A SINGLE MAN: a visually striking and beautifully played drama of loss

It's no coincidence that every scene in A SINGLE MAN evokes those sumptuously staged and photographed ads for designer brand clothing and perfumes which proliferate in up-market magazines like Vanity Fair.

The film's writer-producer-director Tom Ford made his name as a fashion designer - most famously with Gucci - before taking an ambitious jump into moviemaking last year, and bringing with him a talent for creating striking visual images.
Beautiful is the word that comes closest to adequately describing not only his recreation of 1962 suburban Los Angeles but also the characters who inhabit it, and in particularly Colin Firth as George Falconer, an English professor struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of his long term partner, Jim, in a car crash. 
Ford plays with light and colour, alternating both from one scene to the next to reflect George's emotions and state of mind as he goes about his daily routine and daydreams about happier times with Jim. His memories of a passionate past are flooded with vivid reds and yellows which stand in stark contrast to the dark browns and washed out skin tones of his solitary present. This colour-coded signalling of love and loneliness reaches a not-so-subtle climax when George finds himself unexpectedly seduced by one of his students. In their early scenes together the young man radiates rich golden hues while his teacher appears almost ghostly. Although Ford probably makes a little too much use of this technique it never quite reaches the point of annoyance.
But what makes A SINGLE MAN so much more than simply one hundred minutes of glossy and extremely appealing eye candy is Colin Firth. He garnered a richly deserved Oscar nomination for his magnificent portrayal of a buttoned down, middle-aged, meticulously correct Englishman abroad whose well ordered life has lost all meaning with the death of his lover. 

Firth's familiar screen persona as a rather stiff and terribly English gentleman whose very formal exterior conceals a passionate heart works well for him here, playing a man who hides his sexuality in plain sight from a disapproving society. George makes several loaded references to the persecuted minorities in our midst while teaching his literature class, and it's no coincidence that he and Jim have designed a house for themselves filled with glass walls. It's not particularly subtle but it is effective.  
Watching A SINGLE MAN I was reminded of Sophia Coppola's feature-length directorial debut with "The Virgin Suicides." Both films display a very unique and engaging style of storytelling, and create an impression which lingers long after the final credits have rolled. Coppola's subsequent films have confirmed she really is a talented and original filmmaker. It'll be interesting to see whether Tom Ford can do the same.  

THE BIG NIGHT: a big name in need of a big talent

Choosing to go into acting with a name like John Barrymore jr is just asking for trouble, especially when you decide to jump into leading roles without first taking the time to learn your craft.
But that's what the 18 year old son and namesake of the legendary Broadway and Hollywood star chose to do in 1950 and, by all reports, he made a considerable hash it.

But by the time he came to make his fourth film, THE BIG NIGHT in 1951, he had developed at least a rudimentary understanding of the basics of acting although he still wasn't anywhere close to being bona fide leading man material. Luckily for him the film's production values are so low that they help mask his inadequacies. 

As a teenage boy who comes of age on the night he witnesses his father being beaten and humiliated by a local gangster, he certainly looks the part (even down to the acne) but he struggles to convincingly convey the appropriate emotions.
His preferred approach is to do everything at half speed or less. Barrymore jr acts in slow motion with every gaze held for several moments too long and every reaction played out as if in a drug-induced haze. It's as if he were acting out the story for a series of still photographs rather than a movie.
What's surprising is that director Joseph Losey settled for so little from his leading man. By 1951 Losey was an established director and came to this project off the back of the superb film noir thriller "The Prowler." 
But possibly his mind was on other things. He'd recently refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was facing the prospect of an open-ended self imposed exile in Europe. Perhaps, given these circumstances, he was just happy to be able to work and was willing to overlook the cheap sets, inadequate acting and thin storyline.
In the 53 years that were left to him Barrymore jr never succeeded in living up to his father's illustrious reputation as an actor. Sadly he had much more success in emulating John Sr's tumultuous off-screen life, and today if he's remembered at all, it's as the father of Drew Barrymore. THE BIG NIGHT  does nothing to change that legacy.

BACKGROUND TO DANGER: of all the films in all the world they chose to rip-off "Casablanca."

