And yet more proof I'll watch Sharlto Copley do almost anything, even a money job. I am clearly impervious to learning. This witless contraption was directed and co-written by Rupert Wyatt; Erica Beeney, Gary Ross and David Self helped with the script. Over two nights as it's clearly made for the second screen.
On paper Anthony Mackie leads in this pre-apocalyptic Saudi-Arabian-funded non-MCU/non-Mad Max fiasco as a lethal bandit but actually second bean/Queen Aiysha Hart (Mogul Mowgli (2020)) is who we're supposed to focus on. She got a lot of unvarying hard-faced/unyielding closeups. For unclear reasons (things got very wonky in the middle) she managed to corral a few tribes against Emperor Ben Kingsley's huge army led by Copley, both of whom play humourless heels. Things proceed as they must to the point of near fatal boredom. The music is very obtrusive.
Glenn Kenny saw more success than I did. Inevitably not Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Wikipedia.
I liked what director David Mackenzie tried to do with Relay (2024) but once again the script (this time by Ben Hopkins) let the show down. The cast was good enough to deliver whatever was intended: Aaron Taylor-Johnson led, Theo James does OK as a nervy South African, Sam Worthington brought the operational chops (maybe).
There's a bit too much going on on a beaut high-summer day on the streets of London: a large World War II UXO is uncovered at a worksite and the resolution requires the "don't be shit" British Army to coordinate with the Metropolitan Police. So far so The Bill but of course this is just prologue to a heist-with-twists which seems to be lifted straight from the 1980s: from a generator to power the tools/plot (why not jack someone's house battery or electric vehicle?) to the counters in the money transfer apps. The holey plot is competently realised but the totality is nowhere close to Thief (1981).
The ending left no ambiguity about where the creators' sympathy lies.
Glenn Kenny: three-and-a-half unfathomable stars at Roger Ebert's venue. Jeannette Catsoulis. "Amiably daffy", "programmatic, its characters bland cogs in a Rube Goldberg machine."
A Bérénice Bejo jag from The Past (2013). Written and directed by her husband Michel Hazanavicius who won an Oscar for the direction. Also Oscared as best picture. The novelty is that it's mostly silent.
A simplified Sunset Boulevard (1950): talkies killed the silent-movie star but the star-is-born actress brought him back. Much of the time Hazanavicius did not seem to know how to drive the story forward or provide enough wildly inventive scenes (somewhat like Sound of Metal (2019)). Jean Dujardin (Oscared, the first Frenchman) disappeared into the lead role: he embodied the looks, self-regard and expressiveness of golden-era Hollywood. The dogs can act. Bejo (Oscar-nommed) is far better here: she does unmitigated joy a lot better than complex emotions. John Goodman is fine but his character (a producer/studio head) is a cliche, as is James Cromwell's devoted manservant/butler. I found it less engaging than it should have been; it's more effective in showing what the American movie industry could do than being great in itself.
Universally feted. Roger Ebert: four stars. Singin' in the Rain (1952). Dana Stevens: "essentially a novelty item." Genteel alcoholism. The "plot is a deliberately unoriginal backstage melodrama." "[D]rags a bit in the last third."
Idle curiosity about what Javier Bardem did earlier in his career and a vague memory of the title from the 1990s. Brother Carlos Bardem played his cousin. Both are so young. For reasons unknown Rosie Perez starred; this is a big climb down from White Men Can't Jump (1992). Also James Gandolfini as a DEA agent and Don Stroud. So no excuses really.
This is some sort of offshoot of Wild at Heart (1990), an expansion of Isabella Rossellini's character. The plot is nonsensical (all summaries sound ridiculous): voodoo, rape, murder, bank robberies, foetuses for skin cream. Much of the production is barely B grade. Álex de la Iglesia co-wrote and directed; Jorge Guerricaechevarría and David Trueba also helped Barry Gifford adapt his novel for the screen.
Apparently none of the usual venues reviewed it at the time. Catherine Texier on the source material. References Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz (1954).
A jag from Ice Cold in Alex (1958) via director J. Lee Thompson and Anthony Quayle. Also for Anthony Quinn who has some fun in a minor role as a Greek Cretan who cannot say no to Irene Papas (his co-star in Zorba the Greek (1964), Z (1969)). Carl Foreman (High Noon (1952), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)) adapted Alistair MacLean's novel.
