Thor: The Dark World

***Contains spoilers***

After last summer's Star Trek Into Darkness, using the word 'dark' in a sequel set in a devastated London seems to be becoming hip.

Although it has to be said, this is one film that is pretty dark anyway.

Literally, about half of it is set off in Asgard again, much of which is just not terribly well lit. Last time I could blame this on the airline seat in front of me, but my local Odeon cinema has less excuse. When we get to gaze upon the famous rainbow bridge, we have to wonder just how the Asgardian sun managed to come out without the rest of that world noticing.

I'm afraid I found all these scenes to be, in every sense of the word, dull. Even the pseudo 3D barely noticed, although admittedly this made for a much more convincing effect than the exaggerated cardboard cutout look of other movies lately that have lazily been converted from 2D. If you're making a 3D film then please just use 3D cameras already.

As a result, I found myself switching off and tuning out so much of this that when it all suddenly went into slow motion I realised that I must have just missed something important. Hang on, wasn't Thor's mum in this a moment ago? Has she just died or something? Oh, right, she did die, and I missed it, even though I had apparently been looking straight at the screen throughout. I'm sorry for your loss Thor, I for one missed her immediately.

Erik: "Your brother isn't coming, is he?"
Thor: "Loki is dead."
Erik: "Thank God! [BEAT] I'm so sorry."

I have much better things to say about the other half of the film - that's the stuff set on Earth, in daylight!

Early on the story follows Jane Foster investigating a levitating automobile in London, and I admit that at this I was duped into erroneously believing two things:

1. That this film was about to tie into the recent floating phenomenon seen just two episodes earlier in the TV series Agents Of SHIELD, an effect which had even been caused by a virus from one of Loki's aliens in Avengers Assemble.

2. That Jane was turning into good character material.

Nah. On both counts. Jane spends most of the rest of this one in need of being rescued. :( Ah well.

These Earth scenes are realised and played much more for comedy though, and as a result they garnered quite a few laughs from the giggly yobs sitting just behind me annoyingly repeating lines. Being a Hollywood movie set in London, and also being screened in that city, one line that particularly meritted some chuckles was 'Greenwich'. We expect a film by Edgar Wright to set such major global events in such a mundane sounding suburb, but not Marvel. Excellent!

All the same, for all the enjoyment that this one place name caused around our theatre this evening, much funnier surely had to be that commuter informing Thor that he could somehow get to Greenwich by travelling a mere three tube stops from Charing Cross station.

Yes, the Hollywood rule that all references to journeys on the London Underground must be complete nonsense remains intact, as does casting American actors who cannot do British accents, and one rather US-looking apartment.

However lest you get the wrong idea about me, I found this film okay, and indeed amusing for all the right reasons as well. Having played similar comedic roles in The IT Crowd and Frequently Made Mistakes About Time Travel, guest actor Chris O'Dowd now seems happily typecast as a stressed single office worker. Again both his scenes here are funny simply because we are expecting him to be. The presence of the ITV newsreader is embracing for similar reasons.

Also nice cameos from Captain America (Chris Evans) and Himself (Stan Lee), the latter of whom appears to have had a rough year since Avengers Assemble. Is he in that mental ward for thinking that he was Hugh Heffner in Iron Man 1, Larry King in Iron Man 2, or himself in Rise Of The Silver Surfer? (bit of a shoe theme going on through this one too)

There were a few other bits of the story that I thought didn't work, however since I didn't bother following it much, perhaps I should keep those to myself. (But the convergence's occuring naturally every 5,000 years still sounds like too round a base-10 Earth number to be mere chance, and the same alignment by definition doesn't just happen on Earth but on all those other worlds too. Oh, look what I've just gone and done.)

Ultimately though, I'm glad to have got to a cinema in time to catch this, and also pleased that Nigel and I failed in our attempt to see it on its UK release night recently, simply because the preceding episodes of the TV series Agents Of SHIELD have since been broadcast. Yes, the one time British TV screened a US series in sync with America, we somehow got the tie-in film eight days before the States did. Thanks Marvel UK!

Thor 3? Oh all right then, if you must.

However if I'm honest, I'm only following the Thor movies because of the other cinematic worlds that they themselves converge with.

:)

San Demetrio London

Ealing effects movie that was pretty big upon its release, but by today has become a bit forgotten.

I'm not entirely sure why. While in this post-modern age the how-on-earth-did-they-film-that question mark no longer hangs over it, this movie's sheer intensity still matches anything I see Hollywood coming out with today.

It's a war film, based upon true events from 1940, and released just three years later while the same war was still in progress. As you know, war is grim. As you also know, it's even grimmer at sea. And at night. In a storm. When you're stuck in a lifeboat for days on end...

Letting go of the non-stop impressive visuals for a moment, the soundtrack is more of a mixed bag. People outdoors give away their actual location on a studio set by the incessant echo behind them. Conversely, people who actually have been filmed outdoors lack footsteps. However these are things that we wave by soas to not lose hold of the spectacle of the film, which thankfully retains its starkness due to the absence of much incidental music.

Unlike the real-life seamen portrayed here, the names of many of the film's production team seem to have been lost to time, although I understand that Ealing's own Bob Vloeburgh was one of them.

San Demetrio London remains a classic, although one which I'd never heard of before.

On Remembrance Sunday, it's good to be reminded of the war heroes of the Merchant Navy too.

(available for shipping here)

The Straight Story

Danny: "Even if you get that mower running again, it might still break down."
Alvin: "Well you're a kind man talking to a stubborn man. I still wanna finish this the way I started."

It's Twin Peaks for kids!

Well that's the only way I can describe the outset of this U-rated Disney movie directed by David Lynch. It just doesn't matter how innocent everything may appear on the surface of this old-fashioned American community, the cocktail of Lynch's pondering direction and Angelo Badalamenti's sad atmospheres still convince you that something very unpleasant indeed must surely be occurring just off-camera.

And... they're right! Oh, wait a minute, if they actually are right then that jokey exclamation mark won't be appropriate. And they're right. When lead character Alvin Straight's phone rings, off camera you can just make out his daughter answering and learning that his brother has just suffered a stroke. Ooh. Oh. Ah. No, that's not fun at all.

In fact, despite the family-friendly certificate, you have to wonder just how much Lynch deliberately slipped in under the censors' radar here. Alvin smokes throughout. He also accidentally murdered someone years ago, of which he has never spoken. His daughter? Man's inhumanity to man has pronounced an appalling sentence upon her too. And there's more...

Somehow though, this is a film in which David Lynch effortlessly soars over what may be expected of him, and proves without hesitation just what a fine director he really is. He doesn't talk down to his audience at all, having 100% confidence in us to stay with the slow narrative, and take on board every development at his intelligent level.

He coaxes utterly believable performances out of his cast, and captures them in all their tiny detail.

Alvin's big flashback to World War II is captivating, made all the more so by the length of this unbroken take. I don't know quite how long this monologue went on for - I was just too lost in the visuals that the performance was conjuring up in my own imagination.

That largo pace works both ways however. Often when an event does happen here, it then turns out to amount to nothing, just like in real life. The number of times that Alvin's lawnmower breaks down, only for it to get fixed again, is impressively high for a film.

If you're looking for an intelligent reflection on mortality, then this film should definitely be on your list.

