cmcastl Reviews

Red River (1948)

Politics prairie-style

[10/10 · 6 August 2023]

I guess it is because I am interested in politics that whilst I enjoy the film for the classic Western it is, whose qualities and virtues, are so well articulated in all the other reviews here, that what fascinates me most about Red River is that it is that rarest of Westerns - although of course High Noon comes to my mind - in that it is subtly but strongly a film about political ideologies, too. Ideologies that determine not just politics in the abstract but in mundane behaviour, the way of doing things and getting things done, both in the Old West and even today as you watch it generations later.

In this case, the ideologies fixing for the shootout are the libertarian/authoritarian at the one end of the street and at the other the democratic (you could say that Republican and the Democrat in American politics). The film directs the debate between both with subtlety, not coming down too heavily on one side or the other, it seems to me, but I think does gently propose that the democratic is better.

Mebbe only the authoritarian Dunson could have grown the herd, got together the men and kept everything together for the trail-blazing which needed to be done. But his 'take no prisoners' leadership ultimately proves his tragic flaw and his men desert him, including the only real friend he ever really had, Groot, for a leader with whom they feel more confident, and relatively safer!

The cowboys would follow Garth to Hell and back if he could give them convincing reasons for the necessity and he would also have had a vote taken on it beforehand. Dunson just says "it is my way.... ' or it is a case of then with him reciting from the Bible burying a hapless cowboy who dared oppose him.

This was just after the 2nd World War when American divisions in politics were reasserting themselves and this film, or perhaps I should say, movie, may have quietly inserted itself into the debate.

But I do watch it too regularly to enjoy it as yet another Hawks classic, great script, direction acting and production values. Not to forget the music of Dmitriy Tiomkin too (and do I hear a sly reference to a Chopin tune in that glorious score?).

I end by mooting that I think there is one missed opportunity for a great line in this film. On the trail, after they have expelled Dunson whom they know will come gunning for them, Garth says to his men when they find themselves caught between raiding Indians ahead or Dunson remorseless on their tail, "Which do you prefer, what lies ahead or behind?" If I had been in the script session at that point I would have suggested one of them reply. 'I would rather face the Injuns!'

Dante's Peak (1997)

I wanted to bump up Dante's Peak ratings because...

[10/10 · 7 March 2021]

... of its kind I think it one of the best scripted and plotted disaster movies I have ever seen.

The special effects still stand well with today but that is not why I have come to praise it not to bury it.

There is a warmth and chemistry in the characters played by Pierce Brosnan, as the vulcanologist, Harry Dalton, and Linda Hamilton as Rachel Wando, the most attractive small town mayor, in the words of one of Dalton's team colleagues, they had ever come across. Within the limited time confines of the plot, their relationship develops believably.

What I particularly like about this film is that at least one third of the film is scene setting. The film does not start with an earthquake to build up to a climax, in the prescription of one of the old movie moguls, but the scene setting is allowed to proceed relatively leisurely within the confines of the time limitations, ratcheting up the tension gradually.

Most of the characters are sympathetically portrayed and when a couple of them perish, there is a genuine pathos and sadness.

The kids are cute without being annoyingly so.

Excellent film score, tender and thunderous by turns as the scene requires.

If I were a teacher of film, I would recommend this to anyone aspiring director as an example of intelligent and economic plotting and scripting for a disaster movie before all Hell breaks loose.

I could and do watch this every few years. That is not the case for most of this genre .

The Holly and the Ivy (1952)

Utterly superb script!

[10/10 · 24 December 2020]

As many have noted, there is superb ensemble playing from a great cast of actors, headed by Sir Ralph Richardson.

I saw it on the TV recently and I just wanted to emphasise what a superb, literate and engaging script is on display by Anatole de Grunwald and its original playright Wynyward Browne.

Anatole de Grunwald was responsible for helping fashion Terence Rattigan's play Flare Path into another superb film 'the Way to the Stars' (1945).

These films may seem dated now but I think they have aged well, with the quality of their writing and their rich depth of feeling. Human frailty is on display but in an understanding, compassionate way and curiously simultaneously both elegant and raw way. They were succeeded, even superseded, by the 'kitchen sink' dramas of playwrights such as John Osborne in 'Look back in anger', and I suppose that was a necessary development, but I think and I hope there will always be a place for such dramatic gems on both stage and screen.

You really care about the characters in the piece, and yes, as one reviewer has said, one wishes it could be made into a series to see what happens to them all next!

Ralph Richardson's clergyman wondering about the continuing relevance of religion in people's lives is a theme just as relevant today as it was nearly seventy years ago when the film was released and will surely be so in another seventy years!

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Absolutely superb cinematography!

