billm-4 Reviews

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Very good but very overlong

[8/10 · 18 January 2014]

The Wolf of Wall Street has a cracking script, superb acting, top notch technical work in all departments and masterly direction binding the wonderful ingredients together. The sheer exuberance and energy behind most scenes indicate that all involved had a whale of a time making this movie. Its extravagance of style matches the total lack of scruple and restraint on the part of the title character, Jordan Belfort.

Why not give it a perfect 10 out of 10? Well, the sheer length. It really is not necessary to have a three hour movie when the subject matter is less than epic. Much of it is shamelessly squalid and we really don't need multiple episodes of sexual excess and drug overdosing to rub the truth in. You can see any number of scenes which are redundant as far as story development and character portrayal are concerned.

Scorsese has been criticised for glamorising the lifestyle of a most unsavoury crook. I think that is beyond ridiculous. You might as well criticise real life for being unfair. The anti-hero, brilliantly portrayed by DiCaprio, did have a fantastic time at other people's expense and has largely got away with it. He served a short prison term for numerous monstrous and pitiless frauds which would have merited multiple life sentences in any decent system of justice. He is now enjoying a globe trotting career making loads more money as an inspirational speaker. He is subject to a restitution order to make a trivial contribution to the brutal losses he inflicted on his victims. But he is failing to repay even that penalty! Blame the feeble US justice system. Well, maybe not. We don't want too many bent financiers, bankers and politicians to serve huge prison terms, do we? One reviewer noted the contrast between the anti-hero's lifestyle (travelling on a 170 foot yacht and private jets) and the life of the dogged, incorruptible investigator who pursues him...and travels on the New York subway. You can hardly blame Scorsese for telling the truth. When I see the salaries paid to British police and other investigators compared with the wealth enjoyed by the scum they try to bring to justice, it restores my faith in the decency of so many "ordinary" people.

The only moral and storytelling criticism I would offer is that Scorsese shows very little of the impact of Belfort on others. True, his first wife's grief at his shameless whoring and philandering is very touching, if briefly portrayed. When he lost his first job on Wall Street, she had been willing to sell her engagement ring to make ends meet. Her loyalty and genuine unselfish love were betrayed. His second wife and their children are also shown as suffering from his insane drug abuse and promiscuity. But I could feel only a fraction of the sympathy for her that I felt for his first wife. Wife No 2 knew, or should have known in one part of her mind, that she was marrying a ruthless cheating chancer. But no doubt she deluded herself that he would settle down, turn over a new leaf, etc.

As for all Belfort's financial victims? At best, they are voices on the other end of a telephone sales pitch. None gets even a cameo appearance to portray the rage and despair they must have felt. Maybe some were rich and could absorb the losses. Maybe some lost everything. Maybe some were driven to suicide, as happened with at least one of Bernie Madoff's victims.

I have not done any digging to see the painful stories behind the Wolf's success. And Scorsese was not making an expose documentary on the mechanics of large scale fraud and the effect on the victims. The focus is quite properly on the title character with the brutally apt nickname. Very few directors could produce such an eyepopping, guilty pleasure.

The Railway Man (2013)

Read the book for a fuller story

[6/10 · 14 January 2014]

"The Railway Man" is a sober restrained film for much of its running time. Its low key approach makes the torture scenes and the depictions of Eric Lomax's searing post-war nightmares all the more horrifying and unforgettable. The acting is uniformly excellent. The direction and all the technical contributions are admirable. I normally never consciously notice the sound design, but here it contributes intelligently and gently to several episodes. I was particularly fascinated to see Eric and the other signals staff emerging into the sunlight from the underground "Battle Box" headquarters in Fort Canning Park, Singapore. I toured it in 2007; it is now a museum peopled by realistic waxworks of the soldiers, senior and junior, who were there on surrender day, 15th February 1942.

Yet the film has several irritating shortcomings. The title character, Eric, was 61 at the time of the scenes set in 1980. Good as he is, Colin Firth is visibly too young. Perhaps it shouldn't matter, given the power of his performance, but it gets in the way if you try to make sense of the time lapses.

The very down to earth portrayal of Eric's lonely life is immensely touching, as in the scene where his new love Patti wants to scrub clean the cooking pot in his grubby bachelor kitchen. But such practical matter of fact detail inevitably invites down to earth speculation such as "Where does the characters' money come from?" This tiresome little problem hardly matters in more fantastical Hollywood sagas where everyone is filthy rich or in possession of superpowers. Eric is shown to drive a Triumph 2000, a car typically owned by the affluent middle classes of that time. (I have not seen one for years. The Triumph marque disappeared long ago along with much of the British car industry. The equivalent British middle classes now drive BMWs, Mercedes and Audis). This fine car and his neglected house are the only signs that he had a successful and productive working life between 1945 and 1980.

His tormented friend at the veterans club notes how the survivors of the 1940s horrors are now bank clerks, teachers, engineers, retired people; honest productive citizens, whose unsung post war endurance is as admirable as their war time survival. (One of my teachers around 1969 had been a Prisoner of War at Changi Prison in Singapore, but you would never have heard it from him.) Presumably many of these gentle heroes were married, as was Eric. But his failed post-war marriage and two children are unmentioned in the movie. As are Patti's three children. Somehow, despite a failed marriage, she has the cash to tour Britain. The fact that she had been married is barely hinted at (she describes herself as single again). The fact that the real Patti lived in Canada for many years is unmentioned.

Even a passing mention of the characters' histories could have considerably enriched the film. As it stands, it feels as if they were dropped into the story from Mars.

In his book "Hollywood vs America", the critic Michael Medved noted the inviolable barrier between Church and Studio in most Hollywood films. The same deep rooted reluctance to mention spiritual matters, even when they are relevant to the characters, is very evident in this film. The only sign of the prisoners' religious leanings in this real Valley of the Shadow of Death is the recitation of a Psalm in one scene. Eric's deep Christian faith helped him through the nightmare and perhaps lead to his forgiveness of his tormentor decades later. He carried a Bible for decades during and after his imprisonment until it was utterly worn.

You can get the background story from the book. For the price of a cinema ticket, it is much better value for money. You get at least a limited sense of the vanished Britain of the 1920s and 1930s when Eric grew up. The lovingly described details of the social and industrial environment that formed him make sense of how this man came to be a survivor. A new preface in the movie tie-in edition describes how Eric did not want to see the finished film; he died before it was released. If he had seen it, he might have pointed out, in the most polite manner, how much of the really important story had been left out.

Cheaters (2000 TV Movie)

Fascinating story, very good cast

[10 June 2000]

I have so far been unable to confirm how closely "Cheaters" is based on the real-life scandal in 1995 when the team from Steinmetz High School in Chicago was caught cheating in the National Decathlon. A disclaimer at the end of the movie admits that some names were changed and characters amalgamated. The film makers obviously needed to squeeze several months of events into 100 minutes screen time, reconcile several participants' stories AND keep the libel lawyers off their backs.

Allowing for extensive dramatic licence, what remains is an enthralling and well acted story. All the actors, adult and adolescent, look believable as the teachers and students at this inner city school. The youngsters' heartbreak at studying intensively for months on end, only to be beaten out of sight by a highly resourced team from a priviledged suburban school, is well conveyed. You can understand why the team coach Gerard Plecki (Jeff Daniels) is so desperate for these kids to have one rare taste of success. Despite their aged, run-down, graffitti-decorated school and unsupportive family backgrounds, they are all admirable characters, willing to work outside school at menial jobs, care for younger siblings while their single parents are at work and put in staggering amounts of extra study time before and after school to prepare for the Decathlon.