First released in July 1943, BACKGROUND TO DANGER was a calculated - and some might say cynical - attempt by Warner Bros to replicate the enormous box office success of "Casablanca"a few months earlier.
Beyond a shift in locale from Vichy ruled French Morocco to officially neutral Turkey the studio made very little attempt to disguise the origins of this tale of wartime espionage, intrigue and betrayal. Both films open with the same studio voice intoning over a map of the action, and close with a plane, carrying some of the main characters, taking off for further adventures in support of the fight for freedom. And inbetween, "Casablanca" cast members Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre return in characteristically malevolent roles, supporting an American hero,  the exotic female object of his affections and their search for vital missing documents.
Unfortunately, where "Casablanca" had Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in those key roles, BACKGROUND TO DANGER is stuck with George Raft and Brenda Marshall. Raft was not as wooden as he's sometimes made out to be but his emotional range was limited. Whether he's being smacked about by Nazi thugs or making nice with a young lady, his expression and delivery are exactly the same. In his defence, Brenda Russell, as a Russian agent who may or may not be in the pay of the Nazis, exudes all the seductive charm you'd expect from a woman named Brenda so there's really not much incentive for Raft to change his expression.

But beyond the complete lack of chemistry between two deeply uncharismatic leading actors there's also the story which is rushed and hopelessly muddled. Even with the characters pausing frequently to deliver large blocks of expositional dialogue I still lost track of what everyone was worked up about and shortly afterwards stopped caring.
Greenstreet's bizarrely named Nazi heavy Colonel Robinson is nothing more than a retread of his Casper Gutman from "The Maltese Falcon" with a faint German accent and a pencil moustache. Director Raoul Walsh even replicates the shot-from-below-looking-up camera angles used by John Huston in that film to emphasise Greenstreet's girth.  
It's possible also to detect traces of the "Falcon's" Joel Cairo in Lorre's character, but the overwhelming sensation is of an actor who's bored and frustrated with a badly written part.
Even disregarding the inevitable comparisons to "Casablanca" there's enough rope here for BACKGROUND TO DANGER to hang itself with.Ill-advised and poorly executed, the film richly deserves its anonymity.

A TOUCH OF CLASS: is what this film needs

It's difficult to understand what motivated the Academy to award Glenda Jackson the 1974 best actress Oscar for her performance in A TOUCH OF CLASS.

Neither she nor co-star George Segal cover themselves in glory in this tedious, contrived, heavy handed rom-com which plays like an extended episode of a bad 1970s tv sitcom. 
The title is an ironic reference, to Segal's character, a married man living in London who embarks on an affair with Jackson's recently divorced mother of two kids. But it could also stand as description of what writer-producer-director Melvin Frank hoped Jackson would bring to the project. 
It's not an unreasonable expectation given her best actress Oscar for "Women in Love" in 1971 and her nomination in the same category the following year for the superb "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
She's undoubtedly a class act but what this film really needs is a touch of style and sophistication.

THE GHOST WRITER: masterful suspense from a masterful director

It's been a while since a film gave me chills but I got them all over and more than once while watching THE GHOST WRITER. What caused them wasn't a creepy old house, or a hideously deformed psycho-killer looming out of the dark, or a sudden hand on the shoulder of the protagonist when we thought they were alone, or any of those other hoary old tricks employed to make us jump in our seat.
It was the sense of overwhelming fear which suddenly engulfed me when the unexpected discovery of a piece of information by the main character made both of us realise that his life was in immediate and serious danger. This is genuine suspense. It doesn't rely on a jarring blast of music or jump cut editing; it arises organically out of the unfolding story.

