A MARRIED COUPLE: it's reality but not quite as we know it

If you look up A MARRIED COUPLE on imdb you'll find it described as a documentary. Technically this is correct because the film is a non-fiction study of a real life couple and their collapsing marriage.

But if it were to be released today it would categorised as big screen reality tv because it portrays a heightened version of reality that's not quite real. I'm not too keen on that descriptor though because it suggests A MARRIED COUPLE is something akin to 'Jersey Shore' or 'The Real Housewives of where-ever' which it most definitely is not.
I prefer 'actuality drama' which is the name given to the genre in which director Allan King worked for much of his career. This 1969 film follows Toronto couple Billy and Antoinette Edwards over an unspecified period of time as their marriage comes apart under the pressure of their differences. Almost from the outset it's clear that this is not going to be a standard documentary. King uses camera set-ups which obviously required pre-planning and the co-operation of the subjects to walk into shot at just the right moment, belying the sense of spontaneity and the camera as a fly on the wall, both of which are essential components of the documentary genre. Billy and Antoinette are offered up as a real husband and wife yet it's difficult to shake the feeling that they are - at the very least - playing up to the camera, if not acting. And if they're acting they're acting badly.
Their style of speaking to each other sounds almost declamatory and less than entirely natural. It's as if the director's given them a scenario but no script and instructed them to improvise when he calls action. It's much the same process that John Cassavetes used in making his most personal films ('Husbands', 'Shadows' 'Faces et al) but he had the advantage of working with professional actors. Billy and Antoinette succeed in appearing awkward while having a genuine argument, but after a while they warm up to the task and are able to minimise the distraction caused by having a film crew record some of their most intimate moments. Sadly, these don't involve a great deal of affection, they're mostly arguments over anything and everything from the trivial to the profound. This is a couple in crisis and neither of them knows how to resolve it or end it. Neither of them are completely blameless but Billy comes across particularly badly. He's controlling, opinionated, self-centred and quick to belittle his wife. It's difficult to understand how Antoinette was ever able to put him on the pedestal from which he has now toppled. She's frustrated, apparently unfaithful, and unsure what her options are. Other than a shared belief that any other relationship they could leave this one for is likely to end up the same, the only thing holding them together is their young son, the unfortunately named Bogart.
There's plenty here for any husband and wife to reflect on and learn from, most disturbingly the ease with which married life can become a deep rut whose sides are almost too high to climb out of. Billy and Antoinette are to be admired for their willingness to expose their private issues to the camera's scrutiny and allow themselves to be judged by an audience of strangers. By the end I was desperate to find out what happened next, and also to seek out more of Allan King's unique brand of actuality drama.

CONTAGION: a disaster movie not to be sneezed at

Remember all the fuss and fearmongering over the SARS and H1N1 viruses? For a time health authorities around the world had us believing we could all catch a potentially deadly strain of flu from birds and/or pigs. Well that all passed with the vast majority of us remaining healthy and we rapidly forgot about the importance of covering our mouth when sneezing or coughing, and making regular use of hand sanitizer.

CONTAGION is a timely reminder that we shouldn't become complacent. We dodged the bullet with SARS and H1N1 but the threat is real and it's out there somewhere, just waiting to unleash itself upon us again.
Director Steven Soderbergh's tense and tightly woven story charts the spread of a new and deadly strain of a flu-like disease, from its' initial infection of the first human (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) to the death of millions across the globe in a matter of days. It's the speed with which the infection spreads which is most frightening. Scientists Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet from the Centers for Disease Control spell out to disbelieving government officials the scale of the epidemic with impressive calmness, making it clear that drastic action is required immediately to prevent the deaths of untold millions.
Simultaneous with the spread of the disease CONTAGION also examines the power of the internet to spread rumours at an equal speed. Jude Law plays an influential San Francisco blogger who insists that the authorities desperate search for a vaccine is a government hoax and that they are suppressing supplies of the real cure for economic and political reasons.
As befits the scale of the story Soderbergh pulls in a veritable army of characters from around the world and this is both a plus point and a weakness. The diverse collection of players and nationalities adds credibility but the film's 1 hour 45 minute running time doesn't allow time for us to get to know these people properly or fully explore each of their stories. 106 minutes is barely time to scratch the surface of such an epic issue so the film resorts to using representative characters - Fishburne is the US government representative, Marion Cotillard is the World Health Organisation, Law is the opposition to the official effort, Matt Damon is the general public losing loved ones to the disease, Elliott Gould is the scientific research community etc. In some cases the camera lingers on them long enough that they're allowed to develop a personality but with others we meet them for only as long as it takes for them to perform their function in the story.
CONTAGION would have benefited from a longer running time allowing for a more in-depth exploration of the handling of such a crisis and a more satisfactory resolution to it. As it currently stands the ending arrives almost as quickly as the disease initially spreads leaving a sense of having been rushed through a highlights-only version of a modern day pandemic to get to the happy ending before we've had time to become seriously scared by what we're seeing. But given the brief attention span of many of today's younger film goers perhaps that's inevitable if the film is to be successful in imparting its' message.