A shortcoming of the film is that its running time and numerous characters allow the audience little opportunity to get to know any participant individually. Gerard Plecki is a gifted, dedicated, imaginative teacher - "so what is he doing at this school?", as one cynical student remarks. We see him still living at home with his elderly mother, but get little sense of why he is still stuck in this professional and personal rut. Another shortcoming is its repeated foul language. Do students even in inner city schools use four letter words in front of their teachers without rebuke? Would Gerard Plecki really use the F word in front of his elderly mother as he struggles to justify encouraging his pupils to cheat?

Even Jolie Fitch (the excellent Jena Malone) as the most prominent student character has little of her background sketched in. We briefly see her home where she seems to be isolated even from her parents, and a few seconds of her restaurant job. Still, it was refreshing to see a young girl who actually values education and has enough savvy to recognise and value Gerard Plecki as an outstanding teacher without developing a crush on him.

When one of the team gets an stolen copy of the paper for the State section of the Decathlon, it is all the more depressing that teacher and students so willingly and clumsily cheat - they score suspiciously high marks in the competition and are very quickly found out, despite their vehement denials. It is even more depressing that Gerard Plecki was so willing to justify cheating to himself and even persuade one reluctant student to cooperate in the deception. Even after the debacle is publicly revealed, he is unwilling to admit to any serious moral lapse. It is left to his mother to spell out what he should have done.

The moral ambiguity of using cheating to redress the balance in a wholly unfair competition is well brought out. I would be interested to find out if there have been any long term changes as a result of the scandal - e.g. forcing the all-conquering suburban school to take a holiday from the contest for a few years, or giving Steinmetz more human and material resources.

Well worth seeing and taping for a second look; 8 out of 10.

The Beach (I) (2000)

Great scenery, shame about the script

[2/10 · 16 February 2000]

"The Beach" is blessed with magnificent scenery and outstanding cinematography, courtesy of Darius Kronji. The cast are all up to the job, including many who are unknown to North American audiences. It is a shame that their talents are wasted on a script which is riddled with so many glaring loopholes:

1) The idyllic beach community, which the Leonardo daCaprio character and his two French friends discover, has apparently been in existence on this isolated island for 6 years. So how do they obtain their money for the periodic shopping trips to the Thai mainland for the little luxuries such as deoderants, batteries and Tampaxes which they cannot grow in Paradise?

2) The government of Paradise is always a problem. The Tilda Swinton character has apparently been accepted as the leader, but whether this was arranged by group consensus or sheer force of personality is never explained. It is never made clear how the various tiresome chores (housebuilding, gardening, fishing) are allocated and work enforced. As there are no unifying ideals in the community apart from the aimless pursuit of pleasure, it is hard to see how it could hold together for long.

3) There is a major problem when one of the fishermen who help support the community is badly injured. He is left to die in horrible agony in the jungle - out of sight, out of mind. The loathsome Swinton character fears that, if he was allowed to go to a mainland hospital, the "secret" of the island might leak out. The aimless community beach life carries on regardless. Most of the community raises no serious objection to this act of near-murder. Has no one else fallen sick or been injured in 6 years? Does no one consider what will happen to them if they fall sick?

4) The Tilda Swinton character is one of the dumbest, as well as one of the vilest, group leaders ever portrayed on film. She sleeps with the Leonardo character when they go to the Thai mainland for supplies - despite the fact that both have partners back on the island. She seemingly knows nothing about group dynamics and cares nothing about creating divisive jealousy in such a small and isolated community.

5) Although the group has apparently existed for 6 years, with cheerfully casual indulgence in sex all round, there are no children in the community. Also, none of the characters seems to have any family outside the island - or none they want to keep in touch with. If they care nothing for their biological families, how attached are they going to be to one other?

6) When more unwelcome newcomers discover the island, the leader orders the hapless Leonardo to recover their map and send them away. Does she think they are going to forget the location or fail to tell more outsiders about its existence?

I could go on all night about this crassly adolescent vision of an isolated model community, but no sane adult would want to live there or to pay good money to see this ludicrous movie.

Angela's Ashes (1999)

Bleak, powerful, unforgettable

[7/10 · 24 January 2000]

George Orwell once remarked that autobiography is only to be trusted if it reveals something disgraceful. On this assumption, Angela's Ashes must be highly trustworthy as it reveals TWO truly shameful episodes in Frank McCourt's young life. The first is his writing threatening letters on behalf of a local moneylender, Mrs Finucane. This usurer was preying off his desperately poor friends and neighbours, and even off one of his relatives, but he still wrote the pompously worded letters to terrify them into paying up. He was so desperate to escape from his impoverished boyhood in Limerick, Ireland that he was willing to go to any lengths short of murder to raise the fare to America.

Murder was not necessary for his second despicable action: he comes into the unsavoury Mrs. Finucane's home and finds her recently deceased. But before calling for help, he steals from her purse and money box. Thus he has the fare to escape to a new life in America.

It is rare that any film, fact or fiction, has the nerve to portray its "hero" in such an unappealing light. Up to that point, you could not help rooting for Franky. He has humour, spirit, courage, intelligence, fierce family love and loyalty, an appetite for hard work and perseverance. He defends his downtrodden mother against her loathsome cousin to whom she is, in effect, prostituting herself in exchange for food and shelter. Yet you understand the depths of his desperation in committing such foul offences. The horrible squalor of the Limerick slums, the dirt, hunger, damp, disease and death are all rubbed in repeatedly. All the same, both my father and my mother came from very poor West of Ireland families and both they and their numerous siblings escaped to better lives in England and the USA without robbing anyone. So I could not help but feel deeply uneasy at the way the film seems to half-excuse Franky's actions.

Emily Watson deserves a third Oscar nomination (AND an actual Oscar!) for her wonderful performance. She never fails to amaze me. When I saw her in "Breaking the Waves" I assumed she is Scottish. In fact, her "normal" accent is educated South-of-England middle class, as she displays in "Jackie and Hilary". Yet here she plays a very working class west of Ireland mother. One subtlety, missing in the film, which is well described in the book, is the astonishing range of Irish accents, even in a small area. A country Limerick accent marked you out from a city Limerick dweller. People from Kerry, Cork or Dublin were foreigners. Worst of all (arguably even more abominable than an English accent) was a Northern Ireland accent, as Franky's drunken father is unlucky enough to possess.

Robert Carlyle gives a memorable and nuanced performance as the wretched father. He obviously had some strengths as a parent, as Franky and his brothers love him, his wild imagination and story telling. Yet as they grow up, they cannot avoid noticing his alcoholism, his inability to hold down a job and his self-defeating pride. Unlike his realistic wife, he is too proud to pick coal off the street to warm his shivering children. Unlike his neighbours, he is reluctant to move to the hated "enemy" England, where work is plentiful, to provide money for his starving and disease ridden brood. When he does finally move to England, he abandons his family completely.

The portrayal of the father was another source of unease for me. I am losing count of the recent films where fathers are routinely portrayed as absent, hateful, irrelevant or useless: Election, The Opposite of Sex, The Five Senses, Rosetta, All About My Mother, Anywhere But Here, Tumbleweeds, Felicia's Journey, Music of the Heart... Is it me, or do filmmakers have a determined grudge against fatherhood, a conscious or unconscious agenda to denigrade it at every opportunity? Why do they pick such topics for their movies so consistently?

About the only adults to come out of the movie in a favourable light, apart from the usual sainted mother, are two inspirational teachers, one of whom urges his intelligent, but poor, pupils to escape to America as they have no future in Ireland. The clergy, needless to say, are distant or snobbish, but are not as savagely maligned as you might expect from other horrid-Irish-childhood memoirs.

Compared with the book, the basic story remains intact, but much of the verbal humour is lost in translation to a visual medium. Plenty of acidly humourous dialogue and situations still remain. I may be biased by happy memories of summer holidays not far from Limerick, but I cannot believe it is as continuously wet, grey and miserable as the heavily manipulated cinematography makes it appear.