Expert mountain-climber Gregory Peck ended up leading a small band of British Army irregulars in an assault on, well, the fictional guns of Navarone during World War II. David Niven went along as an explosives expert, Quinn as an indestructible one-man army, Papas as the daughter of the local rebel who leads them across the Aegean island. James Robertson Justice brought the tonsils to the introductory framing, Allan Cuthbertson some plummy what-ho. Richard Harris has a cameo as an Australian pilot; his accent was middling. Lengthy and things go as they must. Nobody is particularly age appropriate except perhaps the ladies (Papas and Gia Scala).
Bosley Crowther. A band of boring heroic stereotypes. IMDB trivia: the mountain-climbing bit was totally faked. Harrison Ford starred in the sequel Force 10 from Navarone (1978).
Sometimes I get a bit curious about what Guy Ritchie has been doing but usually the reviews scare me off. This one is even less fun than Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre (2023). I wish he'd spent a bit more money/time/neurology on researching the business and legal stuff as what he served up is pure gibberish. The plot is nonsensical as his analysis of the interests and leverage of the various parties is fallacious. The first hour is pure exposition, and a lot of that is about logistics; the movie proper doesn't really get started until the last thirty minutes. (I think the idea is that we're supposed to enjoy Eiza González as a clothes horse / girlboss alongside the witless banter between male models/Arnies Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal.) It struck me that he could've just made a making-of or documented the day-to-day lives of his producers and financiers.
The one thing that made me pay some attention was a scene where Rosamund Pike tells the boys "you do the dancing, I'll do the thinking" — which, to complete the Samuel Beckett reference, is the natural order. Unfortunately her part is totally irrelevant, as is Carlos Bardem's.
Glenn Kenny at the New York Times: just winnowing the herd of less good-looking guys. The A-Team (2010): and wasn't I just wishing that Copley would phone in from somewhere.
And yet more Alejandro G. Iñárritu completism. He co-wrote and directed. Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone helped with the writing. The trio were more successful with Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014).
Lengthy. This one wasn't for me. Javier Bardem led as a bloke in Barcelona who gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. He has two kids with his bipolar wife Maricel Álvarez who he is semi-separated from. He makes his money from various immigration-related arbitrages, specifically via a Chinese labour arrangement and by paying off the cops for a group of Senegalese street sellers. Almost all of it goes predictably and predictably wrong. Many of the secondary characters are more intriguing than the central focus but lack depth and development. There's a supernatural element that seemed tacked on.
Perhaps it functions as a time capsule for Barcelona.
Roger Ebert: three stars and a shrug. Dana Stevens: "This forced march through a chamber of personal and sociological horrors is difficult to endure but easy to forget."
Tahar Rahim completism with very diminished returns. Directed by Kevin Macdonald (Last King of Scotland (2006), State of Play (2009)) from a screenplay that Michael Bronner, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani derived from protagonist Mohamedou Ould Slahi's book Guantánamo Diary (2015).
"The Mauritanian" Slahi (Rahim) got caught up in the post-9/11 dragnet and ends up at Guantánamo. No-character players, lawyers Jodie Foster and flirty, credulous Shailene Woodley (Ferrari (2023)), took up his case. Benedict Cumberbatch played Stuart Couch, an assigned prosecutor who choked on the evidence of torture. Ultimately everyone won except the audience.
The actors did all they could; the fault is entirely in the script. I felt Rahim converged somewhat with those battered-faced sufferers Peter Mullan (Swanny) and Stephen Graham. The production seemed to be a vastly simplified, flattened and heavy-handed variant of his breakout A Prophet (2009) and perhaps he is destined to have his first role be his best.
It seems archaic to revisiting these topics in 2021, especially as we don't learn much from the torture/enhanced interrogation scenes and coarsely sketched religious bits. It was news to me that Michael Mori was not the only military lawyer to take a conscientious stand but that mostly shows I didn't think about it too hard. I did enjoy the "Do Not Harm the Iguanas — Penalty $10,000" sign.
Jeannette Catsoulis. Two stars from Brian Tallerico at Roger Ebert's venue: never "more challenging or interesting than a superficial, manipulative accounting of true events." The cinematography is sometimes effective. The real-doco outro over the credits is superior as it so often is. Dehumanising.
Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice (2020)). For Mads Mikkelsen.