HORRIBLE BOSSES: Jennifer Aniston in good film shocker!

Yes, you read the headline correctly. Jennifer Aniston has - finally - appeared in a good film. Following countless bland, interchangeable humour-free, eminently unwatchable rom-coms (see 'Just Go With It', 'The Switch', 'The Bounty Hunter', 'He's Just Not That Into You' etc etc) she has pulled her big-screen career out of the crapper with HORRIBLE BOSSES.

And just how has she managed this miraculous feat?
It's simple - she's not the star and this is not a rom-com.
HORRIBLE BOSSES is an adult comedy in the vein of 'The Hangover' and 'Bridesmaids' and perhaps what's most surprising about it (other than Aniston's presence) is that it doesn't bear the fingerprints of current Hollywood comedy god Judd Apatow. I double-checked the credits twice and his name doesn't appear anywhere. Director Seth Gordon ('Four Christmases'), 3 screenplay writers and 7 producers (including the wonderfully named Michael Disco) put the project together without any help from the man who's become a one man comedy industry.
Despite the presence of some big names above the title (Aniston, Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey) this is very much an ensemble movie. The stars may pull in the audience but its the lesser known Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis who do the bulk of the heavy lifting and they are a delight to watch in action. SNL's Sudeikis, Day from tv's 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' and the veteran Bateman are a team with genuine chemistry, each getting their own moment in the spotlight but none of them overshadowing the others.

They play three friends each suffering at the hands of a horrible boss. Bateman is bullied on a daily basis by the egotistical, sadistic Spacey, Sudeikis is watching the company he helped build up being dismantled by a coke-snorting, hooker-hiring Farrell, and Day is being sexually harrassed by the entirely inappropriate Aniston (not too much sympathy there!).. Unwilling to take the constant humilation any longer the three hatch a plan to murder their tormentors but, being law-abiding, mild mannered middle-class men, they're not exactly pro's when it comes to committing the ultimate crime.
The unintended consequences of their attempts to carry out their hare-brained scheme are a joy to behold, replete with the stupidity, ridiculousness, humiliations and occasional nastiness that we've come to expect from this particular comedic genre.
This is not high-brow stuff but it is laugh out loud funny and perfect for a Saturday evening in front of the big screen tv with beer and snacks. I just pray that director Gordon et al don't let this praise go to their heads and make a sequel. Let's not inflict another 'The Hangover 2' on the world.

TRUE GRIT: a classic revisited and re-evaluated

"Memory is..." a colleague once commented to one of my co-workers, "a fragile thing." Of course he was scoring a cheap point in a discussion about which of them had most accurately remembered a conversation they'd previously had about money, but there's more than a grain of truth in what he said.

His comment sprang to mind as I was watching John Wayne in his 1969 western TRUE GRIT. I'd felt inspired to slip the disc into my DVD player after seeing Glen Campbell in concert the night before in deepest Kentucky. Campbell had performed the title song and made some jokes about how his performance had helped earn Wayne the Best Actor Oscar.
It had been years since I'd watched the film and in my memory it was a bona fide classic with a thoroughly Academy Award deserving turn from the Duke. In my review of the Coen Brothers version of TRUE GRIT, published on this blog back in January, I'd compared Jeff Bridges interpretation of ornery US Marshal Rooster Cogburn unfavorably with Wayne's, describing the former as 'playing' the part while Wayne 'was' the part. Oh, how frail my memory proved to be.
This time around I didn't see anything in Wayne's performance that made it Oscar worthy. His Cogburn is likeable, and just about believable as a real character but there's no particular depth to his interpretation. Wayne plays him much as he played all his characters in the 1960s - as John Wayne, larger than life all American hero, in a cowboy costume.There's no sense that Wayne was reaching for something special in his portrayal of this whisky-sodden lawman who - against his will - discovers his better nature when a teenage girl (Kim Darby) hires him to track down the man who killed her father.
Perhaps I'm under-estimating Wayne. Perhaps he made it look so effortless because he was the consummate professional, drawing on 40 years of acting experience. I can't claim quite that many years of film study but I think I've seen enough movies to recognise an outstanding performance when it's given, and Wayne doesn't here. I think he got the Oscar for outstanding achievement over four decades of dependable service to Hollywood, encapsulated by TRUE GRIT. His portrayal of dying gunfighter JB Books in his final film 'The Shootist' was far more deserving of an Oscar and he didn't even get nominated.

