THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE: shlock horror

Horror movies were a staple part of the output for many Hollywood studios in the 1930s and
40s. Hundreds were churned out during this period by everyone from MGM to Monogram. A few demonstrated genuine style and creativity but the vast majority were just average, produced quickly and cheaply and intended to do little more than prop up the bottom half of a double-bill at the local Roxy.
Even within this vast swathe of average horrors there were big differences in the levels of quality and originality, but few scraped so blatantly along the very bottom of these standards as 1944's THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE.
The only shocking aspect of this Columbia production is how little attention was paid to the script, acting and sets. The shoddiness shines through in every single scene, from the complete lack of emotion in the performers' delivery of their lines to the piling of horror movie cliches one a-top another, and the complete disregard for even a token attempt at plausibility in the storyline.
Set in a cramped studio-bound evocation of bomb-scarred wartime London that even Basil Rathbone's 1940s incarnation of Sherlock Holmes would struggle to recognise, the plot revolves around the return to life of a vampire intent on wreaking revenge on the scientists who drove a stake through his heart 25 years earlier.
A pasty, flabby faced Bela Lugosi, desperately in need of make-up, plays the suspiciously Dracula-like vampire Armand Tesla who masquerades as a German scientist recently rescued from a concentration camp to get close to his intended victim. She is an English lady scientist, Lady Jane Ainsley, who never lets anyone forget she's titled. In the hands of Frieda Inescort, Lady Jane appears to be the unsuspecting victim of a lobotomy which has rendered her completely unable to emote. Whether facing imminent death or consoling her upset daughter, Inescort delivers every line as if she were reading aloud a page from the telephone directory.
This total lack of emotion does, however, serve her well in her frustrating dealings with Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Frederick Fleet (Miles Mander). With his absolute refusal to even entertain the remote possibility that any of Lady Jane's concerns might just have some slim grounding in reality, Sir Frederick takes the character of the pigheaded policeman to new depths. Time and again he dismisses eyewitness reports and tangible evidence of supernatural goings-on with the mantra "there's a perfectly reasonable

explanation for this" without ever suggesting what that might be. He's so brazenly stupid he makes Dennis Hoey's Inspector Lestrade in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes stories look like a Nobel Prize winning physicist. And don't even get me started on the short-sighted police commissioner cliches! Fleet makes copious use of every single one of them to delay the story's predictable conclusion.
If this mix were not already intoxicating enough, director Lew Landers also throws in a walking, talking werewolf able to morph from human to lycanthrope without so much as unbuttoning his jacket or loosening his tie. The effect is less scary and more an impressive piece of fancy dress.
The result of all this is a sloppy, lazy and distinctly unchilling drama that's implausible even by the already implausible standards of the vampire genre.

THE MONUMENTS MEN: a monumental disaster

THE MONUMENTS MEN is a disjointed, dull, superficial and monumentally unengaging piece of cinema.
Director, producer, co-screenwriter and star George Clooney has bitten off considerably more than he can get into his mouth, let alone chew, with this misguided attempt to tell the story of a small band of art experts operating on the frontline in post D-Day western Europe to recover some of the hundreds of thousands of art treasures looted by the Nazis.

The Allied invasion of Europe and subsequent advance across the continent towards Berlin was an enormous undertaking which doesn't easily lend itself to retelling within a 1 hour 56 minute time frame, and the film repeatedly highlights the folly of attempting to do so. The story hopscotches from the US to the UK to France, Italy, Belgium, Germany and who knows where-else in a series of disjointed stories within the story which are too short to offer anything more than a snapshot of a particular moment in a particular part of the war, and it's sometimes far from clear just which part of the war we're dropping in on.
Clooney and co-star Matt Damon breeze through the death and destruction all around them with the same nonchalance that they brought to the considerably more lightweight 'Ocean's 11/12/13' series, leaving it to a couple of their senior supporting cast (Jean Dujardin and Hugh Bonneville) to remind us that some people actually got killed in this particular escapade. The all-star cast (Bill Murray, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Bob Balaban),  the method of their recruitment into Clooney's team, and their underdeveloped characters only adds to the sensation of an 'Ocean's 11' retread with a CGI battle-devastated Europe taking the place of the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas.
THE MONUMENTS MEN exudes the same kind of cinematic inauthenticity that pervades so many Hollywood studio-bound war films of the 1940s and 1950s but minus any of the style which served as those films' saving grace. Perhaps if Clooney had focused on just one of his responsibilities instead of trying to write, produce, direct and star in the thing, he might have created (or co-created) a more polished, coherent and engaging movie, but in trying to balance so many hats on his one (undeniably suave and charming) head he's given us a monumentally crashing snore-fest.

JOE: hell no I won't go! (for a ride on this particular bandwagon)

Seems Jesus Christ isn't the only one to have risen from the dead this month.
Nicholas Cage's career is also experiencing an equally miraculous resurrection if some of the hype surrounding the release of his latest film JOE is to be believed.
It's 'a re-birth', 'there's not an unfelt moment in Cage's performance' and 'Joe ... reminds us that Nicolas Cage can still be a great actor when he wants to be' is just a sampling of the

hysteria based solely, it seems to me, on the fact that Cage is doing something other than his standard bat-sh*t crazy ham-acting routine in one of those take-the-money-and-run pieces of junk that he's chosen to focus his talents on in recent years.
But just being not awful doesn't make it great or the dawning of a new, serious Nicholas Cage as actor.
Cut through the frenzied hyperbole and what we've got with JOE is a non-shouting or screaming Nicholas Cage with a beard playing a guy called Joe but not for a moment making us forget it's actually Nicholas Cage - even with the beard. I suppose one could argue that by not going way over the top Cage is stretching himself but that in itself is a stretch and still doesn't add up to a great performance.
I mean it's not even like Joe is a particularly interesting or original character. An ex-con whose tough, gruff exterior hides an inner loneliness and a soft spot in his heart, Joe is a type we've seen many times before in the cinema as is his story with its way too predictable ending.
The film's only real revelations are the two main supporting actors. Newcomer Tye Sheridan is superb as Gary, the 15 year old who adopts Joe as an unlikely role model and uncovers the chink in Joe's armour, while first-time actor Gary Poulter is a revelation as Gary's vicious, violent waster of a father, a broken-down alcoholic with no compunction about beating up his son and stealing from him. Poulter plays him as irredeemably mean, making no effort to win our sympathy or understanding, and succeeds without ever resorting to any of the cliches and stereotypes often associated with this type of role. Sadly we'll never get to find out whether Poulter had the talent to build on this initial success as he died a couple of months after filming was completed.
Whether JOE marks a turning point for Nicholas Cage remains to be seen. In terms of a career revival it's more akin to Burt Reynold's in 'Boogie Nights' than Matthew McConaughey's in 'Dallas Buyer's Club' despite those what many of those same critics I referred to earlier might insist.   