Nikolaj Lie Kaas (The Kingdom (2022)) goes down for a bank robbery and is released a decade-and-a-half later. Brother Mikkelsen, missing or perhaps possessing a few extra mental screws, was charged with hiding the loot but now wants to present as John Lennon. Much forced humour ensues, interspersed with cliched, repressed childhood trauma in a stock, tired format. Strangely the violence against women (Sofie Gråbøl and Bodil Jørgensen) is served up cold. Søren Malling (A Hijacking (2012)) gets lumped with the straight dipso role. The framing cartoon story is better than what it bracketed. The soundtrack is ridiculously obtrusive.
Calum Marsh at the New York Times: indeed Mikkelsen may have delivered a career-best performance but the movie is a long way from the best he's been in.
For reasons I did not totally grasp Captain John Mills (Hobson's Choice (1954), Oscared for Ryan's Daughter (1971), The Big Sleep (1978), etc.) and Mechanist Sergeant-Major Harry Andrews had to drive "Katy" the ambulance with two nurses (Sylvia Syms and Diane Clare) from Tobruk to Alexandria as the Germans closed in for another round of siege-laying during World War II. Along the way they picked up Afrikaner Captain Anthony Quayle for frisson. Things got a bit The Wages of Fear (1953) but nowhere as engrossing. Directed by J. Lee Thompson from a screenplay T.J. Morrison helped Christopher Landon derive from the latter's novel.
A cinematic take on Greek-Armenian/Russian mystic Gurdjieff's (unreliable) autobiography of the same name. Adapted by chief disciple/gatekeeper Jeanne de Salzmann with director Peter Brook. There's some good material, like the ceremony shot in Afghanistan that opens proceedings, but it's poorly assembled. Prompted by having bought a copy of The Moon of Hoa Binh (1994) from New Age/explorer providors Bennett Books in 2015. Also some Terence Stamp completism: he plays Russian Prince Lubovedsky with solemn leaden gravitas. Dragan Maksimovic leads as Gurdjieff. The soundtrack is intriguing.
As always with these things it's hard to get too excited by the gnomic mysticism on show; it's unclear what was sought, what was found and what was confected. As near as we get to a philosophy is generic transcendentalism alloyed with some received wisdom about bodily movement from the possibly-existing Sarmoung Brotherhood of Sufis. (These guys are supposed to reside in Kafiristan, the same setting as Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King (1975).) But surely the journey is the point, the intriguing esotericism merely the vehicle; conspiracy theories from a more spiritually-expansive time. Notionally there's some science in there but I did not recognise any; perhaps someone meant the enneagram and associated numerology.
I won't attempt to read the source book (Goodreads) but I strongly suspect that T. E. Lawrence's roughly contemporaneous autobiography (~1922) has more worthwhile things to say. The supplemental literature (abidingly written!) appears to be similarly opaque and often plays like soap opera and yak shaving.
Janet Maslin: Brook has no interest in continuity. Lifeless until the sacred dances towards the end. (I get the impression that learning these movements is pay-to-play.) Wikipedia. The young Gurdjieff (Mikica Dimitrijevic) does radiate that spiritual thirst but it's so hard now to discern it from the omnipresent existential angst.
A Tahar Rahim jag from A Prophet (2009). Written and directed by Asghar Farhadi who was responsible for the widely feted A Separation (2011) which I never got around to seeing and won't now.
A kitchen-sink soap opera set amongst the Iranian community in Paris. Ali Mosaffa returns from Tehran after four years at the request of separated (notionally French?) wife Bérénice Bejo who is shacking up with dry-cleaning Rahim and wants to formalise a divorce. There he acts the wise man to her and him and the kids, so obviously the role of the kid strung between separating parents. Some unprocessed stuff gets partially processed. Nobody has anything else going on in life except this mess. All of the characters are more-or-less repellent for one reason or another. The histrionics are trying, especially from leading lady Bejo. Forgiveness just happens. Not enough is asked of Rahim.
The revelatory/iterative-deepening narrative strategy was trying and flawed: I did not ever understand the motivation of the elder daughter (Pauline Burlet) to sabotage her mother, and while I can't say I was paying enough attention to everything, the daughter's meeting with the dry cleaning employee (Sabrina Ouazani) for an account of a minor event that much is made of made no sense when it is later strongly implied that the very same woman gave her the email address of Rahim's wife.