In the hands of veteran (and to some people - legendary) director Roman Polanski, the story which unfolds in THE GHOST WRITER is utterly absorbing and totally gripping. Ewan McGregor stars as a writer (known only as "The Ghost") who finds himself in way over his head when he agrees to take on the ghost writing of the memoirs of recently retired British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). Within days of joining Lang at his borrowed, bunker-like estate on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts,  the former PM is accused of war crimes in connection with the rendition of 4 suspected Muslim terrorists, and the writer uncovers evidence which suggests that Lang has something in his past that he wants to keep hidden.
It may just be coincidence that a charismatic director living in exile from his adopted homeland and unable to travel freely for fear of arrest and extradition to the USA to face controversial sex crime charges has chosen to make a story about a charismatic politician who finds himself unable to return home for fear of arrest, but it's difficult to resist making comparisons between Lang and Polanski. Has Polanski's empathy with Lang's situation influenced his depiction of the man as a complicated character who can be perceived in many different ways by different people?
It's similarly difficult not to draw analogies with Tony Blair when watching Lang. The film never suggests that Lang is a stand-in for Blair, but both men are charismatic, relatively young former leaders who had an uncomfortably close (for some) relationship with the USA,  who led the United Kingdom into unpopular wars to support the American President, and who remain controversial figures even out of office.  

These convergences, whether unintentional or not, contribute to the credibility of THE GHOST WRITER as a piece of docudrama rather than just another fictional thriller. We think we know enough about the "secret" world of international political intrigue to believe that the events explored in this film are plausible, and the fact that the moments of suspense are not contrived or cliched merely adds to the sense that we're watching events that aren't too far removed from reality.
Pierce Brosnan is probably not the first actor you'd think of when casting for the British Prime Minister but he works. That, I would argue, is because we have Tony Blair as a role model. Brosnan would have been a ridiculous choice for the part if we'd only had John Major or Neil Kinnock to compare him to.
Ewan McGregor's never been one of my favourite actors but he's effective in a part which has the potential, if overplayed, to diminish the story's believability. The Ghost never resorts to superhero actions to drag himself out of dangerous situations. The only unconvincing aspect to The Ghost's character is his London accent which has a tendency to drift north towards Hadrian's Wall on occasion.
(Talking of accents, it may be significant or nothing more than coincidence that only one of the five leading actors speaks in their natural accent, but I'll say no more).
THE GHOST WRITER follows in the footsteps of two of Polanski's greatest movies - "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown" - in peeling back the covers to partially reveal a hidden, parallel present where the lust for power, control and secrecy takes precedence over individual life. 
Similarly stylish, sophisticated and spotted with moments of black humour, this is a superior piece of adult entertainment which will keep you hooked until the final frame.

ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE: a little made to go a long way

Is ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE a cult movie or just an independent film that got lucky?
The term cult movie is one that has been much used and abused, primarily because it's so elastic. The basic requirements for its' bestowal appear to be that the film has developed a small but passionate, sometimes obsessive following, despite being a commercial failure on its original release. Often it's a film that is in some way outside of the mainstream, whether through story, production values or casting, although the term has also been applied to standard Hollywood fare 
By this criteria ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE would seem to fit the bill but does it deserve the status of a cult? To me it's one of those rather quirky, slightly left field no-big-stars American films from the early 1970s (1973) that has become tagged with the descriptor "cult" for no other reason than because it is slightly quirky and vaguely counter-culture, with no big star names.

The quirky quotient is provided by Robert Blake as John Wintergreen, a vertically challenged motorcycle cop patrolling the dusty desert roads of northern Arizona who dreams of becoming a homicide detective. 
Wintergreen's a 100% by the book cop,eternally optimistic and unfailingly polite even when issuing a speeding ticket to an irate LA detective who thought he'd been let off because he's a fellow cop. His best friend, fellow motorcycle officer Zipper (Billy 'Green' Bush) is the total opposite, and it's this study in contrasts which supposedly gives the story depth. 
Why would a straight arrow cop like Wintergreen tolerate, let alone pal around with, someone so blatantly corrupt and contemptuous of the values he's paid to uphold? Maybe it's because he's quirky!
The story moves at a leisurely pace with numerous scenes that don't appear to have much point to them, and the camerawork switches from claustrophobic close-ups in the first half (where it's impossible to get a clear picture of what's going on) to long shots in the second half, suggesting perhaps an alienation from the central character.
But it's also too easy to read the languid pacing and unusual camerawork as indicators of a deeper meaning that's just waiting to be discovered if only the viewer thinks hard enough. I did think about it and I'm not convinced that there are any deeper meanings to be divined. There is however plenty of gratuitous overacting (I'm talking about you Elisha Cook jr, Jeannine Riley and Mitchell Ryan) to make the suspension of disbelief a painfully back-wrenching piece of heavy lifting.
Other than some beautiful desert landscapes I found ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE to be an empty, unsatisfying viewing experience memorable only (and not necessarily in a good way) for it's very unusual final shot.