IMPACT: bowled over by Ella Raines

I came for the story and stayed for the star.
There's the makings of a tight little murder thriller in 1949's IMPACT but unfortunately it's overlong and let down by plot holes so large you could drive a fully-laden furniture truck through them with tailgate down, and the terrible miscasting of one of Hollywood's finest

character actors of the 1940s.
Charles Coburn was undeniably versatile but even his talents don't stretch to playing a plausible Irish-American police detective. Quite why this role wasn't given to one of the hundreds of supporting actors who earned their living playing this stock type is a mystery, but Coburn's obvious discomfort and inability to maintain a consistent accent are a definite hindrance to the willing suspension of disbelief.
This piece of miscasting, however, is but a minor footnote when placed in the context of the bigger story which even the the most willing of disbelief suspenders will find mighty hard to swallow.
Brian Donlevy plays tough-talking businessman Walter Williams who narrowly escapes with his life when his wife's boyfriend tries to murder him on a lonely mountain road somewhere between San Francisco and Denver. Moments later the boyfriend's killed in a firey crash and his body burnt beyond all recognition. The cops think the ashes are Williams' and put his wife on trial for murder, while Williams assumes a new identity and finds work as a garage mechanic in an idyllic Idaho town. He's so eaten up with bitterness at his wife's betrayal that he's prepared to see her jailed for a crime she didn't commit, until the burgeoning love of the garage owner (yes, she's a woman!) persuades him to go to the police and tell them the real story - at which point he finds himself on trial for the boyfriend's murder, and there's still 30 minutes of plot to go.
All these convolutions are fine as long as you don't think too deeply about them. Even shallow thoughts will root out the inconsistencies and implausibilities that'll have you shouting at Coburn and his fellow detectives "Why don't you ask the 2 guys driving the furniture truck what they saw?!"
Having established that the film's too long, the plot doesn't make sense and they've got the only actor who couldn't do a credible Irish accent playing an Irish-American cop, you making be wondering what exactly is the motivation for investing precious time in this movie?
Two words - Ella Raines.
My god this woman is beautiful!

From the first seconds of her first appearance, dressed in mechanic's overalls, her hair tucked under a hat and her face smudged with oil as she works on a car engine, I was smitten. Not only is she the sexiest car mechanic you are ever likely to encounter, but she's adorable too. She's so adorable she even manages to convince us she finds short, stocky Brian Donlevy desirable and, heck, if a man who's as wide as he is tall can set Miss Raines' heart a-flutter then surely there's hope for the rest of us guys!
It doesn't hurt either that she can act. Her belief in the plot remains total, even as it descends into the realm of nonsense, cliches and borderline racism in it's demeaning depiction of the character played by veteran Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong.
Whatever else IMPACT is, it's not film noir, despite what some other film review websites would have you believe. It's not just that there's way too much daylight and sunshine, but Walter Williams is no existential anti-hero battling vain against a pre-ordained fate. He's a stock Hollywood crime drama/thriller character grappling with an increasingly unlikely set of circumstances of the kind unfortunately found in way too many B-movie dramas of the period. IMPACT would like to be a film noir but it doesn't meet the requirements.
It does, though, have the wonderful Miss Raines, and that'll do for me.

THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY: Just kill me

Leon Trotsky was lucky.
He got an icepick to the head and was gone a few hours later.

Contrast that with Joseph Losey's 1972 dramatisation of the assassination which inflicts a cinematic slow painful death on every single person in the audience. Rarely has such a famous and dramatic moment in history been reduced to such mind-numbing, turgid and lethargic boredom.
The story's ending is pre-ordained. Heck, the title even gives away the big finish, so all that's left is the build-up, the story behind the murder and a chance to shed a little light on Trotsky and the motives of his killer. We already know the what, but surely there's still some interesting angles to be explored with the who and why.
"Don't call me Shirley" is director Losey's curt response to that proposition.
His preference is to fill the screen with one hundred minutes of Alain Delon alternately running around various crumbling stone edifices in Mexico City, looking moody/blank in a cool pair of sunglasses, and wrestling girlfriend Romy Schneider on a bed whenever she asks awkward questions about his identity. Intersperse that with scenes of Richard Burton as Trotsky dictating his political thoughts to a secretary and then listening back to them on a primitive dictaphone (because hearing dense political theory once just isn't enough); mix in a jarring, screeching soundtrack and numerous pointless panning shots, and the result is an empty, bloated hulk of nothingness.
A complete and utter waste of time, money and talent.
Losey had almost a quarter century of film-making experience under his belt by the time he called action on this project (perhaps 'Inaction' would have been more apt) yet he gives the impression of having absolutely no idea what he's doing. Visually the film is bereft of vision, the story barely holds together, and the cast can hardly summon the energy to simply go through the motions. Delon is a cypher while Burton phones in his performance, presenting the great Russian revolutionary as a windbag with the charisma of a potted plant.
Whatever your personal opinion of Trotsky's politics he deserves better than this.

ANCHORMAN 2 - THE LEGEND CONTINUES: this anchor's too lightweight to hold down a story

Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear!
What was I thinking?
How could I have deluded myself into believing this film might be worth watching?
How could I have so easily forgotten the intense marketing campaign for ANCHORMAN 2 which saturated  tv, radio and the internet just a few months ago without raising one genuinely laugh-out-loud moment?