[10/10 · 20 October 2020]

I don't need to add to the praise of this film for the direction, acting or script. I hardly need to add what I am going to say now but I will nevertheless say it and cheer on a ten out of ten rating; that apart from all its obvious virtues, I am still amazed at the top notch quality of the cinematography of this 1967 vintage film. As one of the other IMDB reviewers has put it, the cinematography is gritty but beautiful. I have watched it many times now but am still amazed by the sheer visual quality, which almost distracts from the film's other cardinal virtues. There is not a badly shot scene or one which isn't visually gorgeous in its detail or sheen despite what might have been initially considered as a film subject not necessarily to lend itself to such virtues.

Peace on the souls of Haskel Wexler, along with Gregg Toland, two of the greatest cinematographers ever. Even modern technology will never improve upon their artistry.

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

'This England'!

[10/10 · 29 September 2020]

I re-watched 'A Canterbury Tale' for the umpteenth time recently. I have contributed other IMDB film reviews but I now wonder why I have never contributed one for this film, for this is one of my top ten favourite films. If I could rate it on this website at a thousand rather than just ten I would!

I want to make one particular point. This film is utterly unique in British cinema. I have never since seen its like and do not expect to again unless there is cinema in Heaven. There was another film called 'Green grow the rushes' (1951), with a young Richard Burton, who also starred the Last Days of Dolwyn (1949). I might also mention that other great Powell and Pressburger film 'I know where I am going' (1945). These films I mention because they give some sense of a definite time and a definite place, a genius loci, as it is termed, but for me none so poetically, magically and mystically as 'A Canterbury Tale', particularly as the film was framed in the drama of wartime.

I made my own Glastonbury pilgrimage after watching 'A Canterbury Tale'!

The overwhelming majority of films then and now focus on such themes as power, intrigue, class, war, money, sex and crime etc. That is fair enough, as it is in what the film going masses are most interested. Film is for the most part mass entertainment, for good or evil. Powell and Pressburger were, however, interested in making films altogether deeper. 'A Canterbury Tale' has been described as just one in the series of WWII films on the theme on 'why we fight' but I feel it is so much more than that; it is also a film on 'why we live' or how we should live, at least in England.

If you try to look at the England around you, not just politically, economically or sociologically, but with a deeper, a metaphysical sense of what England is, its history, its meaning, its look, its feel, both in city, town and countryside, that is the theme of this glorious film, as exemplified by its mysterious central character Thomas Colpeper, magisterially played by Eric Portman. Along with the novel 'A Glastonbury Romance' by John Cowper Powys, which I would love to see turned into a film or TV series, 'A Canterbury Tale' takes you from the everyday to what surrounds the everyday. Most of us do not appreciate, to borrow a phrase from poet W B Yeats, 'what unearthly stuff surrounds a mighty scene'. The mighty scene of this film is England, focussing on Kent and Canterbury, and pilgrims on their way through it, as pilgrims wherever we are we all are.

I consider that you are not an Englishman worth the name if you do not suppress a throb of emotion of seeing Canterbury Cathedral standing holy, proud and defiant in the scenes depicting the bomb-struck city.

Michael Powell once said that all you could hope to do was make a film as if a nest in which a magic bird might seek to make its home. Well, he and Pressburger magnificently did so in this film, peace on both their souls. Watch this film to see the magical bird sing in it! 'This England.'

2010 (1984)

Utterly disappointing! Apalling missed opportunity.

[3/10 · 22 September 2020]

Anybody who cares to review my reviews for IMDB will see how I exult in great films but this is the only one, so far, to which I give such a low rating.

A missed opportunity of a glorious sequel!

Previously, in '2001', a genius of a director is paired with a genius of a science fiction writer and they produce one of the greatest science fiction films which was ever made or perhaps ever will be made, even allowing for the unimaginable film technology of the future.

In '2010', a genius science fiction writer is paired with a not so great film director and a mediocre film results. And my science fiction/artistic heart bleeds!

I think there is a moral here, somewhere, about how to create magic or mediocrity in films.

I wonder what went wrong? Was it budgetary or time constraints or could a more appropriate director in the pairing have come somewhere close to equalling the original?

The only reason I gave this film three stars is that the special effects are pretty good. I like the space ships and interiors.

Also, while Roy Schneider gives a great performance as Doctor Floyd he is Roy Schneider and still not the William Sylvester of the original. Helen Mirren is brilliant as the Russian lady cosmonaut but then she has a genuine Russian heritage upon which she drew and when was she poor in any film in which she appeared? Jon Lithgow is apparently auditioning for the artistic subtlety he subsequently brings to the tv comedy series 'Third Rock from the Sun' (which actually I love!).

Perhaps the producers thought they could produce a decent sequel cheaper? Well, you never can for a great, great film. Sequels seldom work, one of the iron rules of Hollywood and how that rule has been proved true in this case!

Watch this film only to go back to the original and see the difference between utter genius and Hollywood run of the mill.

Duty Free (1984–1986)

I just felt I had to increase the ratings for Duty Free....

[10/10 · 31 July 2020]

Alright, this is not classic comedy after Oscar Wilde or Noel Coward but I find it happily heart-warming and constantly tickles my fancy no matter how often I watch the episodes.One of my favourites of its kind.

