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!

AIRPORT 79 THE CONCORDE: a decade-long franchise crashes and burns

No guns are ever shown and the word is never spoken but there's definitely a hijacking taking place in AIRPORT 79 THE CONCORDE.
And this act of air piracy is committed by a most unlikely character.
Joe Patroni had served this 70s disaster franchise faithfully since it's original departure in 1970 with

the star-studded 'Airport.' As played by George Kennedy, Patroni was the only original character to re-appear in the subsequent three installments, although by 'Airport 77' he had been reduced to little more than a walk-on for old times' sake.
So when producer Jennings Lang came knocking at Mr Kennedy's door asking him to reprise Patroni for a fourth time in AIRPORT 79 THE CONCORDE I get the impression that old George played hardball. I've no documentary evidence to back-up this assertion, but Patroni's part is so grotesquely enlarged compared to his role in the previous 3 films that it just makes sense that Kennedy demanded and got a whole lot more airtime in return for chomping down on that soggy cigar for a fourth time.
He hijacked the story.
And, like most hijackings, it's not a very pleasant experience for anyone involved - fellow cast members or viewers.
Patroni was originally a subsidiary character, played by an actor whose name very properly remained below the title, especially when rubbing shoulders with stars of the calibre of Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin and Helen Hayes. In 'Airport 75' he got a boost, but still played second fiddle to Charlton Heston, Karen Black and Myrna Loy. His 'Airport 77' role was, as I've already mentioned, little more than an obligatory nod to the episodes that had come before. So it makes no sense, other than my hijacking theory, to then cast him in such a central role in what turned out to be the final 'Airport' outing 2 years later.
Patroni's aviation skills had always been tied to the Boeing aircraft company. He was never explicitly described as a Boeing employee but his intimate knowledge of the inner workings and handling characteristics of the 707 ('Airport') and 747 ('Airport 75' and 'Airport 77') had been essential in averting disaster. Suddenly in 1979 he's promoted to Captain and fully qualified to pilot the supersonic Concorde, which was a joint venture by British and French aerospace companies.
So now he's front and centre of the airborne action that unfolds as the Concorde comes under attack from a sophisticated missile launched by a rich and unscrupulous arms dealer who's determined to destroy some incriminating evidence in the possession of one of the passengers. And - by George! - if

Patroni is not more than equal to the task of swerving Concorde through the skies like a jet fighter while shouting out the handling characteristics of the pursuing missile (which he's successfully identified while traveling in excess of Mach 1 with the missile positioned behind the plane) to his bemused co-pilot, Alain Delon, who clearly thought he was the star of this film.
But fighter pilot heroics are not enough for Patroni. He also wants the lions' share of the action on the ground, and that means the infliction of some disturbingly inappropriate scenes with Kennedy making love to a high class Parisian hooker on a bearskin in front of a roaring fire. Once again, Delon can only look on helplessly as his own romance with a resolutely clothed Sylvia Kristel (the original 'Emmanuelle') is effectively extinguished by the competition.
The insistence on putting Patroni at the forefront of the action merely serves to highlight how far the franchise had fallen by 1979. Kennedy was not leading man material and Patroni is a coarse and unlikeable character. But he's not the only element weighing down proceedings. Sure, it's got the sleek and sexy Concorde, but the ridiculous plot, comic book characters, inane dialogue, half-assed special effects, B/C-list cast, even the font used in the opening titles, all contribute to the sense of a shoddily-constructed tv movie trying unsuccessfully to punch above its weight.