Singer Campbell just about holds his own against Wayne's formidable competition. He's not a natural actor and I sense his performance as Texas Ranger La Boeuf was the result of a lot of acting lessons. I imagine the prospect of acting opposite Wayne would have been daunting and Campbell acquits himself well in the circumstances.
Kim Darby as young Mattie Ross is a little more difficult to figure out. Her interpretation of the determined and strong-willed teenager who gets the better of Cogburn and La Boeuf is interesting but she's not as convincing in the part as Hailee Steinfeld is in the 2010 remake.
So TRUE GRIT has been knocked from its pedestal, but that's not to say it's a bad film. The story and the performances meld to create two hours of reasonably absorbing entertainment, and watching Wayne play the legend he had become is always enjoyable. Just don't expect too much in the way of excitement.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE: having too much fun at the expense of the rich

From the opening scene of a Venetian garbage man emptying the island city's trash cans onto a gondola garbage barge and striking up an Italian love song as he rows off down the canal it's clear that TROUBLE IN PARADISE is not going to be your standard Hollywood romantic comedy.
Everything about this 1932 film is ever so slightly off kilter and it keeps the viewer ever so slightly off balance too. It takes a while to figure out what's going on and when you do you still can't be sure of what's going to happen next.

The wonderful Herbert Marshall stars as the suave, urbane and sophisticated Gaston Monescu, a man of apparent means who actually earns his living as Europe's most notorious jewel thief. When we first encounter him he's posing as a Baron, living it up in a 5 star Venice hotel and romancing a Countess, Lily, played by Miriam Hopkins. Of course the Countess is not what she seems to be either, and we follow them as they join forces to target Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Fwancis), the wealthy and beautiful owner of a Parisian perfume company.
Under the elegant direction of Ernst Lubitsch the tale which unfolds is a marvelously witty and stylish farce involving concealed identities, romantic entanglements, jealousy, deceit and the contents of the safe in the wall of Madame Colet's bedroom.
It's also racy, taking full advantage of the anything goes attitude to sex prevalent in many pre-code Hollywood films. Lubitsch's style was as far from smutty as it's possible to get but he leaves very little to the imagination when it comes to Gaston and Mariette's lustful designs on each other, and there's nothing coy about their scenes together in her bedroom even though both remain resolutely clothed. The film's response to social mores and respectability - represented by Mariette's two asinine suitors played by Charlie Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton, and C.Aubrey Smith's stuffy chairman of the board of directors of Colet & Cie - is one of complete disdain. These supposedly upright, proper gentlemen are figures of fun and - in at least one case - a fraud hiding behind a front of starched shirt pomposity.
The real fun is to be had by those causing trouble in paradise - Gaston and Lily and, after a little encouragement - by Mariette too. And their brand of humour is infectious. It's impossible not to become caught up in their devil-may-care approach to life, love, right and wrong.
The entire concoction is an absolute delight, an 85 minute time-out from the travails of everyday life which will transport you to a fantasy world of elegance, wit where the dishonest poor triumph every time over the dimwitted, honest rich.

THE ANDERSON TAPES: a master director disappoints

Question: what's the thread that links 'The Wizard of Oz' with 'Kangaroo Jack', 'Diff'rent Strokes,' Cary Grant, 'St Elmo's Fire' and 'The Hunt for Red October'?
Answer: the 1971 crime thriller THE ANDERSON TAPES.

How come? Well, Margaret Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West in 'The Wizard of Oz.' Christopher Walken sullied his reputation in the 2003 movie starring a digitally created Kangaroo. Conrad Bain played the adoptive father of Willis and Arnold Jackson in tv's 'Diff'rent Strokes. Cary Grant was married to Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam played a pushy dad in 'St Elmo's Fire' and Sean Connery starred in 'The Hunt for Red October.
And Hamilton, Walken, Bain, Cannon, Balsam and Connery all appeared together in THE ANDERSON TAPES.
And other than mentioning that a very young Walken is impressive in his big screen debut, that's really the only interesting thing I have to say about this film. I wish there was more, particularly as it's directed by Sidney Lumet, who's made some outstanding films ('The Verdict', '12 Angry Men', 'Network', 'Dog Day Afternoon' etc etc). For me, this is one of his misses. Sean Connery appears uncomfortable playing an American with a Scots accent, Martin Balsam camps it up outrageously as a parody of a gay antiques dealer, the cutting edge technology which plays such an important part in the story, looks terribly dated, and Quincy Jones headache inducing 'sci-fi' score is just an irritating racket.
Lumet was prescient in his portrayal of how much of our daily lives and conversations are watched and monitored by a multitude of government agencies none of whom are coordinating with one another but the end result doesn't quite hang together.
Perhaps he hoped we'd be so caught up in the unfolding caper that we wouldn't notice the holes in the plot.