The writing, by Eric Chappell and Jean Warr, is, I think, quite simply as good as it gets for light TV comedy and a lot better than much TV comedy can manage today; it could be a little risque but never smutty. The laughter of the studio audience was not forced, but genuine and it was frequent. I almost always felt like chuckling when they did.

As has been previously noted, the ensemble playing by the quartet of main characters, played by Keith Baron and Gwen Taylor, as the first British couple and Joanna Van Gyseghem and Neil Stacy as the second was just perfect, a masterclass of its kind. They enjoyed and inhabited their roles to perfection. Comedy acting can be just as demanding as high drama.

Keith Baron plays David Pearce, the perpetual would-be Don Juan who wonders why he hasn't got further in life and in love, and his loving and long-suffering wife Amy is played by Gwen Taylor, whom I readily confess I really fancied when she was in her prime in this series. I never understood what David saw in Joanna Van Gyseghem's Linda Cochran, whose character, was superficially attractive but ultimately brittle; but, it was, of course, the engine of the plot. Neil Stacy was perfect as the stolid and unromantic but thoroughly decent husband to Linda.

If WWII POW films have been held up as showing the British character so is a series like this, in showing the British on holiday, when temporarily all the normal rules of everyday life, and the individual history which is its long train, are suspended and some new departure seems possible, although ultimately there must come the realisation there isn't. This is just a holiday. You go home at the end of it.

The British have all too human frailties, but still remain thoroughly English even when mired in them, somehow engagingly so.

My favourite episodes were 'Neville', brilliantly played by Philip Fox, as a gloriously gawky go-between between David and Linda, 'Cause Celebre', in which David rediscovers his old trade unionist passion in supporting exploited Spanish waiters, which makes Amy remember why she fell in love with David in the first place and The Party, in which Amy does a spirited cover on Marlene Dietrich's classic role the Blue Angel which makes David realise why he originally fell in love with Amy.

I should be remiss if I forget the excellent comic characterisation of Carlos Douglas as the kindly but sometimes perplexed and over-worked Spanish waiter.

Sadly, Keith Baron is no longer with us and the others are now elderly but in this series they have set in aspic the perfect light-hearted British comedy romance, but one which is not without some deeper bass notes gently sounding from time to time below the froth. Bravo to all concerned!

Sapphire & Steel (1979–1982)

Unique TV drama

[10/10 · 11 June 2020]

I don't have that much to add but I do have this to stress, that it was unique. Virtually every TV drama series ever made can be easily situated in a genre; but Sapphire and Steel was unique.

It was, to be sure, supernatural drama, but not along the lines of the conventional diabolical or ghostly. It was metaphysical drama. Metaphysics as drama. Kabbala as drama. Concepts of time, space and other planes of existence as themes for drama.

Drama not just to titillate or relax but make you think about the confines of your own existence and what high strangeness might surround it.

From W.B Yeats: The Old Stone Cross

'Not knowing what unearthly stuff Rounds a mighty scene.'

There was nothing like it before and there has been nothing like it since. (As one TV commentator noted about another more conventional supernatural series, TV prefers the mundane.)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988 TV Movie)

Very disappointing for such a classic tale in the Holmes casebook

[3/10 · 3 June 2020]

I am glad to find that I am not alone in my disappointment with this most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Most people have heard of this Holmes story if they know of no others.

Virtually every other episode in the two series is first-rate in acting, script, drama and production values and I don't know of any critic who seriously disputes that Jeremy Brett is the definitive screen Sherlock Holmes but something falls terribly flat with this episode. I just felt I had to mark down the episode because I feel strongly it should not have come to this but for whatever reason did.

I can't quite put my finger on it but would venture that either through slack direction, mediocre script or lack of atmosphere, and the 'Baskerville hound' sequences themselves are I consider but poorly dramatised, the whole episode just falls quite flat and limp.

This was my disappointed reaction when I first saw it first screened all those years ago and the intervening years have not changed my opinion.

I watch it now out of a sense of duty when I see the series revived on cable but was frankly glad when the two and half hours was over.

Ever Decreasing Circles (1984–1989)

As good as TV comedy gets

[10/10 · 19 May 2020]

I thoroughly agree with the other reviewers that Richard Briars, Penelope Wilton and Paul Egan excel in Ever Decreasing Circles which, for all of them, I do think, feature their best TV comic performances. Paul Egan in a commentary for the DVD box interestingly notes that this was his first TV comic series; previously he had played far more serious TV roles, notably as a gangster in Big Breadwinner Hogg (ITV, 1969). The main actors are ably supported by the superb scripts of John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, and by many fine supporting actors notably Stanley Lebor and Geraldine Newman as Howard and Hilda.