And it's a prudent heads-up to offer the younger generation at the outset of their journey through life too.

Alvin Straight: "You don't think about getting old when you're young... you shouldn't."
Cyclist #1: "Must be something good about gettin' old?"
Alvin Straight: "Well I can't imagine anything good about being blind and lame at the same time but, still at my age I've seen about all that life has to dish out. I know to separate the wheat from the chaff, and let the small stuff fall away."
Cyclist #2: "So, uh, what's the worst part about being old, Alvin?"
Alvin Straight: "Well, the worst part of being old is rememberin' when you was young."

Available here.

First Love (1939 film)

*** Contains spoilers ***

Deanna Durbin's 1939 reworking of the classic Cinderella fairy story is a similarly simple plot, but with fascinating execution.

She's an orphan, as usual, who can sing, as usual, and who finds herself trying to perpetuate a lie, as usual. Yes, I know it's only the sixth feature in her career, but it's also the eighth one I've watched lately.

What makes this one different to the others I've seen, and also keeps us rooting for her, is that as Connie she's trying to bring to life someone else's lie. As is standard, this doesn't work, and as is less standard, what turns her life around is starting to be truthful, even if a different bunch of good guys are now lying to make it all work out for her.

Confused? Well, better not pay any attention to Connie's cousin Barbara (Helen Parrish) who I mistook for the leading lady in two scenes. What's that? Which one is she? I'm not sure...

However the dialogue here is deep, philosophical and smart, and this alone makes the whole thing engrossing. Connie returns to her old boarding school, hoping to embrace independence and fix her error of making her happiness dependent upon others. Here Miss Wiggins' world-weariness is just the latest piece of dialogue that authors Lionel Houser and Bruce Manning seem to have really poured themselves into.

Miss Wiggins: "Now you'll sing at that meeting, show them a sample of what you know about music, have them make up their minds right away."
Connie: "Oh thank you. That'll be marvellous."
Miss Wiggins: "It'll be terrible but I'll do it. You'll get a new dress for it. I'll have all the girls go to the auditorium so you'll have an audience, and you'll sing something that'll be effective."
Connie: "The Spring Song."
Miss Wiggins: "No not The Spring Song. One Fine Day - [Madama] Butterfly by Puccini. Know it?"
Connie: "Yes?"
Miss Wiggins: "Well get to work on it. That'll make them all cry. All the old maids'll sniffle. You know - 'One fine day he'll come back to me'."
Connie: "Oh but, I'd rather, I..."
Miss Wiggins: "Rather what."
Connie: "Well couldn't I sing something else?"
Miss Wiggins: "Why!"
Connie: "Well, I don't think it's a good idea to make them sad."
Miss Wiggins: "Make you sad to sing it?"
Connie: "No. No, not me. You just said it'd make them cry, I..."
Miss Wiggins: "Old maids are only happy when they cry. You'll find that out."

There are also some nice creative flourishes in the direction, particularly during the slightly surreal dancing scene. (enormous set!)

The ending, in which she finds happiness that is dependent upon a relationship after all, is a disappointment, and one which emphasises that Connie seems to spend her entire life getting manipulated by the choices of others. (foreshadowing of Durbin's reasons for later quitting Hollywood?) Even the 'nice' cops who help her out are, by doing so, bad ones. James Clinton's (Eugene Pallette) loss of temper only serves to further highlight Connie's lack of any character development of her own.

A bit hard to get into, but once you are in, highly watchable.

(available here)

The World's End

One film. Two halves. Not much segue.

Simon Pegg seems to have cut out a career for himself playing big-kid science fiction fans who never grew up, and are about my age.

In this one he takes my ability to identify with his characters one stage further and plays Gary King - a man with detailed recall of his mates' lives circa 1990, despite not having really seen much of them lately. (ask any of my own current friends from back then)

Gary: "Drink up. Let's Boo-Boo."
Steven: "'Boo-Boo'? What is that?"
Gary: "You remember 'Let's Boo-Boo'. You know, from Mr. Shepherd's classroom, it said on the wall 'Exit, Pursued by a Bear', you know, from that Shakespeare play?"
Steven: "A Winter's Tale."
Gary: "Yeah. What was it called?"
Steven: "A Winter's Tale."
Gary: "That's it, and if we needed to make a quick getaway, we'd say 'Exit, pursued by a bear', and then it was 'Exit, pursued by Yogi Bear', and then it was just 'Let's Yogi and Boo-Boo', and then, 'Let's Boo-Boo'."

Well all right, maybe selective recall.

Steven: "Wow, you really have a selective memory don't you."
Gary: "Somebody else was saying that."
Andrew: "Me."
Gary: "No, I would have remembered."

Of course, by the present day (2013) everyone else has settled down, got married, and are earning a reasonable amount of income from their careers, but something seems to be missing from their lives, something other than just cassette tape.

Their joy.

After the opening flashback sequence, Gary - an unwanted reminder of the scattered friends' adolescent past - sets about rounding the gang up again to complete an old unfinished pub crawl. So far it's the classic reunion movie set-up, with most reluctantly conceding to come along just for old time's sake, plus of course the customary one who flat refuses to.

This then makes up pretty well the first half of the movie. It's great to see all these old friends cautiously catching up with each other, and gradually dropping their guard to have a bit of fun again. Gary himself is fascinating to watch too, clearly hiding his true agenda from them, and revealing not a jot of what he's actually been up to since any of them last saw him.

Then the second half of the film features them all in multiple fight scenes against alien zombies in a battle to save what little is still left of human civilisation.

Whoa, sorry, what did that last sentence say? As I suggested at the start, this is one story that definitely needs a stronger segue in the middle. I mean there is one, but for my money it's not handled as well as in the earlier films of this Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy.

Back in Shaun Of The Dead, the leads' moment of realisation that there really was a zombie invasion came when they witnessed the girl in their garden standing back up again despite the whacking great hole through her body. There was no way for the characters to rationalise this, and so they were credibly forced to accept that something supernatural had to really be going on.

In The World's End, this dawning moment is represented by someone standing up with no head. The problem with this variation is that one of the humans present would surely have rationalised the headless human as being a shorter person wearing a tall costume with their head in the chest. That's what I would assume, and you too, I further assume.

But not these characters, who consequently lose all the believability they'd acquired in the first half, and quickly become the fantasy characters of the second. The change in the second half isn't so much in the events that happen, as in who the main characters are, and therefore have been up until this point.

Out of nowhere, the guys suddenly have the ability to fight like action heroes, and it all feels more like Scott Pilgrim. When they fight an equal number of aliens, our heroes win. When they are hopelessly outnumbered, our heroes win. When the film's final scene ends with Gary and his band of good aliens getting into a fight with a whole room full of angry humans, that his new alien friends are all about to get ripped to shreds is inevitable, which is surely not the feel-good implication that we are supposed to leave the cinema visualising. (just look at what earlier became of the damage to robot Oliver's head)

Other storyline shortcomings include the coincidence of the invasion both beginning and ending on the same two days as the lads' two pub crawls 20 years apart, the awkward motivation for continuing the drunken pub crawl despite the probability of getting poisoned, and at the end the said aliens just letting mankind off. I kid you not, they are simply talked out of their dastardly plan. In fact, there's so much careless plotting here that it must surely be intended?