THE HELP: history as a Hallmark movie of the week

Current box office number one THE HELP is a powerful and moving story, beautifully told and featuring some fine performances.
But it left me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Could the long, painful, often violent, frequently uplifting and still unfinished struggle for civil rights in the USA really be reduced to this - a two hour tale of a bunch of African American maids in 1963 Jackson, Mississippi who decide they've had enough of their hypocritical treatment at the hands of the wealthy white women who employ them, and rise up against their oppressors by contributing to a book detailing the reality of their lives as servants to the ruling class?
In a world where complex political ideas are stripped of detail, nuance and accuracy and fed to a willing populace as easily digestible thirty second soundbites, should the same process be applied to such an important part of recent US history? Particularly when it comes wrapped up in a happy ending that suggests everything will soon be resolved in favour of those who've been discriminated against. The final walk from the camera down the sunlight sidewalk to a better tomorrow struck me as insulting to those involved and just plain wrong.
Writer-director Tate Taylor employs the same storytelling technique used by countless Warner Bros films of the 1930s to make the political personal and explore often complex social and political issues in terms that the audience could relate to. In the 30s Warners tackled the social and economic pressures of the Great Depression head on, acknowledging the inequities and the struggle to survive and demonstrating how they could be solved by the existing political system without the need for revolution. The intention was twofold - to offer hope and preserve the status quo.
As Taylor's film is set in the past its use of the technique has a different intention - to whitewash the reality of what happened and refocus the picture to a soft, sun-splashed image where the oppression was (reasonably) benign, the revolt civilised and the outcome ideal. To me, the message of THE HELP was that there's no need to dwell on the ugly reality of the Jim Crow laws and the often violent suppression of the rights of a large minority of the US population solely on the basis of their skin colour. Instead let's feel better about this grotesque stain on America's recent past by reframing the issue so it plays like a Hallmark movie.

What I find so disturbing about this is how effectively Taylor does it. THE HELP is an undeniably powerful and moving statement on the struggle of blacks to gain the civil rights most of us today take for granted. It's impossible not to have a very emotional response to the situation of the maids and their quiet, dignified resolve not to take it anymore.
It's equally impossible not to despise their chief tormentor Hilly Holbrook (a magnificent performance by Bryce Dallas Howard) who is determined to ensure that segregation is for now and forever. But I found it cowardly that the enforcement of segregation was depicted in such a non-violent fashion.
I get that it's not realistic to portray the entirety of the civil rights era into a two hour work of fiction. I get that THE HELP works as a means of explaining the issues to 21st century audiences unwilling to plough through dense but compelling history books such as the trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch. I get the whole idea of making the political personal.
But what concerns me is that THE HELP is so effective in telling it's story that it'll be taken as telling the entire story, effectively rewriting history and consigning the larger reality to oblivion. 

THE LOCKET: a Russian doll of a film

Why should I be describing a 1946 film noirish drama from RKO as a Russian doll?
Because just as one of those wooden painted icons opens to reveal another smaller doll inside which in turn opens to reveal yet another so is THE LOCKET constructed of a flashback within a flashback within a flashback.
What's most impressive is the way in which director John Brahm makes it all seem so effortless and un-confusing. Hollywood overdosed on the flashback as a storytelling technique in the 1940s and in some cases overused it to the point where it was almost impossible to figure out whether we were watching something happening in the present, the recent past, the distant past or somewhere inbetween.
THE LOCKET also plugs in to Hollywood's 40s fascination with psychoanalysis. This was the coming thing in medical science and had received it's highest profile attention to date with Alfred Hitchcock's 'Spellbound' released the year before.  And as with anything Hollywood got its hands on the idea was simplified to the point where any condition could be explained in 30 seconds or less.
The character in need of some analysing here is the beguilingly beautiful Nancy (Laraine Day), a seemingly vivacious and well adjusted young lady whose troubled past is gradually brought into focus thanks to the flashbacks narrated by the various men who have loved and lost her, Brian Aherne and a young, pre-paunchy Robert Mitchum among them. But are they telling the truth? Nancy's latest beau, the frankly too old for her Gene Raymond, doesn't want to believe what he's hearing on the morning of his marriage to her.