My particular favourite episode is Housework: Season 2 in which Martin's (Richard Briars) obsessive-compulsive tendencies and over-estimation of his own abilities, outside his own narrow compass, get the better of him and he has to be rescued by Paul (Peter Egan). There is much pathos expertly unearthed by Richard Briar's portrayal of the hapless Martin and, there is much compassion subtly and winningly displayed by Peter Egan's Paul coming to the rescue.

Ever Decreasing Circles is about the most subtle TV humour I think I ever saw, which is I why I feel it is worth making this effort to praise it. That particular episode Housework crystallised my view that the best humour is more than just wit or a belly-laugh although the series had plenty of those (particularly the 1984 Christmas special The Party). The best humour explores the logic and limitations of character and the human condition, even if we still cannot quite define what humour really is or why we laugh, although everyone from ancient philosopher Aristotle has tried. At its best, and most of the episodes are sterling, Ever Decreasing Circles considers, apparently in a light-hearted way but for the discerning with a deeper resonance, the sentence of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau that 'the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation'; particularly if you have the effortlessly superior, if fortunately sunnily dispositioned Paul as a neighbour.

Chance in a Million (1984–1986)

Comedy in a Million

[10/10 · 28 April 2020]

Watching Chance in a Million again makes me think of Fleabag, because of the quirkiness of the writing, the gloriously rich characterisation and the sheer intelligence behind it all. Rare in a TV comedy of any decade.

There are probably some high mathematical theories, as well as, to be sure, religious and philosophical ones, which play with the question as to whether there is coincidence and what is its essential nature, but the writers of this series, Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen, my compliments to them, provided us with witty and pure comic mirth based on the possibility of such premises.

Simon Callow, classically trained actor that he is, completely inhabited the part of the happy-go-lucky, well-intentioned but you-dare-not-cross him Tom Chance, and as to Brenda Blethyn in her prime, well, I don't know of any man, young or old, who watched the series, and that certainly includes me, who wouldn't have ardently desired her to be the Lady Librarian Love of his Life!

Shelley (1979–1983)

TV comedy was sooo good back in the eighties...

[10/10 · 15 April 2020]

I too have caught up with this on British Forces TV! It usually followed the Dukes of Hazzard. Something of a curate's egg is British Forces TV, i.e. 'good in parts'.

There is the occasional sharp, edgy comedy now, such as Fleabag, but they are more rare. Also most comedy these days seems politically neutered.

Not sure what I have to add but I want to say something, if only to add an additional review further to commend it to those who have yet to discover it.

So, Shelley has some really sharp and funny writing, indeed amongst the best I ever heard in a TV situation comedy. I often found myself laughing out aloud which I don't often do at TV comedy these days! Sometimes the writing was very near the bone in a way you would not find in most TV comedy these days.

One of the writers was Andy Hamilton, who is IMHO, and I am sure in his, one of the best British comedy writers of the past two generations. However, other contributory writers were pretty good too. When you saw, however, that an episode was written by Andy Hamilton you knew you were in for a treat.

I am not sure what to make of Hywel Bennett's Shelley. I am ambivalent about his character which is probably part of his appeal. Shelley's wife Fran left him with their daughter because he couldn't settle down to a career and so fulfil his duties as husband and father. Not exactly an example to follow, whatever your political orientation. He redeemed himself, to some degree, in that he was very witty, could be kind and politically his heart was in the right place. However, I personally wish that at the very end of the final series he was shown finally ready to rejoin the rat race, if only for the sake of being reunited with his family or starting another one.

The supporting actors read like a Who's Who of British character actors. It would be almost invidious to pick out just the one but David Ryall, who was his landlord in the final series, was one of my favourites. He provided a masterclass in subtle, humane comedy support. Ars vita, vita brevis. 'Art endures although life is short'. Almost, including Hywel Bennett, all the major actors who appeared in the series, have now long gone to that great casting session in the Sky, peace be on their souls. However, thank Heaven that their gift for entertaining us survives them!

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)

Nine out of ten.

[9/10 · 23 January 2020]

For me, this version only lacks ten out of ten because I think Leslie Bricusse's tunes aren't quite front rank but the songs have a few magical moments.

This, my favourite version, has four glorious virtues:

• Peter O'Toole, at his most pedantic, in the best sense of that word. I would have liked him as a teacher.

• Petula Clark, the musical comedy star, and indeed the girl every Englishman would have liked to marry when in her prime.

• A gloriously sentimental yet witty script by playwright Terence Rattigan. I think it constitutes, in effect, one of his best plays.

• Excellent supporting acting and production values.

My favourite scene is when they first properly meet up in Pompeii, by accident or is it by fate, and get to know each other and then Petula Clark's character realises she is falling in love with Mr. Chips. The classical setting for this realisation at the Oracle of Apollo provides a mythological shimmer.

She thanks him for being given a tour by the world expert on Pompeii. He drily responds that he is not. 'Just one of them.' Beautifully and drily delivered by Peter O'Toole, who is definitely my favourite Mr. Chips. A little stiff in his persona but you sense the potential of a witty and humane man beneath the gown, which she is destined to bring out. So it is Apollo for once and not Eros who is the matchmaker. The music for these scenes is for me the best in the film.