Still, an unforgettable experience. Well worth seeing; I give it 7 out of 10.

Anna and the King (1999)

A true Rupert Murdoch production

[17 December 1999]

"Anna and the King" is a Twentieth Century Fox film. The owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch, also owns some of the vilest British tabloids and is the guy whose "quality" British weekly, the Sunday Times, bought and published Adolf Hitler's diaries. This was before a spoilsport expert proved that the paper on which they were written was made well after the Fuhrer's unlamented death. "Anna and the King" similarly follows the slogan of the British press: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story".

It would be tiresome to nitpick on all the hilarious blunders in the script. My favourites were the Crown Prince's objection to being taught by an "Imperialist teacher" (Right on, Comrade Prince!) and the King's children singing (in the 1860s) the song "Daisy, Daisy" which was not composed until 1892. The interesting story about the culture clash between the very proper English teacher and the reformist-minded King is intermingled with a tiresome and totally unconvincing plot by a chauvinist Minister who wants to get rid of foreign influences in Siam. It culminates in a traditional Hollywood showdown between goodies and baddies, complete with Indiana Jones-style explosions and bridge demolitions. The scriptwriter understandably had no confidence in his ability to write a convincing and enthralling historical drama, even though the raw material could hardly have been better. He just HAD to throw in a ridiculous action climax.

Of course, no politically correct version of Anna and The King could be complete without a few crass caricatures and stereotypes - in this case the crusty, if decent, British Ambassador and a ludicrous, coarse, red-faced vulgarian merchant from the East India Company who nearly destroys a diplomatically delicate dinner.

Still, as long as the film sticks to the basic culture clash theme it remains very watchable. Jodie Foster delivers a subtle and thoughtful performance with a perfect British accent (I am British, by the way) and Chow Yun-Fat is mercifully free of Yul Brynner's mannerisms in the musical version. Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is as magnificent as ever, the Malaysian scenery is wonderful and the costume and set design are top notch. Yet another case of "great story, shame about the script". Overall, 5 out of 10.

Ride with the Devil (I) (1999)

Unusual and enthralling drama

[17 December 1999]

"Ride with the Devil" is another wonderful showcase for Ang Lee's extraordinary talents as a director and his sensitivity to very different characters and attitudes. How many movie directors in history have successfully tackled so many different cultures in so few films such a short time? The hilarious present day comedy "Wedding Banquet" included New York and Taiwanese characters. "Sense and Sensibility" was an early 19th century British costume drama treated in a fresh style. "The Ice Storm" looked at troubled middle class New England families in 1973.

Now we have a very unusual American Civil War drama. It is not about conventional battles between large professionally organised armies. This is messy guerilla warfare on the Missouri/Kansas border. As Lee obviously understands, "professional" soldiers have always detested amateur partisan bands far more than their "professional" opponents on the other side of the battlelines who fight in conventional ways. Spanish guerillas fighting Napoleon in the 1800s, Irish freedom fighters against the British Army in the 1920s, Italian and Yugoslav partisans against the Germans in the 1940s and the Vietcong in the 1960s all incited ferocious countermeasures. The military professionals HATE these small forces who come out of the woods and mountains, deliver sudden ambushes and melt back into their native terrain like shadows.

In "Ride with the Devil" the savagery of this style of warfare is increased by the fact that families and communities were split down the middle over the question of slavery, with regional and racial loyalties being muddled in unpredictable ways. Lee is prepared to focus nearly all the story's attention on a Confederate band whose views on slavery and race relations will be completely anathema to most modern audiences. We are allowed to see them as human beings who are desperate to defend their families and their way of life against the alien Yankees. The poignancy of their sacrifices is compounded by our knowing that they are on the losing side and that they are dying heroically to defend an utterly unjust way of life.

Yet they are also shown as ruthless predators who are prepared to kill all the men in a community and destroy all their homes and property. In contrast, the "enemy" women are carefully spared, even when their husbands are murdered in front of them. The merciless invaders treat the ladies with old-world courtesy. But any "softness" in sparing even a grandfather and his young grandson is viewed as a suspicious sign of weakness and potential treason.

I cannot praise the virtues of this unusual drama too highly: the outstanding performances from a largely unknown (though Oscar-caliber) cast, the beautiful cinematography, the set and costume design and the overall FEEL for the period. Unlike most "historical" filmmakers, Lee understands that the past is not another time - it practically another planet, whose inhabitants' attitudes may be almost incomprehensible to 1990s man. He depicts the brutality of warfare as convincingly as "Saving Private Ryan", though without that film's excessive length and preposterous plot contrivances. The scene where a wounded warrior's arm has to be amputated (without anaesthetic or medical care) because the gangrene is advancing up to his armpit is almost unwatchable. Yet Lee does not need to show us all the gruesome details which Spielberg insists on shoving in our faces.

Most fascinating of all are its small details which you will probably never see in another movie. The hero is from the German-American community. Although they are the largest ethnic minority in America, you practically never see the Germans mentioned in movies, unlike the Irish, Jews, Italians, Africans and so on. The hero is a virgin on his wedding night - when did you last see THAT! The female lead breastfeeds her child; when did you last see the breast used as anything, but a sex toy?

Most highly recommended - 9 out of 10.

Man on the Moon (1999)

Excellent performance by Jim, but why make this film?

[15 December 1999]

As a British citizen who moved to Michigan in 1998, I have never seen Andy Kaufmann on TV. Indeed I had never heard of him before the release of this movie. But I responded to a free ticket offer and saw it for nothing at my local multiplex.

For the first half hour or more I was mighty glad I had paid nothing as Andy's act did not tickle my sense of humour in any way. In particular, Jim Carrey's introductory chatter and the running of the "end credits" at the beginning of the movie were merely tiresome and irritating. To judge from the laughter around me, I assumed that he must be a nostalgic cult figure and the audience were reliving their teenage memories of Andy's antics, much as Brits of my generation can quote Monty Python verbatim. After a while I found myself laughing despite the seeming dumbness of much of the material, especially where Jim skates on the very edge of bad taste and political incorrectness - and frequently falls over that edge.

I cannot judge how truthful an impersonation Jim delivers, but his typically dynamic performance seemed to be the product of really concentrated effort. The later sequences in particular, where Andy is diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer, becomes progressively sicker and tries all manner of alternative therapies, are unreservedly touching and a portrayal of quiet courage. It was particularly fascinating to be reminded of the bizarre Philippines hand-on surgery without anaesthetic which I saw in documentaries of the early 1980s.

As with all Milos Forman films, the craftsmanship is impeccable and the soundtrack highly enjoyable. At the end of it, I was still left wondering why Forman found Kaufmann so interesting that he was willing to invest the staggering effort which it takes to create any movie. As in the case of his last movie about Larry Flynt, though for rather different reasons , I could not see why he picked this guy out of the billions who have lived in this century to immortalise on film. Larry was just too loathsome and Andy was somehow not that distinctive. I will be surprised if the movie has much success in markets where people have no memories of seeing the original Andy first time round. I would give it 7 out of 10 for craftsmanship, acting and (against the odds) making me laugh.

The Green Mile (1999)

Overlong, incoherent, repulsive and ridiculous

[10 December 1999]

I found "The Green Mile" to be a massive disappointment in comparison with Frank Darabont's 1994 adaptation of another Stephen King story, also set in a prison, "The Shawshank Redemption". "The Green Mile" has a running time of just over three hours to tell a tale which could have been told more compellingly in 2 to 2.5 hours. You cannot avoid the feeling that the filmmakers had their eye on Oscar glory rather than making a fine film, and one of the unfortunate rules of thumb in this area is that long films have a better chance of winning than shorter competitors. Alas, there seems to be ample evidence of quantity defeating quality: "Gandhi" beating "Tootsie" in 1982 and "Out of Africa" beating "Witness" in 1985, to name but two.