Hm, sorry guys, you've set the bench so high on your previous movies that I'm afraid I now expect cleverer from you...

However although the second half makes this one the weakest storyline of the trilogy, overall, this is not a bad film. The World's End features less swearing than usual, and is directed by Edgar Wright with his always compelling flair.

It also pummels the viewer with a verbose script packed to bursting with strings of brilliant one-liners.

Gary: "And here we go! Just like the five Musketeers!"
Steven: "Three musketeers, wasn't it?"
Peter: "Four, if you count d'Artagnan."
Gary: "Well, nobody knows how many there were really, do they?"
Oliver: "You do know that 'The Three Musketeers' was a fiction, right? Written by Alexandre Dumas?"
Gary: "A lot of people are saying that about the Bible these days."
Steven: "What, that it was written by Alexandre Dumas?"
Gary: "Don't be daft, Steve! It was written by Jesus!"
Andrew: "Are we there yet?"

Basically, I thought this was a much better character piece than it was a science fiction.

Highly enjoyable, and a rare film in that I actually wouldn't mind paying to go see it again next week.

Although this represents the end of the trilogy, I very much doubt that we've seen the last of these guys.

There are a lot more flavours of Cornetto still out there.

(available here)
(review of Shaun Of The Dead here)
(review of Hot Fuzz here)

Crocodile Dundee / "Crocodile Dundee" II / Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles

Crocodile Dundee

The first entry into the trilogy is itself two culture-shock movies in one.

The first half features US newspaper writer Sue Charlton coping with life in the Australian bush, including snakes, crocodiles, tourists, and having to extensively dub her dialogue indoors. (wonderful photography)

The second half reverses the roles by bringing her Aussie guide Mick Dundee to New York. Among other things, he has to cope with escalators, elevators, and people not saying hello back on the street.

It's got to be said, these are not the same two jokes. While Charlton assumes lower intelligence of the Aussies, Dundee assumes equal intelligence of yanks.

Dundee gets much better one-liners too.

"That's incredible. Imagine seven million people all wanting to live together. Yeah, New York must be the friendliest place on earth."

"I don't mean to put down your black widow spider, but the funnelweb spider can kill a man in eight seconds, just by lookin' at him."

"I read The Bible once. You know God and Jesus and all them apostles? They were all fishermen, just like me. Yeah, straight to Heaven for Mick Dundee. Yep, me and God, we'd be mates."

Next to no plot at all, but whenever Dundee successfully befriends someone, you can feel the outback warmth.

"Crocodile Dundee" II

If last time Dundee's enemy was New York, then this time it's the 1980s.

Reversing the structure of the first movie, here it's the first half which set in the States and the second back in the Aussie bush, which is just as well, as this is when things really get going. The whole protracted cat-and-mouse game against the Colombian baddies is all gripping stuff, made thoroughly enjoyable by the total absence of any real sense of danger. Spectacular photography again too, especially the massive crane up the rocks to Dundee making his 'phone call' at sunset.

Awesome.

Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles

Despite having been made 13 years after the last one, in a stroke of genius this is neither a reboot nor a remake. There are still plenty of culture-shock gags on display, sure, but the meat of this one is a good old mystery, told at such a leisurely pace that we really have time to sit back and live it. The Hollywood setting makes for a few too many knowing in-jokes for my liking, but not enough to spoil anything. This is the best one of the trilogy.

(available here)

All Mine To Give

Six Kids On A True And Wonderful Adventure!

Well that's what the cover of the DVD promised. In practice the words that continually kept floating through my mind during this were "I can't help but notice that we're (HOWEVER MANY) minutes into this film and we still have yet to see any kids begin any adventure that can be reasonably described as either 'true' or 'wonderful'." Yes, this remained my stance right up until the closing titles.

Of course it did. Couple travel far away from home to see relative who they learn has just died. Couple are afflicted with six children. Father falls sick and dies. Mother falls sick and dies. Eldest kid trudges through the snow trying to find five families to take each of his sobbing siblings away from him, forever. On Christmas Day!

As the scenes get longer, the pauses between the dialogue get longer, and even the music becomes slower and slower.

I think it's meant to be an ironic arrangement of Give Me Joy In My Heart, which might have been a better title for the movie.

What's that? You've never seen this getting an airing during the festive holiday TV schedules? There's a reason for that - 'tis the season to be jolly.

(available here)

Summer Holiday (1963 film)

*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

There comes a time early on in most of our lives when we try to piece together what events transpired before we were born.

I was born in the early 1970s, so as I've grown up, I've developed a heavily media-influenced perception of the 1960s. Most of this I could boil down into one phrase:

Everything back then had been really hip, but I'd been born too late and missed it.

In the closing credits of their oft-repeated TV show, The Monkees would regularly sing:

In this generation,
in this lovin' time,
in this generation,
we will make the world shine.

As a kid in the 1970s, I knew those words didn't apply to me. I wasn't a part of their generation. So they were going to change the world and I wasn't.

When it comes to the 1960s life and times of the singer Cliff Richard, there confusingly appear to be two contradictory accounts.

The first states that in those early days of his career, he affected the image of a rebel. Here's the 1963 cinema poster for his then-new movie Summer Holiday:

The second states that he was a sickeningly nice goody two-shoes. Here's the same film's free DVD cover from the Daily Mail recently:

I mean fer goodness' sake - here he's even square enough to be wearing a string vest!

So which one is true? Will the real Cliff Richard please stand up? (and as appropriate put on a dressing gown)

I think the casting vote has to go to the film itself, which I watched tonight. In it the young Sir Cliff, in good faith, saves a lost kid off the streets, sets up his own business, expertly clears his and his friends' innocent names from being framed, and ultimately becomes engaged to his sweetheart.

I don't know, but he really comes across as the sort of capable good catch that most parents would surely want their daughter to marry. Even some of his songs here are about just how nice it is to go on holiday. Yeah, take that, society.

Granted, the embarrassing number We Wanna Take You For A Ride could come across as a bit inconsiderate, as arguably might Sir Cliff's Benny Hill sketch below:

But on the whole, perhaps the sixties were so full of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll that all the niceness in this musical was a rebellion.

(available here, Charlie)

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

*** Contains spoilers ***

The ham with the chat is back.

Which is no surprise given the long and diverse history that the fictional Norfolk DJ Alan Partridge (played with excruciating tension by Steve Coogan) has had.

He started out over 20 years ago in 1991 on BBC Radio 4's spoof news show On The Hour, which presently transferred to the TV as the sadly timeless The Day Today. The news items in these sketch shows were often beyond surreal, and Abba-fan Partridge's deadly matter-of-fact voice would work well when talking about how, for example, his recently killed-off wife had returned, now putrefying.

Morris: "And before you go Alan, I gather that your wife rose from the dead this weekend?"

Partridge: "I was wondering how long it would take for that one to get round! (embarrassed chuckle) Yeah I was doing a spot of decorating and er, right like a bolt out of the blue, err there was my wife y'know with a, couple of other members of the-the living dead."

Morris: "Any smell involved?"

Partridge: "Quite a bit I can tell you..."

Well, no wonder their marriage dissolved...