Aherne as Dr Harry Blair, a psychoanalyst and Nancy's former husband, acts as the narrator of Nancy's past, recounting it with a detached professional objectivity which is at odds with his personal feelings for her. Sure he's a doctor but can Raymond trust him? It doesn't help that Aherne plays the part like a man with a long, sharp stick firmly inserted in a place where the sun don't shine. As an actor he appears strangely out of place in this genre, and his palpable uncomfortableness in the role would seem to indicate he knows it. 
It's interesting to watch Laraine Day demonstrate that she's more than just a young and pretty face. Nancy is a character who is play acting for most of the time, presenting a front to the world without realising it. It's a challenging attitude and Day pulls it off convincingly. Not that it helped her much in her career. She made just 4 more films over the next 4 years before migrating to tv where, with few exceptions, she stayed for the next four decades.  
THE LOCKET's labelled as a film noir and I've described as film noirish because I'm not entirely convinced it fits comfortably into this category. There's undeniably a dark element to the story but it's not an entirely dark film and the style of the storytelling is closer to drama. Let's call it noirish drama and leave it at that!
Whatever you want to label it, THE LOCKET is definitely worth taking in. I'm not making any claims for it being one of the best movies of the 40s but it's certainly interesting and there's a delicious twist towards the end that you'll miss if you're not paying close attention.

THE MAGNIFICENT TWO: oh dear.... oh dear oh dear

I'm a huge Morecambe and Wise fan. The tv shows they made for the BBC in the 1970s are comedy classics. Eric Morecambe could do more with a single look than some comedians achieve in an entire career. And Ernie Wise was the consummate straight man.
What they weren't were film stars.
1967's THE MAGNIFICENT TWO is an excruciatingly unfunny attempt to recreate the easy banter, humour and camaraderie of Bob and Bing's Road movies of the 1940s. It might have worked had someone with an understanding of their comedy style been drafted in to write and direct. Unfortunately they weren't available so Eric n' Ern were saddled with Peter Blackmore's witless script and Cliff Owen's sledgehammer direction.

The result is almost too painful to watch. Morecambe and Wise blunder around a Home Counties version of a tinpot South American country getting mixed up with both its' military dictator and the rebels attempting to overthrow him. Eric is a dead ringer for the recently deceased rebel leader and finds himself installed as the country's new President after the corrupt Diaz regime is overthrown.
Hilarity does not ensue.
The plot plays to the strengths of neither man. Morecambe is straitjacketed into a role which leaves him no opportunity for his trademark ad libs and asides, and Wise is given so little to do he might as well have stayed in bed. Quite what induced them to accept such a thoroughly crappy project is a mystery since it must have been obvious it wasn't going to do anything to enhance their career.
THE MAGNIFICENT TWO is an embarrassment to its stars and a waste of time and film stock.

APOLLO 18: Hollywood we have a problem

Imagine 'Blair Witch Project' set in outer space and you begin to get an idea of what to expect from APOLLO 18.
Did I mention I was referring to 'Blair Witch Project 2'?
Now you really have an idea of what to expect from this ill-conceived project. More misguided than one of those 1950s US missile tests where the rocket turns sideways 3 seconds after lift off this is a film which promises much but totally fails to deliver.

The premise is that this is 84 minutes of found footage (ie real documentary film, not a staged work of fiction) of NASA's final - very secret - Apollo mission to the moon in 1973. According to the history books Apollo 18 was scrapped because of budget cuts but this film purports to show what really happened.
And it's not pretty.
It's not gripping, exciting, frightening or absorbing either. The strongest emotion you're likely to experience is boredom coupled with the powerful urge to stop watching. There is absolutely nothing to engage the senses here. If only director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego had put the same amount of effort into the story that he puts into playing around with his box of digital tricks to recreate 35 year old video tape shot on the moon he might have had something but he didn't so he doesn't.
Perhaps must annoying he makes no effort to make it look as if the two astronauts are actually on the moon. There's no attempt to create an image of weightlessness; it just looks like two guys in spacesuits in front of a black backdrop, running around the Arizona desert. Meanwhile in the command capsule orbiting the moon the third crew member is floating around the cabin, so perhaps the real explanation is that Mr Lopez-Gallego believes there's Earth-strength gravity on the Moon.
Actually that's not the most annoying aspect. That award belongs to the film's grand climax when all sense of science and logic is jettisoned in the interests of an exciting finale that fails to materialise. Absolute nonsense from start to finish without even the consolation of engaging our interest or scaring us at any point.
The only screams APOLLO 18 is likely to generate are screams of frustration.