The film lives down to every expectation which I had chosen - in a moment of madness - to ignore in hopes of some undemanding and enjoyable Saturday night entertainment.
It's yet another lamestream, cynical Hollywood sequel designed to cruise and collect on the back of audiences' fond memories for the original which - in the cold light of day - wasn't that spectacular either.
There, I've said it.
2004's 'Anchorman' is not the classic that our faulty collective memory would have us believe, but it's practically 'Citizen Kane' next to this abysmal follow-up.
The big problem I have with this film is Ron Burgundy. He's not a consistent character but rather a vehicle for Will Ferrell to show off his 'incredible' improvisational comedy skills. For a character to be credible he or she needs to display certain reliable and recurring traits, and when in the interests of a quick laugh or a plot requirement, they act in a way that is not consistent with the way we've been lead to believe they are, it shatters the illusion of believability.
Burgundy is presented to us as an egotistical, misogynistic, dim-wit whose sole talents are great hair and the ability to read a teleprompter, except when Ferrell decides to have him do

something outside of this character to, as I say, grab a laugh or service a plot twist.
And my reaction is - that's not what Ron Burgundy would do or say. My disbelief is no longer suspended and the world within the film falls apart.
ANCHORMAN 2 has Burgundy inadvertently inventing the template for 24 hour cable news channels, with a collection of off-the-cuff comments and spur of the moment decisions that the channel's executives seize on as flashes of genius. Not only are these outside the realm of Ron's capabilities, but they're such obvious set-ups for a bunch of cheap and lazy jabs at what cable news has become that they fail even to raise a knowing smile.
As with almost every other Will Ferrell starrer it's clear that improvisation has taken precedence over the script, to the detriment of the story. Too many of the scenes feel like the product of numerous takes and many different lines, with the intention of finding the perfect bust-a-gut-guffawing routine. The result, unfortunately, is too often reminiscent of a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch where the germ of a funny idea shrivels and dies for lack genuinely creative development.
The net result of all this misfiring is that the film feels interminable and when it did eventually get to the end the only sensation was of being cheated out of two hours of my life.

LAST VEGAS: The Hangover on Viagra fails to rise to the occasion

LAST VEGAS is as shiny, glitzy, shallow and fake as its namesake city.
Both dangle tantalizing promises of fun and excitement that neither are able to deliver on.
Las Vegas can be a wonderful place if your idea of a great time is blowing your life savings in a matter of minutes, but for those of us searching for something less costly and more stimulating its welcome soon wears thin.

Utilising the strapline 'It's Going to be Legendary', LAST VEGAS baits its trap with similar blandishments. Who can resist the opportunity to watch an all-star cast of Hollywood heavyweights cutting loose in that sun-soaked high temple to hedonism with their own viagra-fuelled  take on 'The Hangover'?
The reality is considerably less legendary and infinitely more 'feet of clay.'
Without maligning in any way the professionalism of Messrs Robert  De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline, there's very little sense of any of them making more than the most token of efforts to create a plausible character for themselves. The overwhelming perception is of four big-name actors half-heartedly participating in a very generously all-expenses-paid lark which doesn't ask much more of them than to turn up, remember their lines and not walk into the furniture.
Playing lifelong buddies, now in their late 60s, re-uniting in Vegas to throw a bachelor-party for Douglas ahead of his wedding to a woman half his age, the cast goes through the motions with a minimum of commitment or enthusiasm. If it's not quite as lazy as Freeman's abysmal 2007 senior citizen romp 'The Bucket List' it comes pretty close. Where that film barely ventured outside the sound stage, preferring to stand its stars in front of a green screen, LAST VEGAS does at least have the decency to actually shoot in Las Vegas but the end result is not much different.
The story's unimaginative, the characters half-formed and predictable, and the humor mostly non-existent. While by the end of it all De Niro, Douglas, Freeman and Kline have unsurprisingly discovered a new lease on life, I was left feeling much like one of those suckers Las Vegas depends on who put their retirement fund on red and came up empty. 

PHILOMENA: no histrionics, just compelling storytelling

PHILOMENA is the true story of a young Irish woman forced to give up her baby by nuns who goes searching for him 50 years later and makes the horrendous discovery that he's grown up into a Republican.
Best Actress Oscar nominated Judi Dench stars as Philomena Lee, playing her as a beguiling mix of naivety, street-smarts, and determination a woman who finds strength and solace in her religious beliefs even though it's the same Catholic church that is responsible for her lifetime of sadness and longing.

Dench is magnificent, holding the screen with an effortless grace and authority that makes it possible to simultaneously enjoy another great performance by Britain's greatest living actress and believe in Philomena as a real life character. Her presence also brings out the best in co-star Steve Coogan, inspiring him to dig deeper than he's done before in an effort to shake-off the Alan Partridge persona that's coloured every non-Alan Partridge part he's ever played on film and tv. He doesn't entirely escape from the shadow of the Norfolk local radio personality but by mid-film the vocal tics and inflections were definitely less distracting.
Even more of a revelation than his acting is Coogan's Academy Award nominated screenplay. Low-key and devoid of unnecessary and manipulative sentimentality, it reflects Philomena's own non-nonsense approach to life, and is as deserving of its Oscar nod as Dench's and the film's for Best Motion Picture of the Year.
Whether PHILOMENA goes home tonight with any of the coveted golden statuettes is almost impossible to predict. It faces very tough competition in every category from films that are so different that it seems unfair to try and rank them against one another. But win or lose, PHILOMENA is most definitely worthy of your time and attention.