When she finally proclaims her love, he protests that he does not consider himself suitable for her. 'You don't choose who you fall in love with.' She simply replies. Rattigan was always good with depicting woman in their feminine fullness.

Another of Rattigan's wondrous lines, which has always had deep historical resonances for me. Mr. Chips' German friend Max has been recalled to Nazi Germany - this is just before the War. He looks around Brookfield School, making his philosophical goodbye of it, and observes to Mr. Chips: 'How lucky you British are and how little you appreciate it.'

The final scenes of the film are unbearably poignant.

Goodbye Mr. Chips and God bless.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2019)

Better than I expected.

[7/10 · 8 January 2020]

No spoilers! I promise.

I have always watched the Star Wars franchise for the special effects rather than the plot and characterisation. I read in my younger days serious science fiction writers, such as Arthur C. Clark or Stanislaus Lem, and there has never been, in my view, any serious science fiction in Star Wars! Just cod mythology. But done with verve and excellent special effects.

But, as I say, the special effects as were gorgeous as ever and I have given it quite a high rating because I found it unexpectedly moving. I won't say why, of course, but J.J. Abrams is a first class sci-fi director and it shows. He rejuvenated the Star Trek franchise and he has rejuvenated this. The references and recapitulations of previous Star War films was expertly and movingly done.

There was almost a Shakespearian depth to some of the plotting.

It is interesting that Mark Hamill said that George Lucas would work without actors if he could .Well, there was no clunckiness to the script of this film and I think it tidied everything up in a nice Tattooine bow as neatly as one could have hoped.

May the force be with you.

The Bishop's Wife (1947)

The very best of the old Hollywood Christmas films

[10/10 · 7 January 2020]

I can't think of very much else to add to all the eloquent reviews previously made but just to add my voice and vote to the general consensus of opinion that this is the very best of all the Christmas movies, or, as we our side of the Pond call them, films. 'It's a wonderful life' (1946) is a very fine film indeed but this tops it.

I watch it every year; usually twice. If the BBC didn't reliably screen it every year then I would simply buy the DVD.

I keep thinking nearly every other moment as I watch it that a movie, I mean film, like this simply couldn't be made any more; it just couldn't. Nor could 'It's a wonderful life' (1946) for that matter. Hollywood or any other media organisation simply no longer has the knack, or the magic; perhaps even the belief for such properly feel-good films.

Michael Powell, the great British director, observed that all you could hope to do is make a film, sorry, movie and hope that a magic bird came to nest in it. Well, it most certainly did in this one, God bless the souls of all who were involved in the making of it.

It is the perfect synthesis of the old Hollywood magic at its best: - direction, acting, script-writing and production values all top-rated. Not to omit what is the icing on this Christmas cake, the gloriously moving music of Hugo Friedhofer. His music for the Best Years of Our Lives (1946) also helped to seal the classic quality of that film. I am writing this review as I listen to the music on Youtube and feel Christmassy all over again.

I have always thought of Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol as like a fifth gospel. Well, The Bishop's Life is a fifth Gospel in movies, I mean films.

I observed to my Roman Catholic parish priest recently, for whom the film is also a favourite, he mentioned it in a Christmas sermon, how nicely done it is that it is the apparently agnostic Professor Wutheridge, who senses the nature of Dudley, the angel, most strongly.

Cary Grant as the Angel is superbly cast. Director Henry Kloster was perfectly right. There is a certain ambiguity and ambivalence in Cary Grant's portrayal which serves the drama well, which brings to my mind the Biblical verse: 'And the angels saw that the daughters of the earth were fair.' Genesis 6. David Niven is perfect as the stuffy, British bishop. The recasting of the roles was a master stroke. And Loretta Young is, well, gloriously Loretta Young. God rest all their souls.

And a Happy Christmas every year to all who watch this film with pleasure. To quote from Charles Dickens: 'God bless us every one'.

Jane Eyre (1943)

A miracle of compression!

[10/10 · 12 November 2019]

I studied Jane Eyre at school as a teenager. I seem to recall that the book is about 600 pages long. I have seen several versions for TV and film and it is quite amazing how all that is most essential in the book, most memorable by way of character and plot, is compressed to an hour and a half in the 1943 Hollywood film! I say again a miracle of compression.

Also - in terms of the brooding, physical presence Orson Welles is for me the best Edmund Rochester.

Joan Fontaine is no 'plain Jane' as Charlotte Bronte had envisaged, but the exquisite vulnerability of her performance, managing to be both emotionally fragile and spiritually tough, in her every gesture is a masterclass in the best Hollywood acting.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Profoundly disappointed, a missed opportunity

[3/10 · 11 August 2019]

Very, very, very few sequels are as good as the originals. The scriptwriter William Goldmann may have written that in Hollywood 'nobody knows anything' but there is at least this one iron law, from which everyone should learn.