After that we had his chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You / Yule, (again contradictory versions on both radio and TV) which featured a live studio audience who would proceed to break the illusion somewhat by laughing at all the dead-pan bits. Well, if the illusion wasn't already broken by the way all his guests looked so similar to each other. (same cast)

Then came two whole TV seasons of the more traditional sitcom I'm Alan Partridge. This fleshed out not just Alan as a person, but also his whole surrounding universe. In contrast to how surreally he had begun, by now Alan had become one lone madman stirring up an otherwise mundane world. (usually)

Since then, he's made about a bazillion other specials, webisodes (most notably Mid Morning Matters) and guest-appearances, until now he even has a big-screen movie out, if only just another cheapy from BBC 'Films'.

By now he's developed so much depth to his character that it's hard to reconcile either his early experiences with his undead wife, or the sitcom style of plot here. At this stage in his career he remains a talk radio DJ, tonight dealing with a gun-toting ex-employee holding everyone at the station hostage. Like I said, sitcom plot.

In a backslide towards to his earlier carefree days, little attempt has been made here to portray either standard police procedures, or radio ones, resulting in a catalogue of situations which are arguably more akin to sketches than a group of real people in danger. For example, as well as the police's decision to send Alan in to talk to the gunman in the first place, there are thousands of further members of the public put at risk just outside the building. The radio station would never have continued broadcasting, and when it does, Alan and his co-presenter face each other to chat on-air by turning away from their respective microphones! Were they using each other's ones from a distance? This is a fun film, but the realism built up in his last few series is not really being embraced here.

Given this step back towards the canon's earlier more fantastical outlook, as the seige is broadcast live on BBC News 24, it's a just a minor shame that some of his old co-presenters from The Day Today aren't anywhere to be seen. Ted Maul would have been in his element.

And yet, the strength of this film lies more with the Partridge himself than the environment in which he's flapping. He seems to have lost the flat rudeness of his middle years, and now just be a funny presenter made even more incompetent by the highly pressured situation he's in. I loved his reaction to the gunman falling asleep in front of him! I was less impressed with his repeatedly leaving and re-entering the building at will, along with how easy this made it look for the hostages to do likewise.

Despite a very empty cinema tonight, there was quite a lot of laughter from the few of us (maybe 20 including Perry and myself) present, and I think we all probably went home having thoroughly enjoyed the preceding 90 minutes. Good recommendation Bish.

For me it was a delight to see the movie remaining so consistent with the storyline's history too - there were no end of characters from his last full TV series ten years ago, and all played by the same actors, as they should be. Shame about Abba's ongoing reluctance to licence their music for use in films though.

After a period of shunning playing the part, actor Steve Coogan now appears keen to keep the character going for however long his viewers want him to. Where will the Partridge fly to next? I'm predicting America.

Wherever, it'll be interesting to see what challenges his chat, and his world, have to roll with next.

Christmas Holiday (film)

*** Contains spoilers ***

Much like the machinations of the plot, there appear to be more than one agenda hiding behind this 1944 film noir musical.

On the one hand it's a deadly serious drama about the leading lady's transformation from singleton into lonely convict's wife.

On the other, well, it's got Deanna Durbin in it, so of course the producers seem to be trying to work in as many songs as possible for her, with only occasional success.

When we first meet Durbin's character, she's earning her crusts as a femme fatale singer in a club, which fits the genre well, and enables her to get in a song straight away. Then she goes to a midnight mass service at church where, quite reasonably, the congregation is expected to also sing. Except that instead she just sits there in silence before breaking down in tears. Oh. Sorry Miss. We didn't realise.

Later there are flashbacks to her happier younger days, including meeting the love of her life (Gene Kelly!) at a concert, where neither of them is singing, or dancing. (although later on there is plenty of rain) As we see their relationship develop, they attend a further performance, where they likewise merely talk. To portray their married life, at one point he does play the piano while his wife sings, but that's about as close as we get to either of their typical fare.

By the end of the movie Kelly has become an embittered murderer on the run, while Durbin's present-day self is back at the club, again crooning sadly at the bleakness of her broken world, now that we the audience understand why.

The pacing here is great. Time gets taken over the fractured family that the characters are living in, and there's a lot of subtlety to their inner motivations and hence performances. It's definitely Durbin's strongest acting outing that I've seen.

The end of the film, when she finally gets her guy back only to find him full of resentment for her before he gets shot and dies, had me finding I was wiping a tear away. She realises that she can at last let go of her yearning, free to finally get on with her life, and it takes a performer as strong as Durbin to command the camera so powerfully on this.

I'm afraid I can't say the same for Gene Kelly though. I'm afraid I found his portrayal too suspicious for Durbin, or anyone, to trust enough to fall in love with.

Elsewhere in her career, Deanna Durbin seems to have made several films in which getting happily married has been portrayed as the conclusion.

It's a numbing thing thing to witness what might have befallen any of those young women after the end credits had finished.

(available here)

The Young Ones (1961 film)

Fifty years ago, the world used to be a very different place.

Apparently, teenagers liked musicals. Said musicals were cheerful, uplifting, and didn't depend upon being mean about anyone. Some of them even contained that nice Cliff Richard, shock horror.

Well, he wasn't marketed as that 'nice' Cliff Richard back then (apparently he was somehow considered 'rebellious'), but on the evidence of this film, 1961 looks and sounds like it was a very nice place.

In some ways it's hard not to enjoy this in an ironic post-modern sort of way. In Technicolor, the 1960s fashions, actors and style of filmmaking look so stereotypical that this could almost be a parody. With all the bright London traffic and post boxes, I kept expecting Austin Powers to drive through the background in that ubiquitous red double decker bus.

And why not, for this is a film all about style. The raising-money-by-putting-on-a-show-to-save-their-building-from-a-property-developer plot is not going to stand up to much scrutiny when early on the lead character exploits special effects to leap, conjure, teleport, impersonate and observe events far away. If the secretly wealthy Cliffy can do those things, then he sure doesn't need to put on a show to raise £1500. Yes that's right, fifteen-hundred pounds!!! (zoom-in on bald Dr Cliff Evil raising his little finger to his mouth and drooling)

So much of this is dubbed that I found it reminiscent of watching the Australian TV series K9, which combined with Cliff's accent to make him reminiscent of Starkey, although Cliff is definitely the better one at singing.

The movie's title number struck me as odd though. When Cliff croons "The young ones, darlin' we're the young ones...", he is obviously having words put in his mouth by someone much older. Now that's square, daddy-o.

While Cliff, Melvyn Hayes, Richard O'Sullivan and Hankie do indeed look so young, the whole show is really stolen by the perpetually watchable 53-year-old Robert Morley.

"Unfortunately, I am a brute."

Still, while the film may have aged (alright so more accurately the world has), its appeal may not have done. In the mid 1980s, I remember catching the end of this twenty-year-old classic when I was a teenager. I assumed it was not something that my peers at school would have been interested in. A month later however I had borrowed an audio cassette of something or other off of Spencer at school, and elsewhere on the same tape I found that he had been recording this off the telly. I later challenged him about it. He admitted it, and very quickly changed the subject.

I wonder how many others, then or today, are closet fans of that nice Sir Cliff?

(available here)

Citizen Kane

*** Contains spoilers ***

A mortality film about the boredom of success, that is not remotely exciting, but is entirely fascinating.