Unlike many Stephen King stories, "The Shawshank Redemption" had no supernatural elements. This was a major advantage in restraining the crazier excesses of the writer's imagination and making the film touching and credible. Unfortunately, "The Green Mile" has a miracle-working prisoner on death row. The wonder worker has the initials J.C., just in case you missed the crass symbolism of an innocent healer being unjustly condemned to death.

Most miracles tend to be arbitrary favours bestowed for no apparently consistent reason by a capricious Deity. Why do only a tiny fraction of people who go to Lourdes get cured, in comparison with the huge numbers of apparently equally devout and deserving pilgrims? Here, the saintly (if mentally challenged) John Coffey is apparently able to cure the terminally ill on demand. The limitations of 1930s medicine are cruelly highlighted. Tom Hanks' noble prison officer character, Paul Edgecombe, has a painful and embarrassing bladder problem which would probably be cleared up quickly by modern antibiotics. In 1934 he faces the alternatives of nausea-inducing sulfa drugs, or allowing Nature to take its slow, distressing course in healing him. J.C. can, of course, cure him in seconds by laying on of hands, absorbing the "poison" into his own body and exhaling it through his mouth in the visible form of droplets.

The good John was apparently aware of his powers (which extend so far as performing a Lazarus-resurrection job on a badly crushed mouse) before he entered prison. This gives rise to hundreds of obvious questions, such as why he did not do a similar Lazarus job on the two murdered little girls with whom he was caught. Perhaps that was beyond even his powers, for some unexplained reason. More seriously, his supernatural gift highlights countless idiocies in the plot development.

This J.C. was apparently not even immaculately conceived and born in a stable; he seems to have been delivered into the world fully grown to his 6.5 feet, 300 pound-plus bulk. He apparently had no prior life history before he was caught with the bloodstained corpses of the little girls in his arms and obviously had not demonstrated his healing powers anywhere, as otherwise he would surely have become quickly reknown as a miracle worker, at least in a local area. Even after he has cured the prison warden's wife of a terminal brain tumour in front of several witnesses, he is still apparently on his way to the electric chair. Even worse, he seems (again, for an unexplained reason) to be unable to "exhale" the poison from the brain tumour and is terminally ill himself. Never fear, he is able to "exhale" the illness into a suitably vile prison officer. This infusion of the bad vapours apparently affects the villain's brain in a non-fatal way - we last see him incarcerated in a mental institution.

This cure of the prison warden's wife is yet another dumb episode which prolongs the excessive running time. Apparently, the combined brainpower of all the officers on Death Row could not devise a legal way of getting the wife and saintly John together for a healing session - they have to smuggle John out of prison to the warden's home in the middle of the night in a complex operation. Also, even when it is clear that John can do cures on demand, no one suggests that his abilities be publicly proven. If he cured a few dying children, would that not help his case for a reprieve, or at least a stay of execution? Well, it might, but it would also impede the risibly bogus plot mechanics where Saint Tom Hanks and his fellow officers end up executing an innocent man, have dreadful pangs of conscience, etc, etc.

The vile prison officer must be one of the most thankless "bad guy" roles foisted on any actor. Doug Hutchison does his best with the loathsome Percy Wetmore and occasionally suggests some humanity within his worthless carcass. I assume his unfortunate surname comes from his loss of bladder control under stress, clearly shown in one scene. However, much of the time the script portrays him as a coward, liar, sadist, manipulator and bully, constantly invoking his influential relatives who will take terrible reprisals against anyone at the prison who offends him. This is yet another unexplained imbecility in the script: if this creep has such powerful connections, why is he doing such a horrible and dangerous job on Death Row? Why have his relatives not already landed him a safe and cushy desk job elsewhere in the State sector? The only motive implied is that he gets a kick out of seeing people suffer and wants the chance to witness, and indeed supervise, an execution close-up.

Of course, poisonous Percy does get this chance. In one of the most gratuitously horrible scenes you are ever likely to witness in a cinema, he deliberately sabotages the execution of a prisoner by NOT wetting a sponge in saline solution before it is placed on the condemned man's head. Thus the electrical contact is imperfect, and the victim screams out in ghastly agony as he is slowly fried alive. It makes an unforgettable scene in support of abolishing the death penalty, or at any rate this form of it. I suppose it is one of the few points you can make in favour of this abysmal film.

Other points in its favour include the excellent cinematography, set and costume design and a very fine cast, especially Tom Hanks, David Morse and James Cromwell. It is a great shame that, as in so many films, the enormous talents of both cast and crew have been wasted on such repulsive and ridiculous dreck. I would give it 3 out of 10, and those three points purely for technical and acting competence.

Rosetta (1999)

Another fatherless film

[30 November 1999]

The excellent acting by an unknown cast, especially the ferocious lead performance by Emilie Dequenne, seems to have distracted attention from the more disturbing attitudes below the surface of this film. The desperate and determined Rosetta fights to obtain a job and find a way to obtain the basics of life for herself and her alcoholic mother. She is willing to go to almost any lengths, including betraying her only friend, to land a job, no matter how menial or insecure. Nowhere in the film is her father mentioned. As the absence of fathers is a major factor (if not THE major factor) in family poverty, you might have expected a brief reference to her dad and an explanation of her semi-orphaned status. You would of course be disappointed.

So "Rosetta" joins the growing list of films where men and especially fathers are optional extras in the lives of young women. Look at the recent crop: "Election", "The Opposite of Sex", "Anywhere but here", "The Five Senses". Whatever their considerable merits, they depict a world where fathers are irrelevant, if they are mentioned at all. In "Election" and "The Opposite of Sex", the fatherless heroines are even more ruthless than Rosetta in trampling all before them to get what they want. Plenty of books, such as "Fatherless America" have lamented the increasing family breakdown and the absence of fathers from active healthy involvement in the lives of their growing children. These books often finger the media and the models of family life they portray as a negative influence on our perception of fathers. This recent crop of movies can only add another small contribution to our misunderstanding of the vital importance of fathers.

Rosetta's ferocious self-respect in striving for a job, refusing to beg for a living and her unswerving loyalty to her drunken mother seem oddly inconsistent with her tawdry and despicable betrayal of her one true friend, just to get a minimum rate job. It looks like a case where the filmmakers were looking for a dramatic plot twist, rather than a consistent development of character. It is a pity, because you can think of other ways of writing the story which would have better emphasised the pain and sadness of Rosetta's life. Up to that point, I was rooting for her 100% because she seemed like a genuinely admirable, if unglamorous, character. It looks like another distasteful trait in modern film making which Michael Medved describes as an instinctive antipathy to any heroism. The filmmakers spend so much of the film building her up as a unspectacularly noble personality, then seemingly destroy her at the end. Her apparent remorse in the last scene is heartrending, but it does not wipe away the memory of her treachery.

The Five Senses (1999)

Beautiful, thoughtful, touching, unusual.

[29 November 1999]

The opening scene of "The Five senses" makes it clear that this is not a mainstream Hollywood shoot-them-up action flick. The beautiful subdued lighting and lovely slow music prepare you for a film closer in approach, sensibility and human interaction to European fare such as "Tous Les Matins du Monde". The cast is uniformly superb. The only moderately well-known cast member is Mary-Louise Parker who acquits herself splendidly as usual, though you get the feeling that the producers were anxious to have ONE name which was at least vaguely familiar to U.S. audiences.