Frin'stance, where sci-fi films are concerned, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey was 2010 and it was a feeble sequel to the original, even though it featured the original script-writer Arthur C. Clarke. Its director Peter Hyams simply wasn't up to the job. The genius of the original was due to the collaboration of Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick.

Neither has director Denis Villeneuve proved, in my view, up to the challenge of Blade Runner: 2049. And yet once again, one of the original screenwriters collaborated on this film, too; Hampton Fancher.

I fear that great films may simply be unrepeatable in their greatness. The Godfather Part II was the exception which proves the rule.

Ridley Scott, director of the original, cannot by himself guarantee a great film. He needs great collaborators to match his genius for visualisation but in the original he had them.

In the words of British director Michael Powell, with a film all you can do is built a nest and hope a magic bird makes a nest in it. This is what the original Blade Runner did. This is what the sequel simply does not do.

K... to specifics. There is at the end of the original film an open ending, an ending of hope, through all the rainy, futuristic darkness which was gone before. This sequel is just shot through with Gallic pessimism, without even any redeeming Gallic wit. If you like Gallic pessimism in your films, so be it. But I don't see why 2049 had to be a Gallic film. I personally wanted it to be a Hollywood one. And it was so plodding. Ridley Scott said the sequel was too long by an hour but it wouldn't have been plodding had it been engaging. Gallic films are not known for their warmth and human engagement. (K... Denis Villeneuve may be French Canadian but that counts as French in my view.)

The visuals are gorgeous but Denis Villeneuve wasn't responsible for those. With modern special effect, they would have been glorious whoever had directed it.

Also, none of the major actors in this film had the charisma of the originals, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Sean Young. Yes, Harrison Ford does make a guest appearance in the sequel but that is all it is.

Ryan Gosling is a decent enough actor but he is inferior to Harrison Ford's brooding, dignified and manly presence in the original. Harrison Ford, who was in his prime, carried the original in the same way that Hamlet carries, well, Hamlet. Ryan Gosling cannot carry the sequel. None of the female leads equal the glorious beauty and tragic femininity of Sean Young. There is no successor in the sequel to Rutger Hauer, God rest his soul, but then how could there be?

Jared Leto makes a serviceable corporate villain as Niander Wallace but is still outclassed by Joe Turkell as the cerebral and amoral but not so brutal Eldon Tyrell of the original.

I am not saying that Denis Villeneuve is a bad director but just that he wasn't right for this film. (And I liked a lot Peter Hyam's Capricorn One). Nor that Ryan Gosling is not a good actor but he was not right for this film.

I go back to the words of Michael Powell. 'All one can hope for is to build and nest a hope that a magic bird will fly to it and makes it nest.' The original Blade Runner is a nest which a magical bird made its own. In my opinion, this cannot be said for 2049.

However, Ridley Scott speaks of the possibility of a tre-quel. I would still like to see that!

The Awakening (I) (2011)

Missed opportunity

[3/10 · 11 August 2019]

Sorry, but I find this film disappointing. I am admittedly repeating criticisms I have read of the film, but with which I heartily agree.

Beautifully photographed with sumptuous settings in fine old country houses, strong performances from the heart-stoppingly beautiful Rebecca Hall and the manly Dominic West, just don't save this film from being convoluted, contrived, uninvolving and ultimately dull. I watched this film through to the end only because it took me half way through to realise that I could have saved about an hour and a half of my life not watching it at all but felt that I had to persevere - possibly so I could write this critique?

I kept on thinking of classical ghost-story writer MR James and longed for his tighter, more mysterious and far more menacing dramatising of the supernatural - which is a skill which seems to elude most modern screenwriters, including for this film.

One thing I will admit was that, although the film was less than the sum of its parts, it did have an atmosphere about it which lingered.

In case you are interested, MR James said towards the end of his life that he did believe in ghosts and hauntings but that 'we don't know the rules'.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

Everything depended upon the casting of Moses

[6/10 · 28 January 2018]

Ridley Scott has never made a bad looking film but he has seldom made an excellent one.

Several reasons, including:

* He seems incapable of discriminating between a bad script and a good script.

* He is dependent upon the casting.

But this was a film worth watching. It caught the majesty, simultaneously barbaric and spiritual, of its Biblical source.

The script was variable but had its moments.

But what let this film down was the total miscasting of Christian Bale who showed no depth in the role of Moses, at all. Charlton Heston was more nuanced in the Ten Commandments and Charlton Heston was not noted of being a nuancing actor!

But the film, for those of us interested in the Bible, was still worth watching for its production values, some powerfully mystic moments, such as the falling star precipitating the parting of the Red Sea, and the utterly gorgeous Maria Valverde as Moses' wife Zipporah.

The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950)

Thy don't make them like this anymore

[10/10 · 13 March 2017]

I watched this film when it came on recently mainly because it was noted as a reference point for Gregory's Girl (1980).