Charles Foster Kane spends his whole life pursuing his wont, but he is taken away from his mom and dad, his political career is defeated by an opponent who is more sly, and his collecting of artefacts becomes so meaningless that by retirement he has ceased even opening their boxes.

His first marriage is depicted as failing in a numbing montage of ever more uncomfortable disagreements over breakfast.

His determination to make his second marriage work, by giving her everything he possibly can, highlights the ultimate emptiness of material possessions and adulation. These things can help with happiness, but only to a point, as Charles and Susan learn when they discover they have nothing else left to wish for. Eventually Susan develops an OCD for doing jigsaw puzzles, creating a false need that she can spend her enormous amount of spare time filling.

Even reporter Jerry Thompson, who after Charles' death spends the entire film searching for the meaning of the tycoon's enigmatic final word 'rosebud', never succeeds, although he has a significant advantage over Charles in how to deal with this dissatisfaction.

He simply accepts that the conundrum doesn't fit his expectation of having a solution that he can identify, and so, rather brilliantly, he just gets on with something else instead.

Jerry: "Charles Foster Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get or lost. No, I don't think it explains anything. I don't think any word explains a man's life. No - I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle - a missing piece. We'd better get along. We'll miss the train."

Ahh, the power of finding value in whatever is here rather than there...

Although the non-chronological narrative is confusing, and the acting quite variable, Citizen Kane bears viewing more than once. The camerawork, style and script are all simply first class, and credit the viewer with just the sort of intelligence that we usually have to leave behind when watching a movie.

Mr. Bernstein: "Mr. Thompson. A fellow will remember things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on, and she was carrying a white parasol, and I only saw her for one second and she didn't see me at all - but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."

That's not a plot-point, it's just the sort of brainy thing these characters are capable of.

Also the make-up here is excellent, with Orson Welles in the title role convincingly appearing to progress through decades. Joseph Cotton as three incarnations of best friend Jedediah Leland looks so different each time that it's a challenge to make the connection that he's the same guy.

Conversely, George Coulouris aims flatly for laughs as Kane's long-suffering guardian Walter Parks Thatcher, and I counted at least three occasions when he dared to mug to camera and break the fourth wall!

The opening sequence featuring a posthumous newsreel of Kane's life is quite laborious, and just goes to show that Hollywood's reliance on a news report for exposition is not purely a modern device after all. It also makes more sense on a second viewing once we actually know which guy in the clips is Kane!

Although we the audience do indeed discover what Charles' final word refers to (fuzzily - that thing it's written on could be anything), it remains up to the individual to choose how to apply it to his life, or indeed to our own. It beggars that haunting question of mortality, what understanding of ourselves might each one of us discover on our deathbed, in failure?

How might a similar film of one's own life substitute the ambitions, defeats and pointlessness?

What will I leave behind?

(available in an unopened box here)

OctoberBaby

Original subject. Brilliant message. Nice film.

Blank characters. Dreary songs. Worst ending in cinema history.

Basically I liked this film in theory, but much less in its realisation.

What's that? You want details? Well so did lead teenager Hannah, and look where those questions got her:

Hannah: "My parents aren't really my parents. And my real parents tried to abort me. And I have a brother, well, I had a brother. He died shortly after the - I'm angry at my parents for not telling me sooner and making me think that I was just like everybody else. I'm angry at my real mom for not wanting me. Why didn't she want me, what's so wrong with me? I found her. And she still doesn't want me. 'N I feel guilty. Part of me feels like he should be alive, and I shouldn't. I wonder if he would've been a better person than me, what he would have been like? I just - ang - I should hate myself for feeling this way."

As you can see, Hannah pretty well has the full set of possible issues when it comes to discovering that someone tried to stop you as a fetus, and in so doing blunderingly caused the opposite by bringing your birthday forward. Well there aren't many films about that journey of self-discovery, so of course the writers of this one are going to cram in as many related developments as they can.

Not listed above are Hannah's lifelong medical problems, including epilepsy, multiple hip surgery and acute asthma, which cause the film to open with her collapsing on stage in the middle of a play she's in.

Her biggest problem though would have to be her hopeless adopted father, who despite his years of life experience appears to have never before come across these things called teenagers.

When he thinks his daughter is going to do one thing but then she does another, he's completely taken by surprise. He reads her diary, and then secretly emails it to her doctor, before being dumbfounded at her outraged reaction to this. Has this guy ever met his daughter before? Has he ever met another human being before? For that matter has her doctor? I would describe him as your definitive out-of-touch movie dad, except that he's written as too shallow even for that.

Not that I should be singling him out here. This movie is packed to bursting with bland characters, none of whom offer us any hook whatsoever for being interested in them or their lives. Even the cops turn out to be so nice that they let our heroes off, twice! Thin characterisation can work well in some types of comedy (eg. the 1960s TV series The Monkees), but I can't think of a comparative successful example of drama. There are a couple of comic relief students who occasionally get to say something almost worth smiling at, but after the first half even they get dropped, presumably for threatening to bring a bit of sparkle to all the grey.

Bmac: "This is literally the worst hotel I've ever seen."
Truman "It looked better on the internet."
Bmac: "Where - at normanbateshotel.com?"
Truman "Hotelmonkey.biz."
Bmac: "I'm sleepin' in the car."

The story, though groaning with heavy issues, is a simple one, and that's one of its strengths. Look at the details, and you can't help but notice Hannah's best friend Jason claiming that he doesn't have the money for a second motel room and so he just has to share with her, before in a later scene revealing that he actually had enough spare emergency cash for his own room all along. Aye-aye.

But ignore this movie's shortcomings, because where this film does positively excel is in its moments of drama.

The cast with the serious roles do a sterling job of taking what little their dialogue offers them and transforming it into something compelling. They're helped along enormously by a director and editor who are prepared to really invest the necessary time into these key scenes. The story's simplicity is probably one of the reasons why there is the luxury to invest so much time in telling it. Despite starting out as a road movie, there's no sense at all of this film being in a hurry to get anywhere.

When Jasmine Guy shows up as a nurse who assisted at Hannah's attempted abortion, her performance is solid gold. Thanks to how outstandingly well the film's dialogue has been recorded and mixed (if not the foley), I found I could really sit back and absorb this, without any idea how long the conversation would last, like in a real one.

I'm afraid I can't really say the same about all the dreary Monday morning music that keeps rearing its half-asleep head throughout. Now I admit that when it comes to using a song on a movie's soundtrack, I'm automatically prejudiced against it, because I find it to be a form of narration. However this film tries to get away with squeezing an entire album into the transitions between scenes. The net result is a movie which keeps stopping to explain to you what it's been trying to say in each scene, which is hardly the mark of a film that's succeeding at this.

The worst post-modern moment though is saved for the closing credits. Having spent nearly two hours suspending our disbelief, while the credits roll they gobsmackingly interview some of the cast and crew about how they felt making it. While I respect the content in isolation, the decision to include this within the actual film itself is suicidal. Suddenly these characters aren't real, and neither are any of the events we've just witnessed. Know how many viewers this leaves still connecting with the story? None!

In summary, a film with such a refreshingly life-affirming message ought to itself contain some life too.

(available, throughout the year, here)

Jumanji (1995 film)

Children's horror comedy that has no doubt been responsible many a nightmare since 1995.