The only weakness lies in the script. It does not unduly labor the "Five Senses" theme - five characters each have a flaw in one of their five senses. That would have made the film too much of an artificial academic exercise. Yet it slides into the opposite trap of not emphasising the importance of sense to two of the characters. The cakemaker apparently has no sense of taste, though that is barely apparent. Her lousy cakes might be the result of incompetence rather than handicap for all we are shown and her sensory deficiency is not an integral part of the story as it is for the opthalmologist who is going deaf. According to at least one review I read, the masseuse reportedly has a deficient sense of touch, which is not apparent at all. Indeed the scene where she massages the teacher, who is also the mother of the little girl who goes missing, is extraordinarily tender, gentle and sensuous.

The opthalmologist who is slowly losing his hearing provides some of the most poignant scenes. The writer is very aware of the saying that blindness cuts you off from things, deafness cuts you off from people. The character is obviously afraid of his growing disability enhancing his existing painful isolation. He is already separated from his wife and little girl and now faces losing his beloved music. He has to pay for sex. His prostitute takes pity on him, and after their intercourse she accompanies him to a glorious concert (paradoxically of religious music in a church!) and shows him sign language.

The other unforgettable scenes show the anguish of the mother of the missing little girl, and the remorse of the mother of the withdrawn teenager who lost her. It is a superlative performance by Molly Parker and contrasts favourable with the hystrionics shown by Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Deep End of the Ocean", where her character similarly loses her son. Curiously, Pfeiffer's character was portrayed as a practising Catholic, but was not shown as praying or arranging for any religious service to pray for the safe return of her child. Here, Molly Parker's character describes how she prayed for the first time in years. As Winston Churchill said, there are times when all pray, but here it is convincing and extraordinarily touching. Michael Medved in "Hollywood Versus America" notes how mainstream films hardly ever show their characters praying even in the direst circumstances. "The Five Senses" does not miss this obvious dramatic opportunity, nor does it unduly harp on it.

The predominant theme throughout the film is the difficulty of human communication and the essential loneliness of the individual. There is no intact normal family and you get the feeling that this is very much a "gay" perspective on the world and human relationships. This is not only because of the gay house cleaner and the brief male-male kissing scene, but the astonishing absence of any father - child relationship, which is a strong theme in much gay literature. The cakemaker is shown as anxious about her dying mother, but her father is not even mentioned. The missing little girl has a devoted mother, but again her father is not mentioned. The masseuse's husband is dead and she cannot communicate with her intelligent, but traumatised daughter.

To emphasise the loneliness refrain (another strong gay theme), the opthalmologist is separated from his wife and child. The housecleaner is apparently bisexual, but has no current male or female partner. The cakemaker has no current boyfriend, until the newly arrived Italian from her holiday romance appears - and even them his motivation is suspect, leading to a final complete misunderstanding on her part. The root causes behind the various characters' loneliness are never made not clear; this is a weakness in the writing and increases our difficulty in identifying with them, but it does not diminish our sympathy with at least some of their sorrows.

Overall, I give this unusual and beautifully crafted film 8 out of 10.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Incredible visuals, shame about the acting and script

[19 November 1999]

Tim Burton is incapable of making a boring film. There is always something on screen to enthrall the eye, regardless of the quality of the script. Sleepy Hollow has one magnificent image after another and it is worth paying your 7 or 8 bucks just to enjoy the never-ending stream of misty landscapes, haunted woods, candlelit interiors and New York cityscapes from 200 years ago. Plainly the wonderful crew, from cinematographer to costume designer to art director to special effects, had a whale of a time and delivered every ounce of talent of which they are capable.

I was salivating over the opening credits as so many of my favourite actors' names rolled across the screen. Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Jeffrey Jones, Miranda Richardson - I had seen them all create numerous unforgettable characters in very different films. So what went wrong here? There were so many scenes which ought to have been scary and yet the actors somehow did not look particularly scared, even when in mortal danger. Perhaps it was the oddly inconsistent treatment of the horrible headless horseman, who was apparently immortal and indestructible - he survives a Terminator-type conflagration unscathed, yet he can be temporarily knocked down by bullets and fought off in a traditional style sword fight. He is apparently tangible but his original mortal skeleton is lying in the grave and he can materialise out of a twisted tree.

The lack of an internally consistent magical or fantastical environment is deadly for this type of story. Even if the audience does not consciously reason out the logical gaps, they can sense something in the story is incoherent. "The Matrix" was stuffed with end-to-end idiocies and contradictions, but it bombarded the audience with continuous rapid-fire stunning effects and science-fiction scenes which distracted attention from the imbecilities. The lovingly recreated 18th century setting of Sleepy Hollow is too concrete and the action not fast enough to provide similar distraction.

Also the plot bears hardly any relation to the original short story. It is 30 years since I read the original, but Ichabod was then the local schoolteacher - in the film he is a constable sent up from New York to this rural backwater. As I recall, the Headless Horseman was a flesh-and-blood prankster scaring Ichabod away from the lady they both loved - Ichabod hilariously became the victim of his own superstitious belief in ghosts and demons. In the film he is presented as the modern, rational, scientific investigator of murders and he initially dismisses the locals' beliefs in demons. In the film, the Headless Horseman is a real demon crassly manipulated as a useful hitman by a local vengeful witch.

Thus the delightful short story has been utterly coarsened and made oddly less compelling - we are so blase about special effects,synthetic blood and gore etc that this effects-heavy spectacle is much less scary and fascinating than more subtle masterpieces such as "The Haunting" (1963 version) or "Night of the Demon". A pity, but see it for the marvellous images alone.

Music of the Heart (1999)

Decent people triumph against the odds

[8 November 1999]

After so much fictional drivel in 1999, I saw TWO fact-based films on the same weekend. Both "Music of the Heart" and "The Insider" raised the question of why producers choose to finance appalling nonsense such as "Double Jeopardy" and incoherent fantasies such as "The Matrix" when far superior material lies all around them in real life. An extraordinary fact about "Music" is that almost every single character is likeable and that the vast majority are actually admirable. The only exceptions are Roberta's cheating husband (only an off-screen presence), the sour and incompetent permanent music teacher (who has good reason to be jealous of his inspirational, but untenured colleague) and Aidan Quinn's appealing but fickle lover. At least the latter bubbles over with irresistible Irish charm and blarney. Some real life musicians appear as themselves, most memorably Isaac Stern whose love, decency and lifelong joy in music shines out from the screen during the brief episode when he describes the famous musical ghosts haunting Carnegie Hall. The whole story is such a glorious relief after a procession of films stuffed with people who are as repulsive as the plots are preposterous.

The real difficulties of the Harlem children are portrayed; physical disabilities, crime, single parents, poverty, domestic violence. Meryl Streep's Roberta has her share of shortcomings and problems, as is shown when she struggles with the incompetent contractors she hired to fix up her home or tries to get the charming Aiden to commit to a longer term relationship. But her burning love of music and initially desperate tenacity in teaching these strange inner city kids gradually triumph over all, even mean minded financial cuts. Although it is not mentioned in the film, musical education has enormous benefits in other academic areas, as well as boosting the children's self-esteem and concentration - a fact invisible to the bean counters.

Bravo to all concerned, especially to Wes Craven for a project so utterly different from anything he has created before, and to Meryl Streep for another compelling performance.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Great fantasy, shame about the reality

[8 November 1999]

An ambitious and unusual film like "Bringing Out the Dead" invites admiration and sympathetic consideration. Martin Scorsese takes us where we do not want to go - the meanest streets of New York and the pain and desperation inside the central character's soul, so well portrayed by Nicholas Cage. He makes imaginative use of filmmaking techniques in so many ways: the series of girls on the sidewalk, ALL of whom have the same haunting face, the scene where cage pulls up dead characters from the streets. Some shots shown the beauty of the night time New York skyline, when the sordid details of drug dealers and addicts, hookers, drunks, killers, the dying and the losers are all invisible.