CLASH BY NIGHT: powerhouse performances by stand-out stars

Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan in a drama directed by Fritz Lang! 
It doesn't get much better than this.
1952's CLASH BY NIGHT plays to the strengths of both stars' screen persona while also confounding our expectations.

Stanwyck is Mae Doyle, a cynical, hard-boiled middle-aged dame, selfish and embittered from life's experiences who returns to her impoverished working-class hometown and turns its' menfolk upside down.
Ryan is Earl Pfeiffer, one of those menfolk. Unhappily married to a permanently absent wife, he's similarly cynical about human nature, and irresistibly drawn to Mae. She however is fighting with fate and rejects Earl's advances, choosing instead to marry his kindhearted but weak-willed friend, Jerry D'Amato (Paul Douglas). She hopes it'll turn her into the domesticated and loyal housewife she believes she must become if she's to have any chance of finding happiness.
Earl's ardor is not to be dampened by  trifles like marriage or a baby, setting the stage for a clash of wills that is totally enthralling. Stanwyck and Ryan work magnificently together, trading barbs and looks of illicit lust without ever attempting to upstage one another. One can only imagine how much professional pleasure both experienced from working with someone so equally matched in talent and yet so completely lacking in ego. 
Their generosity extends to the rest of the cast. In many ways it's Douglas's character who is at the centre of this story because without him you've just got two unpleasant people who deserve the unhappiness they inevitably bring to their relationship. A pre-glamour superstar Marilyn Monroe works surprisingly well in the part of Peggy, a young Cannery Row worker frustrated with the limitations of her life and fully possessing the potential to become another Mae.
The odd line of overblown dialogue occasionally belies CLASH BY NIGHT's  theatrical origins (the film's based on the play by Clifford Odets) but it's to credit of veteran director Lang that these don't detract from the cinematic experience. This is very much a film, not a filmed play with a couple of outdoor scenes thrown in to open out the action.
This film is wrongly identified as film noir on several reputable movie websites that should know better. CLASH BY NIGHT is a drama and a damn fine one too. Watch it and enjoy!

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE: flashback to a time when the future was still ahead of us

For anyone who came of age in the 1980s the experience of watching HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is very similar to going back in time ourselves to that decade (were we able to).
Chances are we'd discover that our rose-tinted memories don't quite match up with the reality, leaving us with a slight sense of disappointment. 

As someone who did come of age in the 80s and associates the decade with great music, fun times, the making of friendships that have lasted to this day, and the feeling of a wide open future, I was expecting a lot from this film - probably too much.
I was hoping that it would allow me to relive - at least for 90 minutes - an era which meant so much to me on so many levels. What I got was the mildly (very mildly) pleasant experience of revisiting the 80s through the eyes of an American my age. Although I spent a fair amount of time in the USA during the 80s via vacations and an undergraduate exchange program, I didn't share the film's cultural touchstones - especially the music
The songs that we listened to in our late teens and early twenties can conjure up powerful, intangible, sensations of that time and place and, frankly, Poison doesn't do it for me. US youth's obsession with those hideous preening hair bands meant they missed out on a lot of the good stuff that us Brits were listening to.
So, instead of providing me with a portal to revisit my youth I feel like I'm tagging along on a nostalgia roadtrip organised by one of my American friends. It's less than I'd hoped, but that's ok because there's enough points of common interest that I'll still have a good time - right?  
Well, yes and no. 
I liked that the 80s references and iconography are inserted into the story more organically than, say, "The Wedding Singer" which relentlessly bombarded us with them. But perversely, this admirable restraint on the part of the film's makers left me unsatisfied. I wanted more, I wanted to be bombarded, perhaps because the more 80s stuff they threw on the screen the greater the chance was that I'd find things to identify with.
But what I was most disappointed with was the humour. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE wants desperately to be "The Hangover" but it's not because it's just not funny enough. There's plenty of appreciative smiles and the odd chuckle to be had, but it's lacking the all important laugh-out- loud moments that made "The Hangover" such a memorable cinematic experience. It's not the fault of John Cusack and his co-stars. They do their best with the material they've been given, but it's beyond their talents to make a silk purse out of this particular sow's ear. However Chevy Chase is a major disappointment. Why cast a famous comedian in a cameo and then not give him any funny lines?
The rhythm of the story also suffers from what feels like bad editing. My sense is that HOT TUB TIME MACHINE was originally a longer film that's been cut down, possibly in the interests of length or pacing. Whatever the reason it's resulted in some uncomfortable and awkward cuts in the flow of the storytelling. I strongly suspect that there's a longer 'director's cut' waiting to be released on dvd.
Not as bad as it might have been but certainly nowhere near as good as it could have been, I'm still waiting for the definitive cinematic trip back to the most important decade of my life. 
 