Instead of being a nice safe board game, Jumanji keeps throwing all manner of malevolent real-life dangers our young players' way - from fierce jungle animals to natural disasters to never seeing your parents again - and it all begins its smashing within the delicate safety of the kids' home.

Worse, when each challenge is escaped, it still never really goes away. The result is a town outside the window that is becoming increasingly ravaged by earthquakes, swarms of poisonous wasps, and fast-growing flesh-eating plant life.

Oh, and a big game hunter called Van Pelt, but he's one of the movie's comic reliefs. The sequence where they all fight back at him using whatever's on sale at the local supermarket is just like watching a Home Alone short. (yes, I'm pulling that face now...)

There is danger almost all the way through this one, ramped up considerably by there being no corporeal intelligence to bargain with at the centre of it all. Had this been an episode of Doctor Who, then you can bet the evil game's box would have presently begun bragging out loud about its plans, and laughing. Long, and heartily.

There are a few moments where a needed explanation appears to have been cut, but these seem to me to be minor. I'm thinking of the (lone) cop who almost runs Alan over but then tries to arrest him (!), the medics who vanish when bugs attack the car, and why on Earth Sarah agrees to play the game again. But hey, maybe that was just the Moviemix channel deciding to drop some lines for time.

Jumanji is a well-made epic ride, and all the more impressive for pulling together so many different genres. For the most part I found it very well thought through, and although many of the effects have not dated terribly well, the conviction of the whole cast ensure that they have lost nothing of their dread-factor.

But really, don't throw the game away, just burn it already.

This afternoon, somewhere beyond the bottom of our garden, I could hear a drum kit beating away.

I've always assumed that sort of thing to merely be a neighbour playing around with an actual drum kit, but now... (shudder)...

(Available here. Don't buy the wrong product.)

Daredevil (2003 movie)

There are two sides to this film about a mild-mannered kid who gains super powers but at the cost of his sight - what we do see, and what we don't.

The story, the characters and the acting are all satisfactory, as is the tough crime-ridden version of New York unpacked here. Ben Affleck in the title role of Matt Murdock / Daredevil is okay, but for me the film's real gems are the supporting cast.

Jon Favreau as Matt's partner-in-law is so bold in his abuse of his best friend's 'disability' that he sparkles in every scene he's in. Likewise Joe Pantoliano fleshes out the perpetually cameraless reporter Ben Urich as a man of depth, integrity and compassion. Even Colin Farrell as Bullseye turns his black-hearted deeds into opportunities to make us laugh, partly because he's such a lovable Oirish scoundrel, but mostly because of his proiceless facial expressions.

Oh, and Derrick O'Connor appears fleetingly as Father Everett, but even he refuses to dumb down his position into a stereotype. Everett is a priest with attitude. Well, in a way everyone here is. Apart from maybe the priest bit.

And yet the story that these characters enact is so simple and by-the-numbers that it does miss a certain sense of there being much else going on in these guys' heads, or indeed in New York. While writing of this simplicity, I'm intrigued to learn that an additional character played by Coolio had been completely cut from the final edit, perhaps contributing to this. I guess his scenes must still take place in this story, but leaving no evidence for us to pick up on.

Although I'm afraid that, for me, the character who suffers most from the realisation's baldness is Jennifer Garner's Elektra.

Even before she has appeared in the movie, just ahead of her in the coffee shop Matt is suddenly blessed with the additional power of either telepathy or foresight. Super hearing or not, he cannot possibly know that she is about to turn into this shop. Unless of course she's outside telling someone, but she enters alone.

A few minutes later, when she and Matt play-fight each other in a local playground, neither of them seems to realise that they are both somewhat blowing their secret identities. (actually I'm not sure whether she even has one of those) When it rains on her face, enabling Matt's super-hearing to construct a picture of her in his mind, well, it's not raining on her face. Just look at it. When Bullseye murders her dad using Daredevil's cane, it really isn't enough to implicate the man without fear, but she assumes his total motiveless guilt anyway.

Later, when she sets up all those timed bags of flour to descend in her apartment just so that she can stab them as part of training for her misplaced revenge, in so doing wrecking her apartment, you have to wonder just how sky-high her cleaning budget must be. To do this workout, has she in fact broken into a bad guy's flat?

When she then captures Daredevil and unmasks her pa's murderer, only to discover that underneath the pointy mask is the man she loves, her enormous turnaround over his guilt is instantaneous. No incredulity, no dawning of realisation, nothing. Hmmm, no.

Even when she dies, entirely because she has just thrown her weapon away by giving Bullseye so much time to dodge it, she gets pierced right through her body twice, and her heart is shown to explicitly stop. I hope when she was later revived for the spin-off Elektra, she duly had scars.

Not that I don't like Elektra or anything, but come on. Fictional characters have to behave in a way that makes sense. If they don't, then you literally don't have a story. I just find it ironic that a movie about a man who has to daily construct the a bigger picture from such subtle clues around him, paradoxically discourages this attitude in its audience.

By the end of the film, even Daredevil himself has lost something under the surface, as he is beaten to a pulp, before getting up and... presently just forgetting about it. Like I said, not much depth to the story here, but at least there is one, and one which for the main part works, when Matt isn't hearing things that he could not possibly hear. (eg. the three spinning combination locks on the roof of his apartment, or that no-one is watching him when he takes off his mask in front of a cityscape)

Good movie though, I thought they did a nice job with this one. Matt's sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank to 'turn off' his powers a nice touch.

In 2003, despite a few effects that haven't dated so well, Daredevil secured Marvel's successful fresh foray into the cinema. From today's perspective, it's actually a surprise that they never made any sequels to this.

But hey, Ben Affleck is still bankable. So maybe they will.

We'll just have to wait and


(available here)

Source Code

*** Contains spoilers ***
Goodwin: "This tactical advantage, this tremendous tool that we've given you - don't squander it thinking!"

Theorizing that one can time travel within his own lifetime, US Air Force pilot Captain Colter Stevens steps into the Source Code accelerator... and vanishes. He awakes to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that are not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Goodwin, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a videogram that only Colter can see and hear. And so Captain Stevens finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home...

If this all sounds to you like a bit like Quantum Leap, then you're right. All this film's really missing is a scene in which Scott Bakula has a father-son phone conversation in which one party's days are gallingly numbered. Oh, wait, that's in here too. Yes, Bakula plays the lead's dad, just like in the aforementioned TV series. Oh boy...

(da-da dun dun dun dun dun dun dunn, da-da dun dun dun dun dun dun dunn...)

All of this tribute movie's love for a show that I enjoyed pretty well every episode of really ought to make me tremendously well-disposed to it, but, sad to say, I'm afraid that's just not the feeling I came away with.

For the other thing that this film has taken from Quantum Leap is a great premise, realised rather carelessly. In QL they overcame any shortcomings with consistently friendly characterisation, but for my money Source Code just doesn't seem to be making the effort there either.

The story is built upon an exciting idea - that when a person dies, their brain retains an 'afterglow' of the final eight minutes of their life, give or take. So our man, complete with his swiss-cheesed memory, has been plugged into the afterglow of a bomb victim from earlier that day. Colter chronologically relives everything of which the dead guy - Sean - was aware in those final few moments, and dreamily interacts with it all, looking for some clue to the bomber's identity to report back to his bosses in the near future. Over and over again. Yes, most of this film repeatedly takes place within those same pivotal eight minutes.