HOLLYWOOD PARTY: while Mayer's away the employees will play

This 1934 feature from MGM is really bizarre. It's part Busby Berkeley-style musical, part

Marx Brothers-wannabe comedy and 100% a shambles.
If HOLLYWOOD PARTY had been made 30 years later I would have assumed it was the product of a bad acid trip but as this pre-dates LSD by a good couple of decades and was produced by MGM, a studio not given to committing hallucinations to celluloid, I'm at a loss to understand how the film ever came to be made.
Given the studio's emphasis on class, style and family entertainment I have to imagine that studio head Louis B. Mayer and production chief Irving Thalberg were out of town and unreachable by phone, telegram or carrier pigeon while shooting took place because I can't conceive of the circumstances in which they would have given their approval.   
In what starts out as a spoof on MGM's 'Tarzan' movies, Jimmy Durante stars as Schnarzan the Conqueror, looking to revitalise his flagging jungle man franchise by purchasing a pride of genuinely wild lions to wrestle in his next movie. To persuade their owner to do the deal Durante throws a lavish party in his honour inviting everyone who's anyone in Hollywood although, with the exception of cameos by Robert Young and The Three Stooges in the days before they were the Three Stooges, no actual film stars turn up.
Instead we're forced to make do with a motley bunch of charisma-free C and D list entertainers now mercifully forgotten by history who are lavished by more screen time than they could ever possibly deserve.
Eddie Quillan (a man in desperate need of some serious orthodentistry) and the impressively plain June Clyde fail to strike a single plausible spark as a young couple trilling their new love to each other, while Durante goes all Groucho Marx in some leaden routines with Polly Moran as an ersatz Margaret Dumont. The 'humour' is punctuated by some sub-Busby Berkeley dance numbers which earn a little credit for creativity if not style, and a Walt Disney cartoon, introduced by Mickey Mouse, which seems to exists for no other reason than MGM had a distribution deal with Disney.

Then, just when you think it can't get anymore weird Laurel and Hardy show up, playing themselves and go rather listlessly through some of their more well-worn routines at what feels like half speed. I'm an L & H fan from way back, and their appearance was my sole motivation for watching the film, but I can't pretend I enjoyed it. It's not that they're bad but they're out of their element and their comedy just doesn't mesh with the semi-surrealism of the surroundings. Their sequence with Lupe Velez lacks any of the life which makes their 1930s shorts for Hal Roach such a joy to watch regardless of how many times I've seen them.
Tellingly, the end credits fail to identify a director for this farrago, although according to IMDb no less than 8 directors made a contribution including some of the biggest names of the era. Presumably their agents were more effective in keeping their names off the finished product than Mayer and Thalberg were in preventing its release.

PICK A STAR: just not one from the A-list or B-list

PICK A STAR was independent producer Hal Roach's brave but ill-advised 1937 effort to take on the big studios at their own game.
MGM, Warner Brothers and Paramount had the stars, the production talent and the money

to turn out lavish musicals even when the subject was the Great Depression. Roach had Patsy Kelly, Jack Haley and whatever change he could find down the back of the sofa.
It's understandable that he'd want to set his sights on bigger things than the two reel Laurel and Hardy comedies that had made him famous. Shorts are alright, and the Laurel and Hardy shorts were more than alright, but if he wanted to be taken seriously as a film producer he needed to step up to the big time, and that meant full length features. That also meant bigger production costs and while Hal Roach was certainly not a member of the Poverty Row group of studios he wasn't anywhere near the top tier either.
The paucity of funds is only too evident in every frame of PICK A STAR. It's not just the unimpressive sets but it's the uninspiring cast of C-list actors none of whom have the star-power to carry a film. Patsy Kelly carved out a very respectable career for herself as the loud and unladylike comic-relief in a long string of mostly low budget movies, but even she must have been surprised to find herself top billed in a musical, while Jack Haley was a fine song and dance man (and was to achieve immortality 2 years later as the Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz') but he's definitely not romantic leading man material. Roach further hampered his own ambitions by casting Rosina Lawrence (who? - exactly) as the nominal leading lady despite her glaring lack of charisma, charm or appeal.  If that's not already enough to turn off audiences, the character she plays is so shallow and self-centred that there's really no incentive to root for the Cinderella ending the story's setting her up for. If plausibility were a pre-requisite (and of course it's not because this is a Hollywood musical) she'd walk off into the sunset with the equally shallow and narcissistic Rinaldo Lopez, the patently inauthentic Latin lover movie star played by Mischa Auer. But in that scenario, Jack

Haley would discover true love in the arms of Patsy Kelly and that's something no audience would buy!
Combined with an unimaginative and well-worn (even in 1937) story about a small-town midwestern girl dreaming of stardom in Hollywood, and some clumsily staged musical numbers which serve only to further highlight Busby Berkeley's genius as a choreographer, PICK A STAR boasts all the ingredients of a solid gold bomb. The film's saving grace is the cameo by Roach's biggest stars, Laurel and Hardy. The boys appearance has nothing to do with the story's forward motion but everything to do with giving moviegoers a reason to fork over ticket money to see the film. Their two scenes, while not classic L & H, are a very welcome distraction from the increasingly dull proceedings and the only real reason for watching the film in the first place.

THE LONG HOT SUMMER: a giant steamed ham

Why, bless your heart y'all! Pour me another Mint Julep and fix me some grits while I rest mah weary bones on this here bale of cotton. THE LONG HOT SUMMER puts 'Gone With the Wind' to shame when it comes to perpetuating stereotypes about the Deep South.
Granted it doesn't have slaves pickin' cotton under the hot sun - this is 1958 - but that's about the only cliche screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr omit from their  adaptation of William Faulkner's novel 'The Hamlet.'
A star-studded cast of non-southerners pour on the honeychile' accents thicker than molasses as they act out this entirely predictable tale of overheated passions and frustrations in a godforsaken backwater of deepest Mississippi.
Paul Newman is the sexy tomcat with trouble written all across him in flashing neon lettering who sets his sights on Joanne Woodward, a proper southern lady whose prim exterior conceals a bubbling cauldron of lustful longing. Anthony Franciosa plays her inadequate brother struggling manfully to live up to his overbearing father's expectations of what a son should be, and Lee Remick is his sexpot young wife seriously lacking in a sense of decorum. Looming over all of them is Orson Welles as the ultimate parody of a southern patriarch, spouting aphorisms and puffing on a succession of well chewed stogies as he surveys his kingdom and bends everyone to his will.
In the absence of surprise or suspense the only real pleasure is in watching Welles serving

up one of the largest slices of ham ever to grace the silver screen. As the domineering, cruel and manipulative Will Varner he gives a performance absolutely devoid of shame. Not content with simply chewing on the scenery, Welles takes countless greedy bites out of it with an accent so ludicrously overblown that half of what he says is unintelligible, although it's pretty safe to assume that it's mostly nonsense.
Not content with simply sounding ridiculous, Welles is also determined to look ridiculous. To that end his make-up has been applied with a paint brush and chalk dust liberally dusted into his thick head of hair in a vain attempt to convince us the 43 year old actor is a 61 year old father in uncertain health. The result is a sun-burnt clown.
Despite Welles' overpowering presence, Newman more than holds his own, demonstrating genuine star power in what was only his sixth film, but it's not enough to save the film from sinking under the weight of its overblown predictability.