Thoroughly entertaining but at least fifteen minutes, probably half an hour too short. For me, it ended shockingly quickly.

The attempt by Alistair Sim and Margaret Rutherford as joint heads of a boys and girls school, thrown together by an incompetent bureaucracy, to hoodwink parents and school inspectors comes to such a sharp stop that I can't help thinking that some over-drastic pruning was at work here.

Nothing illustrates the British class system than educational opportunity and it is on exhibition here during the final year of the first British post-war Labour government.

I suppose you could say that the Saint Trinian's series was a sort of sequel but, however funny that was, it was devoid of the subtlety of social commentary that this film was. However, someone obviously noted the potential of Joyce Grenfall and cast her in that series. Alistair Sim also, in the first such film.

As Good as It Gets (1997)

Emotional intelligence

[9/10 · 12 March 2017]

What this film has and which no Marvel comic blockbuster has is 'emotional intelligence'. In this case, basically, the film is emotionally literate. It is dealing with the raw emotions of real people.

Speaking as a guy, I don't like that Jack Nicholson's character Melvin, for all his flaws, ends up so much in debit to Helen Hunt's character Carol and her hard edges. Guys aren't always in the wrong and it is usually the case that the gals like to put us permanently on the defensive. I don't like that in real life and I don't like that in film. Helen Hunt's character Carol has an ailing son for whom to care and she is a fierce mother, there is nothing wrong with that, but Helen Hunt's Carol is the kind of woman from whom perhaps someone like Melvin should actually have stayed away. She has some very hard edges to her, for whatever reason, that could cut a guy every which way, although, to be fair to her, you sense that in her fierceness she can show a fierce loyalty, too. Speaking as a guy, however, I am not sure it is a happy ending for OCD but otherwise sensitive Melvin to end up with her.

But I say again that what I like about the film is its emotional intelligence. It is about the ordinary human emotions, the emotions which make us human, or lacking which make us not so human. So many films today are emotionally illiterate for young males in America, Europe or Asia or wherever, who are emotionally illiterate but want something sexy in the picture and in which people get killed and things get blown up every ten minutes or so. For the Hollywood accountants, this is what puts bottoms on seats, brings in the dough.

I am not sure that 'As good as it gets' could be made today for where is he Jack Nicholson or the Helen Hunt with the subtlety to make it.

The film has one of my all-time favourite scenes. Melvin has been to see his psychiatrist but he is still not happy afterwards, about his life or life in general. So he appeals to the people in the waiting room: "Is this as good as it gets?" Is this not the question that any intelligent person must have asked themselves at some point? Repeatedly.

Predator 2 (1990)

Superb sequel to Predator

[10/10 · 10 March 2017]

Just watched Predator 2 again. Forgot how good it was.

There is always the danger of the law of diminishing returns with sequels but not with this one. Danny Glover is a superb protagonist against the Predator. It was brave and right of the producers to let him, a black American, be the star. He carries the film marvellously. There aren't that many big budget films which will risk a black actor in the lead, even today.

This a violent, often gory sci-fi thriller but it is a master-class in how a film of this genre should be done. Well-produced, scripted and acted. Excellent special effects for the time. The Predators really are ugly sons of *******, beautifully realised. All the supporting actors support to the full. It is, at the time of writing, sad to be reminded of how good the late, great Bill Paxton, God rest his soul, could be as a supporting actor. He cornered the market in being killed by aliens of one kind or another!

This is a great sci-fi thriller but any great sci-fi thriller ought to harbour a philosophical moral or two. This one does.

There was a time when human beings could only survive by being hunters, as well as gatherers, and I have no problem with that, at all. But when hunting becomes merely a Sunday or safari sport that is something with which I, as many like me, do have a problem. And these Predator aliens mirror this dilemma. You sense that with their superior technology they know the risk to them from their prey is usually minimal. It is good to see them get their come-uppence.

IMHO The subsequent Alien versus Predator film was simply silly.

The Rewrite (2014)

Surprisingly good Hugh Grant vehicle

[8/10 · 8 March 2017]

Yes, I liked it. More than I thought I would; much more.

I am not the hugest fan of Hugh Grant, but this film played well to both his strengths and weaknesses as an actor and, well, to the background of his life, shall we say. I salute his ability to accept his strengths and weaknesses in accepting the part. The film suggested that, apart from the louche aspects of English writer Keith Michael's life, the part he plays, the chap has a heart and deserves redemption. He just needed the right girl to awaken it and also to awaken his inspiration. He deserved that filip both as character and person.

Marisa Tomei was never lovelier than in her girl-next-door role. It is a pity we haven't seen more of her on screen in the meantime.

So Hollywood but I love it! There is this dismissive attitude to feel-good movies, as they are called. But I love 'em. Those that succeed,as this does, have this pleasant, positive and life- affirming aura about them. Hollywood's greatest invention, along with the Western. Shakespeare's King Lear is for manic-depressives!

