", nerdy dentist Stu (Helms), laid-back schoolteacher Phil (Cooper) and heavily bearded man-child Alan (Galifianakis) take off for Sin City with buddy Doug to celebrate his impending marriage. They're determined to give him an unforgettable final hurrah before he settles down to married life but when they awake amidst the wreckage of their hotel suite the following morning none of them can remember what happened. There's a crying baby in the closet, a tiger in the bathroom, Stu's lost a tooth and Doug is nowhere to be found. It's their efforts to discover what they did that night in the hope that it'll lead them to Doug which form the backbone of the story.
Along the way they encounter a hooker with a heart of gold, a lisping gay Chinese gangster and - most bizarrely - Mike Tyson playing himself and looking fat (although I wouldn't say that to his face). They're shot at, arrested, tasered, and beaten with baseball bats as they race around Vegas trying to reconstruct their movements. What makes this such an enjoyable experience is the way that each new piece they add to the puzzle doesn't make the picture any clearer but instead suggests several different scenarios.
While there's relatively few laugh-out-loud moments there's enough to keep a smile on your face and you definitely do not want to miss the photo sequence over the closing credits.

The Interminably Long Tale of BENJAMIN BUTTON

By the time the credits rolled at the end of THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON I had totally empathy with the title character. I felt as if I too had lived a life of four score years and five over the course of this marathon two and three quarter hours long film.
TCCBB is an extraordinary tale of a very ordinary life lived in reverse. For reasons that are never explained or explored Benjamin (Brad Pitt) is born in New Orleans in 1918 looking like an 85 year old baby and, over the course of the story he ages backwards growing physically younger but mentally older.
His mother dies in child birth and his father is so repulsed by his son's appearance that he abandons him on the steps of a retirement home run by Queenie (Taraji Henson). She adopts him and Benjamin spends hs childhood as a wrinkled wizened wheelchair bound old man surrounded by equally aged adults not long left for this world. It's here that he first meets Daisy (Cate Blanchett). She's the granddaughter of one of the residents and the little girl who's destined to become the love of his unconventional life.
TCCBB is not a film much concerned with looking beneath the surface of the story. To a large extent what we see is what we get, but this relationship is an exception. In a time obsessed with internet paedophiles it is a little unsettling to watch an elderly man playing with a young girl even though we know that mentally he is her contemporary. Director David Fincher ("Fight Club", "7even", "Zodiac") uses this disconnect between age and appearance to put a fresh spin on the age-old theme of true love being hard to find. Benjamin is sure the moment he first sees Daisy that she is the one, while 11 year old Daisy is too immature to conceive of such a concept.
Given the strength of his feelings for her he's left with no choice but to wait for that elusive moment when their ages and emotions meet in the middle and she becomes mature enough to appreciate there's more to life than simply living for the moment but before he regresses to teenage self-centredness.
In the meantime Benjamin sets out to make something of himself and see the world but, unlike the titular hero of "Forest Gump" with whom this story shares some faint echoes, nothing very extraordinary happens to Button. Considering the tumultuous times in which he lives the outside world intrudes only rarely into Benjamin's life. Though the story is bookended by World War One and Hurricane Katrina and punctuated by the Second World War, none of these events have any direct impact on him.
More worrying is the film's failure to address the issue of race. Benjamin's adoptive parents are black and the seniors they care for are white yet none of these Southerners old enough to remember the Civil War has any observation to make on the arrangement. In Benjamin Button's America the races live in totally harmony which, even a cursory reading of the history of civil rights would suggest, is not the way many blacks experienced the first 50 to 60 years of the 20th century.
The most impressive aspect of TCCBB is the technical one. Common sense tells us that can't possibly be Brad Pitt playing the shrunken septagenarian Benjamin Button but that is exactly what we are seeing on screen. It's a safe bet that a large chunk of the production's reputed $175 million budget went on creating the special effects that allow Brad to be Benjamin for the majority of the story and do it so convincingly that our eyes do indeed deceive us. The Academy got it right in awarding Oscars for some of the more technical categories and passing it over for acting and directing.
Watching TCCBB is like taking a long soak in a warm bath - it'll send you to bed feeling relaxed and rather wrinkly but it's unlikely to intrude into your dreams.

Welcome to The Film I've Just Seen

For as long as I can remember I've had a love affair with Hollywood. When I was a teenager I used to keep a diary listing every film that I watched with a check mark next to the title indicating what I thought of it. Some years that total nudged 500 but this figure dropped considerably as adult working life cut into my free time.
But on the plus side I succeeded in incorporating my passion into my job. First as a DJ and then journalist and news director on my hometown radio station, Southern FM in Brighton, I reviewed new films and dvds on-air and on-line. I also wrote regular reviews for the Sussex-wide daily newspaper "The Argus." This work continued when I moved to Birmingham as launch news director for the innovative rock music station Kerrang! 105.2. I regard it as a great personal victory that I held my own in the weekly unscripted on-air conversations with the anarchic and unpredictable host Ugly Phil.
Now I'm living in the USA and using THE FILM I'VE JUST SEEN to publish my thoughts on the films I'm seeing at the cinema and on dvd. This blog features a selection of the reviews I've written over the years together with my reaction to the films I'm watching now.
I aim always to offer a completely honest opinion regardless of whether or not that makes me popular. For example, I'm not one of those riding the "Dark Knight" - Heath Ledger bandwagon. I found the film overblown and overlong and his performance overhyped. Nothing encourages a loss of perspective like the premature death of an actor.
I'm not the kind of critic who imagines their writing has the power to stop someone watching a film they want to see. I'll explain why I loved, liked, loathed or merely tolerated a film but I don't expect you to necessarily agree with me.
What I hope is that my writing will encourage a greater appreciation of films by offering informed insight and context which helps you to get more out of your film-watching experiences.