CUBAN REBEL GIRLS: an abysmal swansong for a Hollywood legend

CUBAN REBEL GIRLS is literally the wretched final nail in the coffin of Errol Flynn's once glittering career.

This dramatised documentary about Castro's Cuban revolution, shot while the fighting was still in progress, is barely half a notch above the best that legendary bad film director Ed Wood could manage at the height of his powers.
By all accounts Flynn was a bloated, drunken wreck, an oversize shadow of his former matinee idol self, by the time he commenced production on this ultra-low budget project in 1959. The expanded waistline is clearly visible beneath the loose shirt as are his swollen, alcohol ravaged features, despite the abysmal lighting which condemns many of his scenes to semi-darkness. He plays himself as a war correspondent for Hearst newspapers, risking his life to cross the battle lines and trek into the mountains of Cuba's hinterland to interview Fidel Castro himself. Flynn appears only at the beginning and end of the film but narrates much of the story in a voice that betrays a lifetime addiction to booze and cigarettes. It's practically unrecognisable as Flynn's voice, sounding flat, tired and lacking in intonation. Given his condition it's a miracle he lasted long enough to succumb to a heart attack after the end of filming, rather than during it.
The bulk of the story is carried by a group of men and women one might loosely describe as actors if one were feeling particularly charitable. Most give the mountainside trees a run for

their money when it comes to woodenness, but the mightiest Oak of them all is Flynn's 17 year old girlfriend Beverly Aadland. In the lead role of an American teenager who joins Castro's rebel army to be close to her boyfriend, she displays not the tiniest measure of acting ability, delivering her lines with all the vocal range and conviction of a Speak Your Weight machine. It's a clear indicator of just how badly the booze had addled Flynn's brain that he agreed to cast his platinum blonde lover in such a central role when it was apparent to anyone older than three that she had zero talent and could not possibly be anything but a major embarrassment to the project.
Aadland's atrocious acting is neatly complemented by Barry Mahon's witless direction and Flynn's threadbare script, creating an axis of awfulness that makes the 68 minute running time feel like a lifetime and half lived at half speed. And the film's not even bad enough to have kitsch appeal. It's just bad. Really bad.

STORM WARNING: beware of star names in unsuitable parts!

STORM WARNING is a taut and atmospheric thriller marred only by the leading lady's inability to act like an actress rather than a film star.

Ginger Rogers was past her prime by the time she signed on with Warner Brothers for this 1951 B-movie but she wasn't about to get her hands dirty by playing the role the way it was intended in the script. Rather than have the actress subsume herself in the character she made sure the character came to her. That meant playing the part the way she'd played all her parts in her prime - as movie star Ginger Rogers; with just a token hint of the character's personality dabbed lightly on her neck like an expensive perfume.
It was a formula that had worked for the musicals and light comedies that had been her stock-in-trade, but it was considerably less appropriate for the part of a New York model who witnesses the mob murder of a reporter by the Ku Klux Klan in a small southern town. Although she's from the Big Apple, Marsha Mitchell's no big-time glamour model. She lives out of a suitcase, riding the Greyhound bus from one small town to the next to model the clothing her salesman traveling companion is trying to sell to local department stores. She's a working girl without a past or a future. She has no dreams about making the big time, nor any resentments about her lot in life. Marsha Mitchell simply exists in the present.
Back in the early 1930s, when she was first at Warners and before she met Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers could have pulled it off. She was a convincing showgirl on the make in films like '42nd Street' and 'Gold Diggers of 1933' but by 1951 that scrappy ambitious young woman had solidified into a bona fide film star, trapped by the rigid cast of her on-screen persona.
That persona wasn't much interested in depth. The fact that Ginger Rogers was playing the part told us all we needed to know about the character. Except that Marsha Mitchell is not a Ginger Rogers-type character. She's an ordinary working woman who finds herself intimately involved in a nightmarish, life-threatening situation, and confronted with a terrible moral dilemma. None of which can be adequately conveyed by the Ginger Rogers

on-screen persona. Ginger tries, but her efforts amount to little more than alternately looking sad and looking at people with an almost blank expression.
Which is a real shame. Because the story's genuinely exciting and suspenseful, with a real sense of small town claustrophobia and fear, and fine performances from Ronald Reagan, Doris Day and Steve Cochran. Unlike Rogers, Reagan pitches it just right as the DA determined to bust the local Klan despite the threats to his life and, unlike Rogers, Day successfully sheds her songstress image to convince as the naive and trusting wife of the man (Cochran) that Rogers has just witnessed committing the murder.
Admirers of Don Siegel's classic 1954 'Invasion of the Bodysnatchers' will appreciate the similarities in the delving beneath the surface of apparently picture-perfect small town America to expose the sinister secret life of friends and neighbours, although unlike 'Bodysnatchers' STORM WARNING has no aspirations to deeper political meaning. Indeed, if it has any message at all it's a bizarre one. The Ku Klux Klan should be condemned not because it's a racist organisation that takes the law into its own hands to terrorise and murder innocent people solely because of their religion or the colour of their skin, but because it's a racket run by corrupt men who steal the money they charge members for dues, and costumes and other Klan activities.
Despite the missed opportunities, the pulled punches and an unsuitable leading lady, I have no hesitation in recommending STORM WARNING as a worthwhile investment of 93 minutes of your time.