Since the man died on a train that was blown up, this predominantly means that Colter dreams of the individuals surrounding him (Sean) in the same carriage. However when our hero gets up and goes to visit the next carriage, well, he obviously can't know anything about whoever's along there, because Sean never saw them, so they cannot be retained in Sean's afterglow. In fact, Colter won't be able to get any information out of anyone or anything that Sean wasn't aware of. Similarly, gleaning information from the internet would also be right out for the same reason.

That every different version of those final eight minutes features anomalies that are not the result of the protagonist's divergent choices (eg. the girl opposite him on the train starts off sitting in a slightly different position each time) makes it appear that these surroundings are all subjective to Colter, and not fixed. Despite these limitations, Colter succeeds at every one of the impossible tasks that I listed in the above paragraph.

As a viewer, I found this quite aggravating. What is the point in exploring an idea without thinking it through?

Yet then in the film's final few moments, a solution is offered for why this fellow has access to so much information that the original guy who died didn't. It turns out that the project's chief scientist, despite having merely plugged our guy into a dead brain's afterglow, has unwittingly sent him both actually back in time, and into a parallel universe.

I know, what are the chances. I mean he's not working on or experimenting with time travel, or parallel worlds, and yet somehow he's managed to stumble upon the science for both... without ever even realising it.

Why the whole ill-fitting afterglow idea? Why didn't the script just tell us the project was deliberately based upon the whole time-travel / parallel world premise from the outset, and thus give us a story which we could engage with while watching it, instead of just in its final moments? Maybe it did, but I need to go back and relive this morning to pick up on it.

Still, at least there was an explanation, which is more than 1993's similarly themed (and similarly lazy) Groundhog Day offered us. A better trait that both films share is to highlight just how full of opportunity every moment of life is, no matter how mundane it might appear. When Colter pays the depressed stand-up comic to perform an impromptu set for the other passengers on the train, the message for this viewer was clear, uplifting and inspiring.

However I found such moments of warmth to be in a minority. Even the terrorist plot here fails to ring true, a literal case in point being the rigging of two phone detonators, y'know, just in case one gets found and deactivated, but not the other. (which I concede does come to pass here)

Another is the idea that first bomb was some sort of a message to the authorities that a bigger explosion was planned elsewhere for later in the day. I'm no expert on terrorism, but the bombs that I see going off on the news seem to exploit the element of surprise. Of course they do. Any advance tip off to the authorities can only aid in the later ones getting caught.

And the train's running ten minutes late, and bound for Chicago. I don't know, but a timer device that was intended to go off ten minutes further down the line in the city would surely have caused much worse damage than using a real-time remote device between stops, even while passing a second train that the terrorist remotely detonating it couldn't see...

I'm sorry. Source Code seems like a well-intentioned love-letter to that 1990s TV series that I mentioned at the start, but more than anything else I felt the whole thing just lacked objectivity.

I did think they'd realised the scenes in the present a lot better than in QL, simply because they looked so mundane.

I guess I'd better not ask what became of the new universe's version of Sean though. Colter's new girlfriend sure isn't going to like asking what's become of her old friend either. I assume that her Sean's just finished the film by dying in our hero's dismembered corpse.

Is that an unkind metaphor for what just became of Quantum Leap?

I'd like to know whether the original Sean that morning was himself leapt into by a parallel Colter, and whether or not he had messaged Goodwin.

Maybe I'll find the answers to my questions if I rewind the tape and do rewatch the film over and over again...

(available to be watched repeatedly here)

Who? (film)

Rogers: "First we don't know who he is, second we don't know what he is, and third, we do know who sent him."

From 1973, this is one of my all-time favourite films.

During the Cold War, top secret American scientist Lucas Martino suffers a near-fatal 'accident' along the East German border. The local enemy military powers employ cutting edge technology to restore him to health, reconstructing his body to a hitherto unknown extent. Despite the salvage of his eyes, Lucas now has a metal head, a metal arm, and an artificial cardiovascular system. There is very little left of his external body from which his identity can be confirmed. Even his voice, when he relearns to use it, is only similar.

So, given that he will be impossible to physically identify, why not send back to the US a sleeper agent in his place?

This film, then, is 93 intensive minutes of US interrogator Sean Rogers (Elliott Gould) refuting every last supposition that the man received back into his custody is indeed the real Lucas Martino.

We don't know who whether or not this scientist is the real Martino either. Neither do we therefore know whether to root for him. Rogers is definitely the good guy. 'Martino' might be the good guy too. They're not necessarily enemies.

Rogers' real nemesis is Colonel Azarin (Trevor Howard) - the Russian bigwig who throughout this film we witness in flashback, pumping the recovering Martino for every last detail of his personal life. The parallel editing between Azarin extracting this information from the real Martino in the past, and Rogers extracting the same info from the mystery man in the present, speaks its message loudly. The two agents, on opposing sides, have rather a lot in common.

I don't normally like films that are told in a non-chronological order, but here it is a thing to behold. These two military enemies (Rogers and Azarin) are on different sides of the world, never meet, and are separated in time by about four months, but nonetheless the intricacy of their head-to-head battle of wits is staggering. And caught in the middle is the long-suffering man who might or might not be Lucas Martino.

'Martino': "Questions! Questions! What about skin pores? Enzyme patterns? Voice prints?"
Rogers: "Physical tests for a body like yours just have not been invented yet."

In the present, the metal man protests that the fingerprints from his good arm will confirm his identity, until Rogers points out that they will only prove who that arm came from. His eyes may well be the same ones too, but no detailed record of the real Martino's eyes exists. (today they'd probably cover the DNA test etc. options with the same argument)

Even 'Martino''s artificially regulated respiratory system refuses to shed any light for or against him. His robotic heartbeat, breathing and so on remain constant, whatever his feelings.

'Martino': "You think panic has something to do with the heart racing, the nerves getting tense, the breath getting labored? Mine doesn't. But I'm in a constant state of panic, Mr. Rogers. My mind is poised for flight. I'm on the edge of screaming all the time, except that if I did more people would stare at me and that would make me scream more until I wouldn't be able to stop!"

Whatever known information our man volunteers about his life before the accident, no matter how personal, could have been extracted from the real Martino by fair means or by foul.

General Deptford (right): "The only person who could possibly have all that information, those memories, that knowledge of how to act, is Martino himself."

Rogers (centre): "Or someone taught to be Martino."

Haller (left): "Security isn't the only thing that matters, if we haven't learned that yet..."

Rogers: "Haller. When we send an agent over the line to them, we just don't give them the right papers and let them get on with it. We give them the right coins, doorkeys, cigarettes, we give them photographs printed on the right kind of paper with the right kind of chemicals, we even put the right fluff and dust in his pocket, and that's not all. We give him memories of things that never happened to him. We train him to walk and talk their way. To write and read, drink and eat... smile, laugh, cry their tears, and it's all false, every single thing. But if he's good, it becomes real, and he's no longer an agent. He's a baker, or a mechanic, or a train conductor, and no matter what they do to him, he remains a train conductor. He's as bewildered and scared as a train conductor would be, and if necessary he screams and bleeds and dies like a train conductor."

Haller: "He dies. And what if that man really is a train conductor, huh? What then? Doesn't your Colonel Azarin ever stop to wonder?"