ICE FOLLIES OF 1939: frozen in horror

Good God! What were they thinking?
And, more pertinently, was anybody actually thinking?
It's almost beyond belief that the Hollywood studio renowned for its taste and style and lustrous reputation could countenance the creation of such of cinematic monstrosity. 
But that is exactly what MGM did in 1939 and, more than 70 years later ICE FOLLIES OF 1939 still stinks worse than a cow that's been lying dead in the African sun for three days.
The film is so bad my first thought was that its stars, Joan Crawford and James Stewart, had been forced to appear in it as punishment for some offence they must have caused to MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer. The story is so stupid, so cliche-riddled and generally implausible that it seems equally implausible that a huge star like Crawford would voluntarily agree to demean herself by appearing in such tripe. Stewart was still on his way up so I can understand he probably had little choice but to do what he was told, and co-star Lew Ayres was on the slide so he too had little choice in the matter. A job is a job and "we all like to work" as Timothy Dalton once snippily told me after I had the effrontery to asked him what had induced him to play the love interest to an 87 year-old Mae West in 'Sextette.'
The plot for ICE FOLLIES could have been constructed by a 10 year-old who'd overdosed on Norma Shearer movies. Stewart and Crawford are Larry and Mary, an ice-skating couple performing dance-routines on ice-rinks during intermissions in shows. What kind of shows is never indicated, but since an ice rink is not the kind of thing you can set up and tear down in 5 minutes, presumably these are ice skating shows, which begs the question why aren't Larry and Mary appearing in the main show especially since he is described at one point as 'Gable on ice' ?
Anyway business ain't so good and by a contrived set of circumstances and the most ridiculously unlikely audition ever Mary becomes a film star in the space of a month leaving Larry at home to fret and feel emasculated. Unable to cope with the notion of his wife as the breadwinner he vows not to see her again until he's made a success of himself which - surprise surprise - he succeeds in doing within the space of a couple of months with his own Ice Follies spectacular.
At this point the hackneyed plot grinds to a halt to allow director Reinhold Schunzel to present several lengthy ice-dancing routines shot in an impressively unimaginative style and completely devoid of audience reaction even though it's a live show. The absence of gasps of admiration or even a ripple of light applause makes more sense once you realise that the bulk of the audience have actually been very inexpertly painted onto the scenery in an effort to save money on live extras.
But all this is only the half of the awfulness.
The real kicker is that neither Stewart, Ayres nor Crawford actually skate at any point in the film.

This is a story about three professional ice-skaters - one of whom, don't forget, is acclaimed as 'Gable on ice' - yet none of them ever sets a skate on the ice! For all the talk about Stewart and Ayres' brilliance as a team (before Stewart was sidetracked by Crawford) they never once perform in the Follies, even though the show is founded on their reputation. Stewart spends all his time barking directions from the control box, while Ayres is perpetually in the process of getting into his costume without ever quite finishing getting dressed.
It's just rubbish.
The one small glimmer of light is the final 10 - 15 minutes of the film which is shot in sumptuous Technicolor and gave audiences the first chance to see Crawford in colour. However the novelty is not enough to sustain interest in the sequence which features yet more ice-skating routines, this time in a film directed by Larry and starring his wife.
MGM may have displayed stunningly poor judgment in greenlighting ICE FOLLIES OF 1939 but at they were consistent. They maintained the same high level of implausibility all the way through to the bitter, boring end.

SNAKES ON A PLANE: silly fun

Imagine “Anaconda” meets “Airport 75” with Samuel L. Jackson and “ER’s” Julianna Marguiles replacing the cast of old time movie stars and you’ll have a good idea what to expect from SNAKES ON A PLANE.

This is a product that does exactly what it says on the tin - “it is what it is” says director David Ellis on the DVD commentary track. The story opens in Hawaii with surfer dude Sean Jones, played by Nathan Phillips, witnessing the murder of an LA based prosecutor by notorious gang boss Eddie Kim. Jackson is Neville Flynn, the FBI agent tasked with getting Jones safely back to Los Angeles aboard South Pacific Airways flight 121 so he can testify against Kim. But Kim has an ingenious plan to prevent that happening. He fills the hold of the jumbo jet with boxes of poisonous snakes. The boxes will open at thirty five thousand feet, filling the plane with angry snakes that will kill everyone on board, leaving the plane to crash into the Pacific. The only thing Kim hasn’t factored into his plan is Agent Flynn.

Even if you didn’t catch this movie at the cinema (and many didn’t) the plot may well sound familiar, and that’s because SNAKES ON A PLANE became an internet phenomenon which generated an enormous amount of media hype months before it ever hit the big screen.