It is a film which also invites you to think about it and this is where the difficulties arise. The more you think about it, the more the imbecilities apparent in mindless drivel like "Double Jeopardy" are also obvious in this more complex and serious work. The fact that the fantastical elements are rooted in a very gory and gritty reality means you cannot ignore the inconsistencies as you might in a stream-of-consciousness fantasy such as "The Matrix", which did not even bother making up any rules as it went along. Both "Double Jeopardy" and "Dead" depict a very violent vehicle crash, which MUST have killed or at least badly injured the occupants. Yet, in both films the occupants are able to scramble out of the upturned wrecks and run away, just as Tom and Jerry can spring back to life seconds after being squashed by a garden roller. Of course, no inconvenient policemen show up to check the drunken paramedics' breath or charge them with leaving the scene of a crash. In both films, the crashes are irrelevant to the main thread of the story and could easily have been omitted to reduce both the budget and the idiocy count.

Similarly, the paramedics' manager has no hesitation about assigning an obviously unfit driver to shift after shift and does not ask embarrassing questions about the wreck. Nor does he force Cage to see a counsellor, or sack or suspend him. Is the New York ambulance service this deep in trouble? Maybe Scorsese is trying to portray an appalling unending nightmare where you cannot even escape by being sacked, just as even the terminally ill patient cannot escape to the peace of death, but is continually dragged back by zealous doctors to suffer further agony. All I felt after a while was that the story was not going anywhere and the tiresome absurdities undermined any interest I had in exploring the characters' spiritual misery.

The Insider (1999)

Genuinely adult entertainment

[8 November 1999]

After an appalling 1999 at the cinema, I at last found a wonderful film to rival and even surpass the wickedly funny Election. "The Insider" has it all: an enthralling true story, a vitally important subject, moral complexity, superb craftsmanship, intelligent writing, excellent and passionate acting, and interesting and morally muddled characters. Even the "heroic" whistleblower is portrayed as a flawed and hesitant person who was quite content to enjoy an enviable lifestyle for years on the basis of his highly paid job at a tobacco giant. He frankly admits that his main motivation for taking the job was money, with the self-deluding hope that he might make a useful contribution to research. As a recent British immigrant, I found it hard to scrape up much sympathy when he was forced to leave his luxury home and was sadly reduced to living in a pleasant suburb and driving a Volvo estate - a pretty high living standard by European yardsticks.

Similarly, Mike Wallace was portrayed as a mixture of political calculation, professional pride and personal vanity. The decision to water down the "60 minutes" expose under legal challenge was shown as shabby and shameful, but not wholly unprincipled.

The only person shown as wholly pure and devoted to revealing the truth was Al Pacino's dedicated producer/investigator. This was a noticeable flaw in the writing; if all the other main players are shown as crooked or morally compromised, why is he spared? But this is to quibble about a detail in a most worthwhile project. My main regret is that so few feature films are dedicated to important factual issues. A cursory glance at any major newspaper reveals dozens of potentially enthralling films which would not only enlighten the audience, but be far more entertaining than most of the fictional drivel I have seen in recent years.

Guinevere (1999)

You cannot be serious, Ms Wells

[11 October 1999]

After reading various enthusiastic reviews of Guinevere, I emerged from the cinema wondering if these critics and I had seen the same film. Are we expected to take the story or any of these characters seriously? Is it possible that any appealing young woman intelligent enough to earn a BA could be deceived by this crassly predatory con man? Stephen Rea plays an even less attractive version of the walking Irish cliche he portrayed in "Angie" - dark, rumpled good looks, smooth charm, gift of the gab, etc. However, in Guinevere his character has the extra ethnic disadvantage of roaring alcoholism and the tiresome habit of spouting pseudo-Marxist diatribes against the upper classes.

Admittedly, there is no accounting for taste, especially in sexual matters. Yet you hope that even someone as totally gullible and inexperienced as Harper Sloane (even her name is a crass cliche) might be offput by the explicit warnings from the earlier "Guinevere" played by Ileana Douglas....especially when her prophecies come true and Connie sends Harper out to earn the household income in a burger bar, while he stays at home, presumably in an artistic trance or an alcoholic stupor.

It is difficult to see what artistic tuition or inspiration Connie provides his "Guineveres" that they could not obtain more easily at the public library or evening classes. Sloan does not even take a photograph throughout her relationship with Connie, so it is difficult to see how her later career as a successful photographer owes anything to his mentorship. The one piece of career guidance he is seen to offer her is unbelievable. At a hospital, he leaves her alone in a room with one of his friends, who is even less attractive and more alcoholic than himself and is strapped down to a bed undergoing drastic detox treatment. He urges Sloane to document his incoherent pal's agony in photographs. Sloane does not get as far as taking pictures, because the drunk urinates all over her. Connie berates her for not taking photographs, declaring "This is hard....this is work!!" Well, no it isn't Connie; it is vile, degrading and humiliating and only a pathetic old Marxist lush like you (or a lousy screenwriter) could think otherwise.

Sloane's mum asks Connie what he has against women his own age. The answer is obvious, though not spoken in the film - any woman his own age would see through him in a maximum of three seconds. Also if she was sufficiently deranged to share a home with him, she would insist he do some honest work. Curiously, her mum looks more attractive and vibrantly sexual than the wan and compliant Sloane.

When Sloane first tries to leave, Connie says that both he and Sloane will know when it is the right time for her to leave. Eventually even Sloane's immature brain clicks into gear. When Connie is lying desperately ill in a crummy motel room and sends her across the road for a bottle of liquor, she disappears to get a life - and presumably a boyfriend who is not old enough to be her father.

With so many talented performers and technicians on show here, it is a great shame that they were not provided with a better screenplay. There may be good reasons for a young woman to associate with an older man, but this film provides only an unsavory and compelling argument for sticking to your own generation for sexual and intellectual companionship.

Double Jeopardy (1999)

Terrible script, wonderful details

[8 October 1999]

The idiocies and plot loopholes in Double Jeopardy beggar belief. The biggest ones I noticed were:

1) Double Jeopardy itself: YES, you can be prosecuted twice for killing the same person, as numerous real lawyers have pointed out. Double Jeopardy protects you only from being tried twice for THE SAME OFFENSE. If Ashley's character killed her husband "again" in 1999, that would constitute a separate offense at a different time and place from the first "murder" in 1993. Pity that she relied on such bogus legal "advice" from the two "lawyers" in the film. I assume that neither the writer nor Paramount Pictures bothered to do 5 minutes research on this key plot point.

2) The plotting husband apparently had no difficulty getting his hands on his son's $2 million trust fund, which contained the life insurance payout, to fund his luxurious lifestyle.

3) Ashley's character was paroled after only 6 years in prison for cold blooded murder.

4) After she broke into the school, the pursuing police vehicle turned over so violently that anyone inside MUST have been killed, badly injured or at least temporarily stunned - yet they had no problems scrambling out of the upturned wreck, resuming their pursuit of our very athletic, uninjured young heroine and arresting her.

5)The heroine had the advantage of having the dumbest parole officer on the planet - he handcuffed her to the car while it was parked on the ferry deck, left her alone (what would have happened if the ferry started to sink with her cuffed to the vehicle?) and of course he left the keys in the ignition so she could start it and attempt to escape.

6) No one on the ferry apparently noticed anything when Ashley started her parole officer's car and rammed the bright red car off the deck into the water.

7) The heroine apparently had no difficulty getting the gun aboard the airliner for the flight to New Orleans.

8) She also had the benefit of the dumbest murderer in the world. Her husband did not bother killing her quickly when she was completely at his mercy - he simply shut her inside a coffin at the cemetery, with a lighter and gun so she could shoot her way out.

9) Her parole officer seemed at times too stupid to find his own backside in the dark, yet he had no problems keeping track of our rapidly moving heroine as she raced around the country. Of course, he had no problems finding her again and again in a crowded, rain soaked New Orleans, where just about everyone seems to be concealed beneath an umbrella.