CONVICTS FOUR: viewers snore

Having just struggled to remain awake and engaged through CONVICTS FOUR I am seriously considering reviewing my ranking of Ben Gazzara as my favourite actor of the modern cinema.
He won the title through his work with John Cassavetes, Peter Bogdanovich and Marco Ferreri in the 1970s and 80s. His performances just blew me away, and I felt there was something of a modern day Bogart quality to the characters he played. So I wanted to see more of his work, and while I discovered there was a great deal of dross among his tv

movies I was prepared to forgive that as the price an actor paid to keep working. He made the cinematic movies for art and subsidised them with the tv stuff was how I rationalised it.
I've been more reluctant to explore his earlier work from the 1960s because so much of what I read about it sounded so unappealing, and CONVICTS FOUR confirmed my worst fears. Not only is this 1962 true-life drama deathly dull but Gazzara is too. He brings nothing to the part that would differentiate him from the way a dozen other on-the-rise young actors in the early 60s would have played it. He's flat, uninspired and unconvincing.
It doesn't help that the tension of the early scenes in which convicted murderer John Resko (Gazzara) counts down his final hours before execution is completely destroyed by the opening titles which announce that John Resko served as technical advisor on the project - and therefore must still be alive unless he advised from beyond the grave. When, almost at the last minute, the death sentence is commuted to life in jail I didn't realise I'd be required to serve it alongside him.
I've heard a life sentence described as worse than death and that's pretty much how I felt as I accompanied Resko through the following 17 years behind bars in the company of a horribly hammy Ray Walston and pseudo-tough guy Sammy Davis Jr, with cameos from Vincent Price, Rod Steiger and Broderick Crawford. I've never understood the rationale behind the description of cameo appearances by famous faces as 'guest stars.' The phrase suggests that there's a regular show with a regular cast which they are joining for a one-off guest appearance, but a film by its very nature (franchises excepted) is a one-off so - logically - every cast member must be a guest since none of them will be returning for a subsequent episode.
But I digress. The sole purpose of these guest appearances would appear to be to inject a bit of much needed life into the proceedings, but they actually serve more as a distraction because they bring with them the promise of interesting new characters who don't actually stick around long enough to fulfill their potential.
Which leaves us with no choice but to focus on the relationship that develops between Resko and the unnamed prison officer (Stuart Whitman) who rises to the rank of warden, and encourages Resko to develop his natural talent as an artist. It's a worthy cause but when it's stretched out over 17 years you'll appreciate that the development is somewhat on the slow side to put it mildly.
If writer-director Millard Kaufman's intention was to illustrate the case for the abolition of the death penalty he failed. CONVICTS FOUR will have you begging for a swift end to the misery.

WONDER BAR: the not so wonderful side of Warner Brothers

Murder, suicide, racism, theft, and infidelity - WONDER BAR has a funny way of trying to make its audience feel good.

This 1934 musical trades heavily on the enormous success Warner Bros had enjoyed over the previous two years with backstage musicals like '42nd Street', 'Footlight Parade' and 'Gold Diggers of 1933.' But while WONDER BAR reunites director Lloyd Bacon with master choreographer Busby Berkeley, leading man Dick Powell and comedy foils Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert it lacks all of the magic of those previous productions.
By 1934 Warner Bros had developed a reputation for producing films that unashamedly acknowledged the tough times of the Depression. They pulled fewer punches than any of the other studios when it came to depicting the poverty and the sense of hopelessness inflicted on a large majority of the US population, but even by Warner's tough standards WONDER BAR is disturbingly hard and cynical in its portrayal of the human condition. The film skirts perilously close to condoning murder and suicide, and is ambivalent at best in its attitude to adultery. There's a real sense that in these tough times the survival of the fittest trumps all moral considerations.
What's most surprising is the role that the film's star, Al Jolson plays in all this. On the surface he's tough but kind-hearted businessman, Al Wonder. The Wonder Bar is his nightclub where he not only manages the place but also greets the guests and headlines the floor show. Behind the glad handing razzle-dazzle there's a coldness in his treatment of his star dance team Harry (Ricardo Cortez) and Inez (Dolores Del Rio), driven by his secret crush on Inez and his consequent desire to exploit their unhappiness so as to split them up. Jolson's Wonder takes a sternly moralistic view of Harry's attempts to sell a diamond necklace he's cajoled from his secret lover, but has no qualms about saving Inez from the police after she murders one of the other main characters.
One wonders whether Jolson really perceived the truth depth of his character's moral ambivalence when he read the script, but I suspect he was more interested in the opportunities it gave him to hog the screen. His performance is borderline ham and it's all he can do not to roll his eyes as he schmoozes the customers and participates in some obviously over-rehearsed comedy routines. The main attraction for Jolson, I'm sure, were

the big musical numbers and in particular the very long fantasy sequence which forms the film's climax and sees the great entertainer in blackface playing a poor farmer who goes to heaven on a mule and discovers "de promised land" in an afterlife peopled entirely by other white actors in blackface. It's a deeply disturbing piece of cinema that's impossible to watch today without being shocked and appalled at its patronising, condescending, exploitative and stereotypical portrayal of African Americans. I struggled to try and imagine how unshocking and normal many 1934 audiences would have found this, and failed. I recognise that my initial reaction of 'why didn't they just hire African American actors to play the African American parts?' just barely grazes the surface of the dominant attitude toward African Americans at that time.
The result is an extremely unpleasant taste in the mouth that is difficult to wash away, and which colours (absolutely no pun intended) my already less than stellar opinion of the film to that point. Even Busby Berkeley's trademark dance sequence with its dozens of perfectly choreographed blonde showgirls, gliding pillars and mirrors stretching - seemingly - to infinity - fail to salvage the viewing experience. 

SALT AND PEPPER: Do not pass these condiments!