The silly but simple concept hit a nerve with movie geeks, and spawned a myriad of websites dedicated to production gossip, parodies, tributes, and even suggestions for scenes and dialogue that should be included in the script. Rather than sending in the lawyers to close down all the unauthorised activity, the film’s producers recognised the value of this free, fan generated publicity and encouraged it, even reshooting certain scenes to incorporate some of the fans’ ideas. All this was picked up by the mainstream media and reported on extensively, so by the time of the film’s release in the summer of 2006 expectations were so high that they really had nowhere to go but down, and that’s exactly where they went. The film did just average box office business, and now it resides in the memory as a passing fad if – indeed - it resides there at all.

It’s not difficult to work out why the film fell below expectations. It wants to be a combination of airborne terror, horror, thrills and campy comedy, but lacks the imagination to make the mix work. The writers and director have filled the plane with the sort of stock characters that aficionados of mid air disaster movies have come to expect (single mom with baby, honeymooning couple, unaccompanied minors, old woman, stewardess making her final flight etc), but forgotten to give them anything interesting to do. It’s a sad commentary on the quality of contemporary pop culture that the only two passengers with any kind of depth to their character are a Paris Hilton-like airhead blonde with a miniature dog, and an egotistical hip hop star who might possibly be modelled on P.Diddy.

Ranking the odds of survival for each of the passengers is one of the fun aspects of watching this

film. Even before they’ve fastened their seatbelt it’s not too difficult to identify those likely to make it to the end of the film, and those who are shortly going to become snake food, but what would have made it more entertaining is to have done something a little different with them. Why not confound our expectations and feed the cute kid to the snakes while making the obnoxious businessman the only passenger who can fly the plane? And it would have been great to have included a cameo appearance from one of the stars of previous midair disaster movies - maybe Peter Graves from “Airplane!” or George Kennedy, the only actor to appear in all 4 “Airport” movies.

If it wasn’t a lack of imagination then perhaps the reason why these options weren’t explored is that they would have detracted from Samuel L.Jackson. This is his film and he’s not going to compete for attention with anyone or anything else, even the snakes. Jackson makes his passion for the project very clear on the DVD commentary track, describing it as “entertainment and movie making at its best!”, but that enthusiasm doesn’t translate into a particularly impressive performance. His kick-ass FBI Agent Flynn comes across as a watered down cartoon retread of John Shaft.

There’s also another way to look at this film, and it’s summed up by director David Ellis. He says that SNAKES ON A PLANE “never pretended to be anything but a great fun summer movie” and he’s right, at least about the fun part. This is not highbrow art house cinema; it’s ninety-nine minutes of silly, gory, violent and sometimes smutty nonsense that will make you laugh and make you jump.

THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY: a masterclass in a minor movie

This 1952 crime drama is worth reviewing for the title alone, but there's actually a lot more to it than just the quirky name. In particular there's the entrancing performance from Claude Rains, demonstrating once again his impressive range as an actor.
Assets though they undoubtedly were, his face and his voice could easily have typecast him as a

suave, sophisticated, slightly world weary middle-class man of reasonable means and, indeed, his enduring fame rests almost entirely on playing just such a character, Vichy Police Chief Captain Louis Renault in 'Casablanca', but he could also subvert those expectations on occasion, and one of them is THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY.
He plays Kees Popinga, the meek and fastidious head clerk at a small manufacturing company in Holland whose entire identity is tied up in the meticulous books he's kept for the past 18 years. Kees is solid, dependable and dull; a man who's a spectator not a participant in his own life. But he harbors secret dreams of breaking free from the strictures of small town life and boarding one of the trans-European trains which hurtle through his town every day heading for exotic destinations like Paris.
Then one day his chance comes most unexpectedly when he discovers his boss has been looting the company, leaving it teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and wiping out Kees' life savings. During an angry confrontation Kees apparently kills his boss and makes off for Paris by train, clutching a suitcase stuffed with money.
Once in the French capital, Kees stands out like the proverbial sore thumb, with his small-town dress sense, wide-eyed wonder, and the tatty suitcase that he clutches to his chest, but he manages to track down his boss's mistress, Michele (a gorgeously sultry Marta Toren) with the ill-thought-out idea that he can use the money to persuade her to run away with him.
Despite that debonair voice and face, Rains is never less than convincing as the timid, mouse-like, imitation of a man behind whose bland exterior lurks an ill-formed calculating mind. Kees knows he's an innocent abroad, who must constantly be on his guard against those who will take advantage of