WHAT A WAY TO GO! What a Crock!

WHAT A WAY TO GO! ranks as one of the great unsung bad blockbusters in Hollywood history. This is a truly terrible film on so many levels, from the bunch of big name stars with no talent for comedy to the lazily constructed sets, the terrible lighting, the downright dreary story, and the total lack of style.
This is a certified solid gold fiasco.

Shirley MacLaine is the glue holding this stodgy 1964 concoction together as Louisa May Foster, a small town girl with the King Midas touch.  Every man she falls in love with becomes incredibly successful and even more incredibly wealthy before dropping dead, leaving the distraught Louisa May an incredibly wealthy but unhappy widow.
This premise plays out no less than four times, each one less amusing and more drawn out than the one before. Quite how J Lee Thompson can justify his screen credit as director is beyond me given the ragbag collection of performances he elicits from his stars. Far from being directed they all appear to have been left to their own devices. MacLaine shrieks and wails her way through most of the story, Paul Newman mistakes overacting for comedy, Robert Mitchum sleepwalks through his part, while Dean Martin plays his character like a Las Vegas parody of Dean Martin on stage at The Sands. Gene Kelly is the only one who emerges with any shred of decency thanks to a song and dance number which bears faint traces of his great routines from his 40s and 50s musicals.
Interminable, leaden, misguided and just plain painful to watch, WHAT A WAY TO GO! is a masterclass in how to squander talent and twenty million dollars and produce a polished turd.

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES: a booze soaked descent into hell

There would appear to be one major implausibility in the premise  for DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES - the very idea that the beautiful, utterly adorable Lee Remick would be single, unattached and strangely attracted to a working stiff like Jack Lemmon. It just doesn't ring true, at least not on paper. 
But in the film it works.
Remick and Lemmon make an odd, but believable couple and that's entirely due to their talents as actors. Lemmon's Joe Clay may be nervy and a little twitchy but he's relentless - in a goofy kind of way - in his pursuit of Remick's Kirsten Arnesen, and he succeeds in cracking her rather icy demeanor. He also persuades her to abandon her life-long teetotalism and join him in his drinking habit which fast becomes an addiction for both of them, hurtling them into a downward spiral of alcoholism.
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is a brutal examination of how alcoholism destroys lives. Joe and Kirsten slide from heavy social drinking into addiction without realising what they're doing to themselves. Their descent from successful middle-class professionals to pathetic bums willing to steal, lie and cheat to get their next drink is truly disturbing. Lemmon in particular holds nothing back in portraying the agony and helplessness of a man in the grip of a demon which has reduced him to the state of a howling animal. 

Both he and Remick were Oscar nominated for their performances and he was unlucky not to win. 1963 was a tough year in the Best Actor category; Lemmon was competing against the stars of "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Birdman of Alcatraz" and it was Gregory Peck whose name was on the card when the envelope was opened.
If there's a criticism to be made it's that DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES resembles a recruiting film for Alcoholics Anonymous at times, particularly when Jack Klugman makes his entrance as Joe's AA sponsor, talking like he's an audiobook version of the AA handbook.
It's tempting to say they don't make films like this anymore, but they do. They difference is that Lemmon and Remick and director Blake Edwards succeeded in telling an engaging, disturbing,  powerful and very adult tale of despair and moral disintegration without resorting to violence, nudity or profanity.
Now that kind of film they don't make anymore.