In this film, miracles can happen in middle America, that great space in middle of the country that the elites of both sides of the country fly over without caring about it much. But this is the engine of the American economy and the American soul. And writing this review at this time, there are additional political resonances here, are there not?

This is a light but philosophical comedy and there is nothing wrong with that, I say. But, to its credit, it does suggest the harsher, harder side of Hollywood. The film didn't have to lay it on the line but I liked that it suggested. at least, the more abrasive quality of reality, particularly the reality of a Hollywood writer who fears he may be past his best. But also, as I said, that the American dream prevails, in the artistic imagination if not always in real life, is an important proposition of the genre. And I say that as someone not American but someone who speaks with Hugh Grant's accent if, enviously, not being quite as good looking as him!

Film, or movies, if you prefer, is still the vibrant artistic genre of our time. Modern Western music, architecture, sculpture and painting, seem to be in decline. We needs must take our comfort where we may.

Two hours emphatically not wasted.

And not to forget Alison Janney, the adversarial mid-West professor, I love her from The West Wing. Pity we haven't seen more of her on- screen in the meantime.

12 Angry Men (1957)

Legal philosophiser to appeal to any intelligent person

[10/10 · 1 March 2017]

There are, that I know of, two legal systems, the Anglo-Saxon adversarial system and the French system. The French system has judge and jury as paid legal officials. The idea behind that is that trained and experienced legal officials at all stages of the process can deliver a better verdict. But the weakness is that such a system is more open to political corruption. In the English system there is judge, jury - made up of ordinary people who are drafted - and barristers. With some tweaks, the American system follows the British system.

Which is the better? An un-answerable question but a fascinating one.

I have always thought there is a moral ambiguity at the heart of this film. The number of genuinely decent, intelligent, educated and well-meaning jurors seems to be outweighed by the number of bigoted, prejudiced, mentally lazy and ill-educated ones. In the latter category, what psychologists today call those affected by 'motivated reasoning', made founding US father Alexander Hamilton distrustful of pure democracy and hence his electoral college to elect the President. So this film is a powerful disquisition on both the Anglo-Saxon jury system and democracy. Actually, any legal system is intimately a reflection of the political system.

The moral core of the film is Henry Fonda, of course, whom Republicans today would call a 'bleeding-heart liberal'; certainly some of the characters in the film called him that more or less literally so that conservative pejorative labelling is not new. His willingness to give the young defendant, accused of killing his father, in what some of the jurors lazily called an 'open and shut' case, what you Americans call a 'fair shake' is what drives the plot. Then other jurors, better intentioned, rally to his standard and others less enlightened subsequently rally to his standard, as most people do to a true leader, one of his persuasive qualities and of his quality of character, if only to follow the tide of loyalty.

One of the jurors calls Henry Fonda's character an exponent of the soft-sell. But that plain-Joe juror doesn't understand the difference between selling marmalade, which is the latter's job, and intelligence allied to a genuine conscience, which are the hall-mark qualities of Henry Fonda's 'architect' persona.

Solon, the ancient Greek lawgiver, was once asked what would it take for justice to come into this world. He replied that justice would only come into this world if enough people who did not suffer injustice would feel for those who did. We are not there yet.

In any film, play or novel a successful one is one in which all the leading characters are well-rounded and you feel that if you met them on the street you would recognise them immediately. This the film amply fulfills. Apart from anything else, the film is a master-class in top American actors of the late fifties.

I would certainly like a Henry Fonda character on my jury if I ever faced murder in the first degree.

But the curious thing is, the curious thing is, that on reviewing the evidence as it is presented in the film and despite the attempt at rebuttal which is the agenda of this film, I think the evidence stacked more against the defendant than for him! But I repeat, I would surely pray for a Henry Fonda character on my jury.

One of the characters in the Sidney Lumet's excellent 'The Verdict', (1982) a wise old black doctor, (I likee how it was so aptly described as a 'legal Rocky') consoles Paul Newman's lawyer with the sentence that juries can sometimes surprise one in the rightness of their verdict. I guess for all its faults the Anglo-Saxon version of justice is the better.

Angel and the Badman (1947)

One of the strangest films in the John Wayne canon and one of the best

[10/10 · 7 February 2017]

If you are a Christian, of whatever denomination, Gail Russell as Penelope Worth, is the woman you go down on your knees to pray to God for.

I am not trying to convert anyone here. I like John Wayne films, from the stern and relentless Red River and The Searchers, to his more relaxed oaters of later years, such as Rio Bravo and El Dorado.

Exquisite is not an adjective I would normally apply to a John Wayne film but this I would to this. The gunslinger tamed by the Quaker gal whom any man who had any faith and prayer in him would pray mightily for in his life. There have been some beguiling heroines on the silver screen but in my book none so eminently the woman a man should, literally, be blessed with.

My compliments to the script, direction and to the leads for such exquisite portrayal.