10) The apparently by-the-book parole officer cooked up a bizarre blackmail scenario to entrap the husband, instead of simply handing him over to the local police, along with the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

In a genre of movie which depends so much on clever plotting, the above defects stuck out like a gorilla in a kindergarten. As compensation, the Pacific North West scenery is magnificent, the New Orleans street and cemetery scenes are wonderfully atmospheric, the art gallery and other interior sets are splendid, the cinematography is top notch, and Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones are very talented and watchable. The technical and artistic workers deserved an infinitely better script as the basis for their obvious efforts.

Stigmata (1999)

Shame about the technical aspects

[28 September 1999]

Countless films have wonderful cinematography, special effects, sound, editing, etc., but appalling scripts. With Stigmata, it is actually the other way round. The story is intriguing, provocative, off-beat, faithful to many known facts about history, even intelligent in a limited way, but it is served by the ugliest, grainiest photography I have seen in any "professional" film, choppy editing, a hideously over-loud soundtrack and cheesy special effects.

If the purpose of the technicians is to tell the story more effectively, this bunch fail abysmally. The basic story is so powerful and dramatically compelling that it does not need any heavy handed embellishment. If anything, subtle understatement should have been the guideline for all concerned. Instead we get the terrifying development of the stigmata underlined by confusing rapid-cut images and ear-shattering blasts of noise, with all the subtlety of a child writing in block capitals with luridly colored crayons. Utter silence and slow camera movements would have been infinitely more compelling.

Any accusations of blasphemy are plainly ridiculous; the main offense of this movie is not against religion, it is against intelligent and competent film making. It is a pity that the exact nature of the way the ancient script undermines the Catholic Church is not spelled out - the statements that the Kingdom of God is within you and around you, and that the church is not made of wood and stone, are so vague and uncontroversial that it is unclear what the plotting Cardinal is trying to suppress. But at least the end credits give the curious the name of the Gospel of St Thomas if they want to investigate further.

For Love of the Game (1999)

Overlong and poorly written

[28 September 1999]

This film has three massive strikes against it - its length, its confusing flashback structure and its abysmal character development. For non-Americans like me, there is the fourth strike of its cultural parochialism. This is one basketball movie which will leave non-enthusiasts completely cold, unlike the superb "Bull Durham", which provided ample enjoyment even for people who cared nothing about the game. But then "Bull Durham" had a much shorter running time (105 versus 137 minutes), a razor sharp script, a straightforward linear structure and understandable, if sometimes caricatured, characters. Both films enjoyed good performances from very appealing actors, though you have to admit that Kelly Preston cannot hold a candle to the superb Susan Sarandon.

The ponderous buildup towards the inevitable happy endings, both romantic and sporting, seems to take forever. Because it is a "serious" film, these happy endings look doubly forced and unlikely - an aging, injured player achieves a perfect day's pitching against top-notch Major League opponents and an aging philanderer declares true love to a woman who knows he has cheated on her. The corresponding double happy ending in "Bull Durham", even though it is a superbly tongue-in-cheek comedy, looks that much less unlikely and more realistic. A ten years younger Costner hits a record score in MINOR League before retiring gracefully, and he and the gleefully promiscuous Sarandon character establish a tentative relationship, in which neither has any confidence of a lifetime's endurance.

The unlikely behavior of the leading players is continued in the treatment of Preston's daughter - whose very existence is not mentioned until deep into the film. The delightful and talented Jena Malone is provided with the feeblest of excuses for running away from her devoted mother to her uncaring dopehead dad. Her character's limited presence is a mere sideshow to the main story and she could usefully have been deleted altogether to shorten the excessive running time. Other characters are present for some limited, much needed comic relief, or to provide background to the aging god struggling to achieve a dignified and long overdue exit from the game.

The countless flashbacks confuse both story and character development - most of the time you have little sense of when they occurred relative to the present, there is very little sense of what happened between these episodes and there is even less sense of the leading characters' motivations - e.g. why Preston's character hangs onto this Lothario or how deeply the Costner character feels about her from episode to episode.

Thankfully, the disastrous box office should kill any hope of a sequel, and Kevin may be forced to act his advancing age and seek more appropriate roles and better written scripts.

Election (1999)

Wickedly accurate satire

[23 September 1999]

I think that you need to have been involved in some petty election to fully enjoy this skillfully constructed satire. It reminded me horribly of the British trade union elections I have seen at close quarters...and where I actually sought votes for minor offices. All that conniving, plotting, back-stabbing, vote seeking, speech making, hard work and back stage politicking - for an election which no one outside the organization, and hardly anyone inside, cared about. Similarly Tracy Flick struggles both ruthlessly and heroically to achieve election to a post which no one outside that tiny world even knows about. It might have been a first step in her career up the greasy pole of national politics, but she finishes high school friendless, with no one even signing her yearbook.

The writing, direction, cinematography and performances are superb, with the extra pleasure of seeing Matthew Broderick as a school teacher - 12 years after his role as an absconding high school student in "Ferris Bueller". Now that Alexander Payne's talent, so evident in "Citizen Ruth", has been more than confirmed by his second film, I eagerly look forward to his third film. My favourite film of 1999 so far; definitely 9 out of 10.

Sex and the City (1998–2004)

Public Health Education

[11 September 1999]

Among the numerous comments I have read on "Sex and the City", only one has mentioned AIDS, despite the incredibly reckless behavior of these four female Casanovas. Not one of the characters seems to have heard of AIDS or any other social disease. Remember the health panic in the 1980s, when Hollywood suddenly produced morality tales such as "Fatal Attraction", starring Glenn Close as "The AIDS virus with a carving knife" as one British reviewer unforgettably described her? Even James Bond went celibate for one or two episodes.....Jeeez, this is REALLY serious! Now we have four visibly aging bimbos banging every man in New York without a care in the world....or even without any apparent precautions. Could this be a none-too-subtle way of priming the general public for the idea that much of the official information on AIDS is utter baloney, as an increasing number of medical heretics are arguing? Maybe I am reading too much into this. Perhaps it is simply a case of an unimaginative writer who has run out of ways of exploiting a limited scenario and feels he has to keep up the public's interest by getting half the characters into bed every week - and the other half of them moaning about how they can never find satisfying relationships. The time has definitely come to kill off this series before it slides into utter boredom and embarrassment.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Ambitious, enthralling, disappointing

[17 July 1999]

Eyes Wide Shut is an lengthy exploration of the marriage of two affluent New Yorkers. Alice and Bill have a beautiful apartment, a lovely 7 year old daughter, a Range Rover, pots of money, they are portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise...yet something is lacking. Just as there are several things lacking in this meticulously constructed movie.

She confesses to a powerful infatuation with a naval officer (but they do not have sex). She dances in a very flirtatious manner with a older, handsome Hungarian at a lavish party in a millionaire friend's home (but they do not have sex).

At the same party Bill goes off arm-in-arm with two models (but they do not have sex). He embarks on a weird journey around New York. The daughter of a just-deceased patient kisses him in the same room where her dead pa is lying in bed (but they do not have sex). He goes to a hooker's decrepit apartment and pays her $150 (but they do not have sex). At considerable expense and trouble, Bill then goes to an very exclusive orgy at a magnificent out-of-town mansion (where everyone but he has sex). If this is not proof that doctors are grossly overpaid, I do not know what is.

As George Bernard Shaw said about the institution of marriage, Bill's horribly expensive trip combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. Yet he is either too scared or too faithful to his wife (who is far more gorgeous than any of his potential illicit sexual partners) to take advantage of any of the chances laid before him. He constantly flies close the flame, but does not quite get burnt.