If swinging London ever existed SALT AND PEPPER hammers the final nails into its coffin.
This 1968 monstrosity presents itself as a hip n' happening crime caper chock full of laughs, hot girls, cool cats and alcohol-fuelled antics, but in reality it's nothing more than a bloated slab of lazy, juvenile and self-indulgent junk.
Acting (but only barely) under the misapprehension that their mere presence will evoke Sinatra-style Rat Pack magic, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr shuffle through a nonsensical, unfunny, patronising and tedious story about two London nightclub owners tangling with the British Police, Secret Service, military, and Government after inadvertently getting themselves caught up in a very un-British plot to stage a coup.
Despite their prodigious intake of cigarettes and booze the two American imports retain the
athleticism to fight off a seemingly endless stream of presumably well-trained and healthy young soldiers, blithely murdering some of them in the process. Now I understand that such capers are not attempting to recreate documentary-type realism but the complete lack of concern with which Lawford and Davis dispatch these young men and - in one case - a young woman, is disturbing because the troops are at worst innocent pawns in a plot by their superiors to wrest control of the country from the elected government. I've no problem with seeing them knocked cold with a handily placed prop bottle or mallet, but getting run through with a sword is a punishment normally reserved for the chief bad guy and his second in command.
But perhaps I'm taking this too seriously. After all, Lawford and Davis are barely able to rouse any interest in the plot (despite their also producing the project) so why would they concern themselves with how the gratuitous taking of lives might impact negatively on the intended tone of the film?
Everything about SALT AND PEPPER is sloppy, from the characters, storytelling and acting, to the back projection sequences in which Davis pretends to drive a fab and funky Austin Mini Moke down a straight street by constantly twisting the steering wheel from left to right. It's just a small thing, and I know he's not the first actor to over-act the act of driving a car, but it's emblematic of director Richard Donner's complete lack of attention to detail.
If the intention was zany the result is incompetent.

THE OSCAR RACE 2014: a few thoughts ahead of the nominations

Let me start with a disclaimer. I have not, and do not intend to, see every single movie that might
possibly pick up an Oscar nomination next week. I don't have the time or the patience to sit through everything and, to be entirely honest, I really don't have much of a clue when it comes to determining who edited the sound or created make-up and hairstyling better than everyone else.
So I'm going to limit it to those 'new' films that I have seen and the major categories like best actor, actress, director and film.

I don't know if it's just because I watched it last night but CAPTAIN PHILLIPS has left an impression - a very positive impression - on me. I didn't realise until the final credits that it was directed by Paul Greengrass but when I saw his name it all made sense - the semi-documentary style, the hand-held camerawork, that sense of claustrophobia, and of being in the story rather than just watching it. I'd experienced it all
before with 'United 93' which I found to be a profoundly powerful and moving piece of cinema. By the very nature of the story, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS doesn't possess the same level of intensity as the
story of events on the flight hijacked on 9/11 and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, but the final few scenes were almost as wrenching as 'United 93.' In both films Greengrass focuses on the quiet heroics of ordinary people responding to extraordinary and deadly situations, creating palpable drama, tension and empathy without resort to Hollywood heroics, sentimentality or moralising. He got an Directing Oscar nomination for 'United 93' and I think he deserves the same for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, although I also think it's not the kind of film the Academy's likely to bestow that award on.
Tom Hanks stars in the title role demonstrating once again his convincing versatility despite a lack of conventional leading man good looks. What's impressive here is his ability to make us forget we're watching Tom Hanks, and accept Richard Phillips as a three dimensional, real person. Hanks makes it look so effortless that it's easy to disregard the level of talent that requires, and for that reason I can't see a Best Actor nomination although I think he's worthy of it.

Talking of Tom Hanks, a few thoughts about 'Forest Gump With a Purpose' or THE BUTLER as it's more popularly known. The intentions are worthy but the execution is lacking with Forrest Whitaker (yet again playing a character with a droopy eyelid) as the Gump-like witness to 50 years of Civil Rights history as seen from the inside of The White House. Trying to cram a half century's worth of events into a two hour movie is not a recipe for effective story telling, and director Lee Daniels is further hampered by the unnecessary stunt-casting of famous faces in unsuitable roles, most notably Robin Williams as the most implausible President Eisenhower in the history of Ike-impersonations. Short of a tv mini-series I'm not sure how else Daniels' could have handled the story but good intentions are not enough to warrant a nod for director. In my view, Oprah Winfrey as Whitaker's long-suffering wife is the only one worthy of an Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actress.

ENOUGH SAID is the kind of indie-movie that would normally slide in and out of cinemas with little notice but the fact that it was released shortly after the death of its star, James Gandolfini, has

given it more attention than it might otherwise have warranted. He plays a warm-hearted, slightly slobby, divorced dad with a teenage daughter, who strikes up a relationship with Julia Louis-Dreyfus's rather needy divorced mom, also with a teenage daughter. Director Nicholas Holofcener examines the premise that 'love is lovelier the second time around' without really coming to any new or surprisingly conclusions but it plays out pleasantly enough and - most importantly - both Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus succeed in transcending the tv characters for which they are best known. But both would have to be up against particularly weak competition to pick-up the Oscar, and I'm not convinced either is even deserving of a nomination but if Helen Hunt could get nominated for 'The Sessions', which was a similar type of performance in a similar kind of film - who knows?

If we're talking Oscars it's almost obligatory to mention Meryl Streep. With 3 statuettes and a further 14 nominations to her name there's a very good chance that if she's made a film in any given year she's going to get nominated for it. AUGUST:OSAGE COUNTY gives Streep the kind of role many
actresses would kill for. Violet Weston is a scenery-chewing monster of a matriarch, spewing bile, venom and self pity in equal quantities over her unfortunate family when they gather to remember her husband, their father, after he's killed himself. Bewigged and pasty faced, and alternately drunk from the liquor and woozy from the pills she's chugging, Streep doesn't simply dominate every scene, she overwhelms them and the fellow cast members unfortunate enough to share the space with her. Think Elizabeth Taylor in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and you'll have some idea of the kind of force of nature co-stars Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor and Juliette Lewis are up against. Despite Roberts' best efforts and the calibre of the cast AUGUST:OSAGE COUNTY is Streep's film from start to finish and she takes full advantage of the free rein given her by director John Wells. Whether the end result is a great performance or just an acting masterclass I can't quite decide. What I am certain of is that not for a moment did I believe in Violet Weston as a character. Maybe it's my own failing but I couldn't get past the idea of Streep pulling every acting trick, technique and method in an accomplished actor's repertoire to give a great stage performance. The film's based on the Broadway play (the screenplay's written by Tracy Letts who also wrote the original story) and it's impossible to escape the story's theatrical origins. Every line of dialogue, every gesture is theatrical with the characters as types designed to mouth attitudes and philosophies in that irritatingly theatrical way that bears little relation to the way in which real - and cinematic - characters speak, move and behave. If Streep gets another Best Actress nomination it'll be for the volume rather than the credibility of her screen performance.