There are some beautifully constructed shots but it's really all talk with a little bit of walk.
Prompted by Andy Hazel's coverage of this year's Cannes where a 4K restoration was shown. Written and directed by Ken Russell (new to me) who worked off a play that John Whiting derived from Aldous Huxley's novel The Devils of Loudon (1952). In two sittings. Highly rated at IMDB due to infamy.
Notionally it's about some power plays over the small town of Loudon, France in 1634 but really it just sinks into the mire at the crossroads of sex, violence, Catholicism, witchcraft, possession, hysteria and so on. Vanessa Redgrave (Howard's End (1992)) leads as a hunchbacked sexually-repressed Mother Superior in a cloistered order of Ursuline nuns. She gets a bit fruity like Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class (1972). The main plot point has her accuse Jesuit-educated town/religious leader/straight man Oliver Reed (The Big Sleep (1978), Lion of the Desert (1980)) of supernaturally seducing her. This suits the agents of Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue), mostly embodied by Dudley Sutton and Michael Gothard, just fine. Iconoclastically and against his better judgement Reed marries Gemma Jones after impregnating the daughter (Georgina Hale) of the town magistrate/prosecutor (John Woodvine).
But really the plot comes in small bursts in between many cracked, demented scenes of debauchery of one kind or other. The style and choppy editing reminded me of John Boorman's overheated efforts (Zardoz (1974), Excalibur (1981)) though the cinematography is a lot poorer with lots of overexposure. (I can't imagine a restored version would be much better.) The overlong outro presaged Braveheart (1995).
Roger Ebert: zero stars and a supercilious review; it must have been the only time he didn't cut a movie with this much nudity some slack. He saw it at Cinema Theater in Chicago. Vincent Canby: of little substance. Wikipedia has all the details.
A Ha Jung-woo jag from a sneaky rewatch of The Handmaiden (2016), and also Oh Dal-su (No Other Choice (2025), etc.). They're fine as is the rest of the cast but all are working well within their abilities. Director/co-writer Choi Dong-hoon is new to me, as was the other co-writer Lee Ki-cheol. In two sittings due to length and a pro forma script.
The setting is occupied Korea/Manchuria in the early 1930s. Korean nationalists aim to kill some Japanese and collaborators in Shanghai and/or Seoul. The exact details do not matter too much as it's all about set pieces in a lush department store and upmarket Japanese-style house and so on. Thematically it's a shallow reheat of Lust, Caution (2007). There's too much implausible shooting. Somewhat annoyingly lead actress Jun Ji-hyun is far better in the sophisticated urban beauty role than the North Korean (?) peasant worker one that she spends most of her time as.
The cinematography is fine but nothing special given what we're accustomed to now.
Seongyong Cho: two-and-a-half stars. Paul Bramhall at City on Fire.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu completism. I remember enjoying Birdman (2014) but not so much 21 Grams (2003), Babel (2006) or The Revenant (2015). This was his debut feature. It was on the pile for ages but only became inevitable after I recently saw the other Gael García Bernal vehicle of the day, Y tu mamá también (2001). Lengthy. In two sittings as I wasn't that engaged. I lost track of a few threads therefore.
Things are structured around a car crash in present-day Mexico City where three storylines intersect which are are otherwise causally independent. The timelines are somewhat chopped up but again inconsequentially so beyond some wasted screen time. The first has García Bernal involved with dog fighting and his sister-in-law. The second is about a supermodel, her dog and her man after the accident. The final part focuses on "El Chivo" ("the goat") who is supposed to have some form as an intellectual guerilla. He comports with a pack of mongrels and pines for his lost family while doing some dirty deeds, notionally with the wisdom of Solomon.
I felt much of it was witless and leant too heavily on Tarantino. None of the characters are more than a millimetre deep or deviate much from familiar stereotypes. All engage in predictable histrionics. Things generally go as you'd expect. The cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto is often too frenetic to enjoy. Written by Guillermo Arriaga.
Roger Ebert: three-and-a-half stars. A Critic's Pick by Elvis Mitchell.
Woeful David Lean completism. Over three nights due to extreme tedium. Ann Todd (freshly minted as Mrs Lean at the time) leads as a young woman madly in love with an unsuitable Frenchman (Ivan Desny) in 1850s Glasgow. Stuff happens and he dies of arsenic poisoning. Did she or did she not do it?