The film is obviously ambitious in so many ways: its meticulous recreation of New York within an English studio, the lavish sets, the impeccable performances from the entire cast, its superlative craftmanship. I particularly appreciated the SOUND...the ticking of the clock in the dead patient's bedroom, the thump of the wooden staff on the floor during the quasi-religious ritual before the orgy. Stanley Kubrick elicits the most intense and moving performance I have ever seen from Tom Cruise. Admittedly, this is like talking about the hottest day ever in Finland, but praise where praise is due.

The story becomes progressively more enthralling, if you can tolerate its 2.5+ hours of plot development. The scenes at the "masked ball" ritual and orgy reek with menace, before and after Bill's exposure before the wealthy degenerates -especially when they threaten him and his family. Their diabolical threats are seemingly underlined in the utterly chilling scene where Bill enters his bedroom after the ball....

Yet the film as a whole is oddly disappointing. It contains so many unresolved elements, such as the costume shop owner and his "daughter"'s apparently promiscuous conduct. Is she really his daughter? Why does her "father" act as the outraged father when he finds her with two men during the night, yet as an ingratiating pimp the next morning? Does the luckless pianist Nick survive the degenerates' wrath after telling Bill about the time and venue of the orgy? Is Bill's evil millionaire friend (well played by Sidney Pollock) telling the truth about Nick and the deceased party girl? Why does Bill react in such a bizarre manner to his adored wife's honest confessions of sexual fantasies - NOT physical infidelities? The atheist Kubrick seems to be adopting the Biblical principle that to look at a woman (or man) lustfully is the same as actual fornication.

Possibly, as one reviewer suggested, Alice is merely inflaming the rather dull Bill's sexual imagination, rather than his jealousy. In which case, why not indulge his libido with his beautiful, loving, faithful and lawfully wedded spouse? For a guy bright enough to be a successful doctor, he is too dumb to recognise a good thing under his own nose.

If these loose ends were present in a film by any other director, they would be criticised as sloppiness. As it is the late great Kubrick, we are supposedly expected to regard them as profound or enigmatic. It is all the more disappointing in view of the extraordinary length of the project's creation...the longest film shoot in history, talk of 100 takes for every scene. If a fraction of that time and effort had gone into a more coherent screenplay, I am sure the end result would have been more satisfactory.

It is worthwhile correcting some of the crazier rumours which circulated before the film's release. Bill and Alice are respectively an ordinary doctor and an ex-art gallery manager - NOT psychiatrists/sexologists. Tom Cruise does NOT wear a blue dress...pity, it might have enlivened the stodgier early half of the movie.

After seeing most of Kubrick's films, I remember them as an indispensable part of my film education and the best times I have spent in cinemas. I keenly anticipated Eyes Wide Shut. I loved parts of it, but feel sad that he did not leave a better farewell letter.

Instinct (1999)

Fascinating premise spoiled by cop-out ending

[4 June 1999]

"Instinct" is based on the fascinating premise of a distinguished scholar (Hopkins) who joins a gorilla family and completely identifies with them to the extent of killing humans who start shooting the apes. Cuba Gooding gives an excellent performance as the psychiatrist who tries to connect with the now mute Professor during his incarceration in the appalling insane unit in one of the vilest prisons in the US. Sadly, the film is weakened by countless cop-outs and omissions:

1) The lack of any explanation of how the professor was so devoted to the apes while being totally estranged from his wife and daughter

2) The complete absence of his wife from the film after a few seconds in an early scene at the airport

3) The hot-cold semi-romantic relationship between Cuba and the daughter (couldn't have anything to do with the fact that he's black and she's white and studio qualms about audience reaction?)

4) The lack of any explanation for the professor's first refusing to speak a word to defend himself and later opening up to a total stranger.

5) The inevitable but still depressing caricatures of brutal prison officers and careerist officials. Equally predictably, the Ugandan park rangers are glimpsed briefly only as anonymous killers before Hopkins kills them - we are not allowed to know them even as caricatures.

It is all the more disappointing when you remember the excellent performances of the leads and some occasional hints at complexity of character and motivation. Examples include:

1) Cuba's temptations to regard this as a superb career launching/book writing opportunity.

2) The fat lazy slob of a prison doctor (who suddenly becomes clean shaven and well dressed!)offers a touching insight into what it means to try to do your best to help extremely unappealing clients in very grim surroundings.

3) The dialogue between Cuba and Hopkins on who is truly free.

Also Philippe Rousellot's cinematography is as magnificent as ever. Like most of the technical contributions, it deserved a far better script as a foundation for a potentially enthralling exploration of humanity and nature.

The Matrix (1999)

Tennis without the net

[2/10 · 6 April 1999]

Calling "The Matrix" a science fiction movie is a massive abuse of the English language. Science fiction presumes a basis in an existing or projected law of science. At least this is the principle which gives substance to the wildest speculations of masters such as Arthur C Clarke (who has a first class physics degree). This film is better categorized as a science fantasy, i.e. one where the authors use the pretence of science as a fig leaf to disguise the total inanity and incoherence of their project. Even fairy tales work within their own framework of law which gives tension and excitement to the surreal adventures. In "The Matrix" laws are not even made up as they go along, as that would impede the next stream-of-consciousness stunt. It makes a great special effect if a character leaps tall buildings at a single bound or recoils from a road surface after falling from a 500 foot building. Unfortunately it also removes any possibility of the audience taking him to be even a far-fetched human character, and hence destroys any possibility of genuine thrills. These creatures can survive being run over by a subway train and even death itself. Hence the most risible Lazarus scene since "ET" -

Keanu is revived from the tomb by the love of a good woman.

You can make tennis easier to play by removing the net and rubbing out the lines; unfortunately you thereby destroy the game. Similarly The Matrix fails to exist as any sort of half-coherent movie if you want a movie to consist of more than a string of sensational images.

Unlike AC Clarke's work, this screenplay fails to betray even a high school awareness of science in "explaining" its universe, the war between machines and humans, or the rationale for the machines sucking the life force of humans - not to mention the hokey insertion of an old style soothsayer into this "scientific" farago.

I give it 2 out 10 - one for sheer chutzpah in raising $60 million on the basis of such a ludicrous script and 1 for set design and special effects combined.

Edtv (1999)

Much funnier than real life version

[6 April 1999]

Edtv rang particular bells for me as the BBC put this idea into practice with a real family around 1974, when compact lightweight video cameras first made this "fly on the wall" documentary approach possible. For weeks a small crew recorded the tedious everyday life of the working class Wilkins family in my home town of Reading, 40 miles west of London. The Wilkins' dirty laundry was aired for national consumption (e.g. Mrs Wilkins' youngest child was not her husband's). Despite the juicy details, the result was dreary beyond belief, despite editing hours of footage down to an hour's transmission a week. It graphically proved the point that most people's ordinary lives are horribly boring to watch. Both in the real life BBC version and the fictional Edtv, working class people were ensnared by money and the "glamour" of TV into providing cheap entertainment by affluent, articulate middle class professionals.

Edtv's hero is as charismatic as Martin Luther King in comparison with the Wilkins, and several weeks of his life condensed into two hours make very enjoyable viewing. The film is hardly a profound examination of the relationship between media and audience, but it illustrates very directly the nonsense of "objective observation" as far as most modern journalism and news coverage are concerned. The media instantly affect whatever they are trying to record, making the TV chief's insistence that Ed carry on his "normal life" (to satisfy the terms of his contract) both hilarious and fatuous (Bravo Rob Reiner for another comedy cameo to match that in "Bullets Over Broadway"). Any pretence of normalcy vanished the second the cameras moved in. As Ed realises too late: "Without privacy there is no dignity". This truism was horribly illustrated in real life by the Wilkins in one unforgettable scene when they discussed their 9 year old's poor school report with the weeping child in front of 10 million viewers. Pity that no one showed Ed a sample of the real life version before he signed his life away to the TV sharks....