Rogers: "If he starts acting like that matters, he won't be doing his job. He's finished. If I start to believe that our metal man is Martino, I'll be going soft on him and I'll be finished too."

Haller: "Uh-huh. You're just not willing to admit you could be wrong are you?"

Rogers: "Ohh, no, no, I could be wrong, I know that. I have been. I've made mistakes. Every time I remember them I break out in cold sweat. I wake up in the middle of the night wondering when the next time's gonna be, because one day, Mr Azarin might put a really good one over on me. Could be now. And if I make a wrong decision, my friend, all our kids could end up snorting vodka and eating borsht with chopsticks."

As the subject is presently released 'back' into American civilisation and observed from a distance, just about every choice 'Martino' makes can be interpreted as exactly what an enemy agent posing as Martino would do to keep up the act. The fact that it's also what Martino himself would probably do doesn't help any. Ultimately it seems that while this fellow can easily prove himself to be an imposter, it's fast becoming impossible to come up with any scenario that can prove to Rogers that he's genuine.

'Martino' visits an old girlfriend, apparently unaware that this behaviour has been anticipated, and her apartment appropriately bugged in advance. She's convinced that he's the same guy, and accurately predicts the man she once loved's next choice.

But if she could predict it, then arguably so too could a Russian impersonator. Everywhere you look in this film it's stalemate. Perhaps a bit like the Cold War itself.

What about his scientific genius? Well they could ask him about the top secret US work that he was engaged on before the accident, but then in asking those questions they would be risking giving away information about it to a potential ringer. And again, any information that he volunteers could have been extracted from the real Martino.

I suppose my high praise for this low-budget 1973 drama says alot about what I look for in a good movie - a strong script. They've taken their idea here and really run with it! I say this because some of the other elements in this one can be kind of ropey.

For example, the old trick scalpel that appears to draw blood instantly instead of after a moment. Elliott Gould, sorry to say, phones in his performance throughout. Finchley's sudden accidental death happens out of nowhere, apparently because there are simply no more scenes left with him in. The undercover spies trailing 'Martino' stick out like a fancy dress temp handing out leaflets for a Blues Brothers gig:

Most notably, there's also a three minute car chase in the middle that really doesn't belong in this kind of a talkative drama.

Rogers: (regarding the car chase)"That wasn't even real out there!"

(Elliott Gould, again not really acting)

Strangest of all though is the soundtrack, much of which is dubbed, including all of the enemy doctor's scenes. I don't recognise his face, but, darn it, I do know that voice...

And then there are all the flashbacks to Martino's pre-classified youth. Like in V For Vendetta, we never see the main character's natural face in this, so these scenes are all presented from his point of view. When filming of course this required the relevant performers to deliver their entire scene to camera in a single take, and while some of them misjudge their delivery, others are stunning. His girlfriend on the boat is flawless, even despite Martino's lines being added to the soundtrack in post-production, and really not matching.

The real Martino's blood-curdling scream when, in the Russian hospital, he first discovers that he now has a metal face is absolutely terrifying, made all the more so by the apparent print-through on the soundtrack, which provides us with several quiet echos of the moment in the seconds leading up to it. Terrifying. Sorry to use the same word twice, but no other synonym fits it quite so exactly. It. Is. Terrifying!

All this and Benson's governor James Noble as a General - really, he's funny without even trying to be. I hope the army uses him as a spokesperson whenever they have to break bad news.

Ultimately at the heart of this film is its own title Who? What makes a person who they are? Their body? Their history? Their choices? Their attitude?

It's one of those films that really does keep you guessing right until the very last scene. Is he Martino, or isn't he? It's got to be one or the other. But whichever it is, there's no crowing afterwards, "Oh of course I figured it out before that!" It's not a mystery for the audience to unravel. It really can go either way. And yes, at the end they are brave enough to explicitly show us the answer.

Even so, I could still build a case for the opposite...

If you can't find Who? on a low-budget movie channel near you (at time of writing it doesn't even have a page on wikipedia), then you might find it under its reissue titles of The Man In/With The Steel Mask or the vastly dumbed-down Robo Man.

In a Lucas Martino-ish way, some of these posters might help you, or not:

He looks nothing like that.

He looks even less like that.

These two characters never meet each other.

Oh fer goodness' sake... this is just NOT THAT KIND OF A MOVIE!

What's that? Which title is the film's real one? Well, does it matter?

Isn't it still the same movie underneath?

(available here) (NB. Do check it contains the right disc)

Iron Man Three

Q. Who is the comic relief in Iron Man Three?

A. Everyone!

For example...

Tony Stark: After the slow wallowing of the second film, it's great to see him returning to his stand-up comedy persona from the first one again. In this outing he has to balance it with panic attacks following the events of The Avengers, but even here his defensive quips never let up. I like the way in which he avoids the subject, so that the film doesn't have to.

'Kid': It's not that often that a child character comes across as anything other than baggage, but Ty Simpkins had us all (the rest of the cinema and myself) chuckling out loud throughout his scenes.

Mandarin: Ben Kingsley's finest hour. What's that? He once played Gandhi? No I think you'll find that was Trevor Slattery. Hollywood often portrays British people badly. Again all the laughter here in this London cinema tonight proved otherwise. Or maybe those lines were extra ones just for us, like they got in China...

Happy Hogan: With a name like that, we're expecting jokes, and this security guard who never misses Downton Abbey doesn't disappoint. Again with the British jokes.

The Iron Patriot: Yes, it's the US government's rebranding of Iron Man, including changing the outfit's colours. Priceless.

Pageant Judge:

Need. I. Say. More. (true believer™)

Even the opening credits are a parody of the 1970s action genre, and as such might make more sense where they belong at the start of the film to set the scene for the flashback opening. A coupla' decades too retro I grant you, but still more sense than at the end.

I could go on and on here, but while this movie kept us guffawing right through to the brilliant final post-credits scene with Bruce Banner, that's about as laugh-out-loud as it got. We didn't scream in hysterics, we merely chuckled, but we did keep on chuckling.

There is a little drama in here, such as when Pepper appears to fall to her death, because Stark clean forgets he can change into Iron Man to save her, but most of this sitcom is padded out with action. The sequence when Iron Man has to save a dozen people falling from an exploding aeroplane is absolutely breathtaking, and all the more so in 3D.

Also most of the technology on show here is a thing to behold too. Is this story really set today in 2013? Surely that should be more like 2113?!? Ah, well, that's the quasi-futuristic Marvel Universe for you, which here even still retains organisations like the evil Roxxon conglomerate.

Best of all, this threequel returns to the first movie's outlook of being principally a Tony Stark film. It should always be about the guy inside the suit. Guy Pearce finally gets to make a good movie too, rather than merely a popular one.

Overall, I'm glad to have seen this on the big screen (with the big speakers), although disappointed that there are further scenes we missed due to being in the wrong country, and 4DX elements with the same notation. Also I clean forgot to pick up the audio description headphones from reception, which I'm sure would have clarified the plot for me, and further enhanced the 3D.

All the same, nitpicks aside, this is one threequel that succeeds throughout, while at the same time making it all look so effortless.

For a film so packed with gags, it's impressive that Iron Man Three doesn't really drop any clangers.

'Tony Stark will return'? He'd better.

(available here)