Regrettable Al Pacino completism. Also for Holly Hunter who has the thankless task of going on a date with this self-absorbed geriatric misanthrope. She acquits herself just fine. Director David Gordon Green (Joe (2013)) seems to have since shifted into Halloween reboots. Written by Paul Logan. In two sittings due to the tedium.
Texan locksmith Pacino lives by himself with a cat and unfortunately the cat, while gorgeous, does not elevate proceedings. (There is a wantonly explicit scene of veterinary surgery.) He's somewhat estranged from his investment-making son in what's probably supposed to be a critique of honest toil versus fast money. He spends a lot of time pining for a lost love who we later learn found him as confusing as he is boring. Things go quirky-predictably right up to the magic of the mime at the end. The date with Hunter reaches for the classic cringe of Happiness (1998) but is so relentlessly brutal you only come away wondering what is wrong with people.
A pointer from Sam Roggeveen (I think episode 11). A sketch of the Cuban missile crisis from the perspective of special assistant to JFK (and later LBJ!) Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner with a shocker of a Boston Irish accent). That link suggests it is not historically accurate: it points to McNamara's take in 2001. It's not great cinema either: the chronology is often unclear and motivations murky, especially as to why the USSR moved missiles into Cuba at that time. (They must have known the blowback would be epic.) Perhaps the best observation is how the upper reaches of the command-and-control structures of the US military work; JFK's experience was apparently not so different to Trump's (for better and worse). And the lack of direct or reliable communication between the USA and the USSR. But really it's just another love letter from the Boomers to their parents, the Greatest Generation.
The huge cast mostly does OK (Bruce Greenwood as JFK, Steven Culp as RFK, Dylan Baker as McNamara). Directed by Roger Donaldson (Cocktail (1988), No Way Out (1987), Species (1995), etc.) from a script written by David Self (Road to Perdition (2002)) who drew on the book The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow.
Roger Ebert: three stars and a personal memoir. Elvis Mitchell, scathing at the New York Times.
And yet more Costa-Gavras completism. This was his followup to State of Siege (1972). Once again Jorge Semprún helped him the adaptation, this time of a book by Hervé Villeré.
A heavy-handed legal legal/courtroom farce. It's World War II (1941) yet again and Vichy needs some victims to placate the occupying Germans after some enterprising young French Communists assassinate a Wehrmacht naval officer. If they fail a hundred of Vichy's finest law operatives will be killed at the Place de la Concorde. People of substance! For reasons underexplained those operatives require a legal fig leaf to identify and impose capital sentences on these victims. They are most horrified when the best that could be done is a statute creating special courts with retroactive powers and framing up some petty criminals. This point gets hammered to death amongst other bits of padding.
Michael Lonsdale had the thankless task of playing "normalien" Pierre Pucheu, le ministre de l'Intérieur, apparently most responsible. His life story was probably more interesting than what Costa-Gavras showed us. Even so what he did got him the Best Director award at Cannes 1975. Pétain is heard but not seen.
Roger Ebert: three stars. Janet Maslin at the Boston Phoenix (!). The gymnasium is indeed a Meccano fan's paradise.
Costa-Gavras's second feature. He directed his own adaptation of a novel by Jean-Pierre Chabrol.
The film tracks a maquis (World War 2 French resistance rural guerilla group) as it frees some death-row inmates from a gaol, robs a bank of a million francs and is tasked with blowing up a pass in the hills which gets a bit The Wages of Fear (1953). Frisson is notionally added by them accidentally liberating a thirteenth man from the gaol (Michel Piccoli) who professes to be nonpartisan despite wearing German boots. The pace is frenetic, relentless, the opposite of The Confession (1970). We learn that Frenchman can only think and talk about war and sex, and only think about war when they have to. (What about food?)
The film concludes with a bravura shot of Piccoli hanging off a bridge that looks like a scaled-up Meccano set, Nazis overhead shooting down at him; a more eloquent expression of what Europa (1991) reached for.
The cinematography by Jean Tournier (The Train (1964), The Sleeping Car Murder (1965), The Day of the Jackal (1973)) is good.
Howard Thompson at the New York Times: frenzied vitality. Costa-Gavras "should have whittled his pacifist down to size."