No such concerns about a Best Actress nomination for Cate Blanchett's turn as a troubled New York socialite on the edge of a nervous breakdown in BLUE JASMINE. She is absolutely compelling and never less than totally believable, by turns likeable, impossible and everything inbetween. Blanchett's so good, in fact, that you'll forget this is a Woody Allen movie and, given his unique writing and
directing style, that's no easy thing to do. I'm a longtime admirer of Allen's work but the one thing I don't like (other than his misfires) are the films where he doesn't appear and instead gives his part to one of his star cast, resulting in John Cusack (for example) doing a Woody Allen impression and, inevitably, suffering in comparison to the original. Jasmine is absolutely not an Allen stand-in and everyone benefits.

In the Best Actor category I'd like to see Christian Bale get a nod for his irresistible turn as showy, sleazy conman Irving Rosenfeld in AMERICAN HUSTLE. Bale again submerges himself in his character giving a performance that is dominant without dominating. Co-stars Bradley Cooper,

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams are given plenty of room to shine but there's never any doubt this is Bale's film. The film re-unites 'Silver Linings Playbook' stars Cooper and Lawrence with director David O. Russell, and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that any of these three will also be Oscar nominated. Might we see Lawrence with a Best Supporting Actress statuette to put alongside the Best Actress award she picked up last year for 'Playbook'?

Also deserving in the Best Actor category is Matthew McConnaughey for his committed performance as waster and hustler turned unlikely AIDS activist Ron Woodroof in THE DALLAS BUYERS
CLUB. McConnaughey literally proved he's more than just a pretty face by losing 50 pounds to get into the part, rendering himself almost unrecognisable and forcing him to rely on his acting chops rather than his looks and charm to carry the film. It's a compelling story told with a minimum of sentimentality (given that this is a mainstream Hollywood movie), and while Woodroof never really shakes his hustler origins it's to McConnaughey's credit that it's impossible not to root for him by the end.

Impressive though McConnaughey and Bale are, the actor with the strongest claim to the Best Actor statuette this year is Chiwetel Eijiofor for his spellbinding performance as Solomon Northup in 12 YEARS A SLAVE. Eijiofor simply 'is' Northup. There's never any sense of acting or artifice, nor does he try (or need to try) to dominate any scene he's in. There's a quiet, understated dignity to Northup which can't be shattered no matter how demeaning, vicious, or just unfair the injustices heaped on him after he's kidnapped from the free
north and sold into slavery in a pre-Civil War Louisiana. I have a feeling Eijiofor won't be the only person connected with 12 YEARS who gets a nomination come this Thursday morning in LA. Expect to see co-star Michael Fassbender named in the Best Supporting Actor category, Steve McQueen as Best Director and 12 YEARS itself as Best Film. In fact this could be the second year running that a momentous piece of American history dominates the nominations, but where last year's Oscar frontrunner 'Lincoln' was worthy but dry, ponderous and - frankly - dull, 12 YEARS A SLAVE is a vibrant, living thing.

This is in no way to minimise the contributions of Sandra Bullock or George Clooney, but the story
and the method of telling it are the true stars of GRAVITY and if there's any justice (not always a concept that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is familiar with) there'll be nominations for director Alfonso Cuaron, cinematography, and visual effects. I wouldn't begrudge Bullock a Best Actress nom but I would be surprised to see her get it.

I would, however, begrudge James Franco a best actor nod for SPRING BREAKERS. My disapproval is - I'll admit - driven more by dislike of the film and Franco's character than any particular failing on his part. His Florida drugs and arms dealer is so unpleasant on every level that I found it impossible to assess his performance objectively. Neither the film nor anyone in it is deserving of recognition by the Academy.

I've left the longest til last. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is an epic, clocking in at a little over three hours. In the hands of a lesser director that could easily feel like a lifetime but this is a Martin Scorsese production and Scorsese is always worth the investment. For a director whose best years are probably now behind him he's still working at a pretty high level even if the misses ('Shutter Island',

'Bringing Out the Dead') are about as frequent as the hits ('The Departed', 'Hugo'). My view is that WOLF is more of a hit than a miss. It's almost impossible to maintain a story's initial tension and pace for the entire three hour running time, but Scorsese does better than many other directors would, and while the momentum does start to flag in the second half (reflecting the slowing pace of the characters' journey through their story arc) it never gets boring. Scorsese has certainly not lost any of his stylistic and visual creativity when it comes to telling the story, but there's a nagging sense of a lack of depth. We never really get to explore below the surface of the characters (perhaps there's nothing much to see beneath their glossy, brash drug-fueled exteriors) so what we're left with is a stylish and engaging tabloid-style black comedy expose of Wall Street excess. Is that enough to get Scorsese a best director nomination? I don't know. The achievement is certainly more impressive than many other directors could achieve on their best day.
I do think Leonardo DiCaprio's performance in the title role deserves serious consideration for a Best Actor nod. He really is impressive as hyper-active, hyper-amoral, hyper-greedy stockbroker Jordan Belfort, a young man with boundless talent and appetites and little concept of boundaries. DiCaprio's real-life (though not necessarily true) image as a playboy and ladies man works perfectly for him, bolstering his credibility as Belfort, while allowing him to build on it and take it places the actor has never been accused of going in real life. It's a very engaging, enjoyable and - most importantly - committed performance which I believe deserves recognition by Academy voters.
Anyone who's watched the Academy Awards over the years knows that who wins what is often more about rewarding the righteous than rewarding the best, so I'm conscious that what I've written here may bear little reality to what happens on January 16, and I'm also aware that there's plenty of other films likely to be in the running that I've not have time to get to yet. I will try my best to rectify that before March 2!