him, even as he's helplessly drawn to Michele and her ruthless accomplices who will stop at nothing to separate Kees from his money. Toren is equally impressive as the down-market femme fatale whose drop-dead gorgeous face and flawless skin conceal a corrupted and completely amoral soul.
The film's beautifully deep and lush colour only heightens Michele's beauty, contrasting her dark hair and eyes with her creamy skin and Kees grey, washed-out look.
The film itself is nothing special, despite a script by Paul Jarrico based on the original novel by the great French writer Georges Simenon. It's Rains, in a rare leading role, that makes THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY well worth the investment of 80 minutes of your time.

THE ILLUSIONIST: Seeing is believing - or is it?

THE ILLUSIONIST will have you doubting the evidence of your own eyes. Only too late will you realise that nothing is what it seems to be; that no one is to be trusted, and everything must be questioned.

This is a film that requires a second viewing to really get to grips with the story. The first time around you’ll find yourself to be little more than a passenger on a brightly coloured ride that is entrancing and engaging but moving so quickly that it gives no time to properly absorb all that you are seeing.

Set in Vienna in the late 1800s, the film stars Edward Norton as Eisenheim the Illusionist. He is the David Copperfield of his day, and his stage show is the hottest ticket in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He can make a human soul appear, he can separate a person from their reflection in the mirror, and he can grow an orange tree from a pip in seconds flat. To call them mere magic tricks is to grossly belittle his talent.

These breathtaking illusions attract the attention of Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), heir to the throne and engaged to be married to Sophie, the Duchess von Teschen, played by a cast against type Jessica Biel. She just happens to be Eisenheim’s long lost childhood sweetheart, and they resume their romance, unaware that they are being spied on by Chief Inspector Walter Uhl (Paul Giamatti).

He reports everything he sees to the Crown Prince. Leopold is a man used to getting what he wants and orders the Chief Inspector to destroy Eisenheim. But Uhl wavers in the task, torn between his duty to his political patron and his fascination for Eisenheim’s illusions. A battle of wills develops between the three men which leads to murder and a shocking revenge.

THE ILLUSIONIST is a beautiful looking film. Every frame is infused with a golden glow, giving it the feel of one of those big budget hand-tinted silent movie spectaculars that Hollywood used to turn out in the 1920s. This glow washes over the wonderfully preserved buildings and streets of Prague (standing in for 1890s Vienna) to give the story an impressively authentic feel.

The beauty of the visuals is complemented by an understated yet classy music soundtrack, written by renowned composer Philip Glass.

This film’s other two big plus points are its stars. Edward Norton is the Robert de Niro of his

generation. He is a similarly chameleon-like actor, immersing himself completely in the part of Eisenheim, while Giamatti is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s most talented character stars. This is certainly not the best film either of them has ever appeared in, but it is a much better movie because of their presence in it.

THE ILLUSIONIST has a lot going for it but, unfortunately, the sum of the parts does not add up to a satisfying whole. While the ambiguity in the story is acceptable – are we really seeing what we think we are seeing? – the implausibility of the plot is harder to swallow. Much of this is masked on first viewing by the speed at which the story unfolds, but even then chances are that you will be left with a faint feeling of dissatisfaction that you can’t quite put your finger on.

Ultimately, THE ILLUSIONIST’s most effective illusion is the movie itself. By lavishing so much attention on the look of the film, Director Neil Burger has created a story that appears to be more entertaining and carefully constructed than it actually is. THE ILLUSIONIST is certainly not a bad film, but if more care had been paid to the content of the story it could have been a so much more satisfying a viewing experience.