I'm a fan of all things film and TV I write for several websites mainly reviewing the latest shows while my new website, coming soon, will combine all my TV-related articles
One of the elements of 1937 winner The Great Ziegfeld that I enjoyed the most was the the interplay between male lead William Powell and final love interest Myrna Loy in the final third of the film. Little did I know that this was their third film together and they were actually married in a franchise of films known as The Thin Man series. In the film they play Nick and Nora Charles a married couple he a retired dective her a girl-about-town both trying to settle down when Nick is pulled back into action after an old friend of his disappears. His old friend Claude Wynant is the Thin Man of the series but he didn't really strike me as terribly thin. At the same time Claude's girlfriend and personal secretary is killed, possibly by him for taking money that didn't belong to her, so Nick has two cases to solve. Then follows a lot of scenes with Nick interviewing low lives, comic gangsters and almost being killed himself. The final scene sees Nick and Nora host a dinner party with all the suspects present before Nick reveals the culprit. This plot device has been used over and over again in Agatha Christie novels so its seems a bit passe here.
I have to say I wasn't much for The Thin Man, aside from William Powell's wise-cracking razor sharp performance there wasn't a lot to write home about. It wasn't a particularly bad film but the central mystery never grabbed me and one of the best characters, Natalie Moorhead's Julia Woolf, is murdered early on in the film. As well as Best Picture, Powell was nominated for Best Actor (he wasn't for Ziegfeld) and it was also nominated for direction and screenplay but rightfully didn't win any of those either. The film also spawned four sequels which may have been a lot better but I have to say this one left me feeling rather flat.
Obviously I was aware of A Star is Born, but have never seen the two well-known version starring Judy Garland and Barbara Streissand respectively. However I didn't know the format pre-dated Garland and the first version starred Janet Gaynor as the up-and-coming starlet and Frederic March as the leading man who helps her on her way. The film is also historic in its use of technicolour and won a special Oscar for its use of the technique, it is also the first film I've watched in this quest that has a scene at the Oscar ceremony itself. For those unfamiliar with the story it sees a young girl go to Hollywood to make her mark. After several unsuccesful attempts she meets Norman Maine a screen icon who's latest performances have been criticised, Maine introduces her to his agent who renames her Vicki Lester. Maine and Lester get married but soon she begins to flourish and he starts drinking heavily, goes into rehab and is almost sent to jail following a brawl. She gives up her career to look after him but eventually he decides to commit suicide leaving her heartbroken. With the help of her grandmother she decides to return to the screen with a tribute to her late husband.
I rather enjoyed A Star is Born, I believe the later versions are both musicals but this worked well being a straight piece of drama. In the lead roleJanet Gaynor is a triumph, and was nominated for Best Actress, she lets the audience see her journey from small-town North Dakota gal, to struggling actress to Hollywood star. However it is her fellow nominee Frederic March who steals the show as soon as he comes on the scene. You feel for him as his career leaves him and he becomes almost a secretary for his wife. There are also some nice supporting performances most notably from Lionel 'Max from Hart to Hart' Stander who, as he did in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, plays the wise-cracking aide. Aswell as the nominations I've mentioned and of course Best Picutre, the film did win Best Screenplay and was also nominated for Best Assistant Director an award that would disappear that year. A very good and compelling film, A Star is Born ultimately lost out to The Life of Emile Zola, but left more of a lasting legacy than most of the films up against it that year.
After starring in Captain Courageous, Spencer Tracy would get back to back Best Actor Oscars the second at the 1939 ceremony for his performancein Boys Town. Boys Town is one of those 'based on a true story about insparational mentor' films that seem to always crop up around awards season (Dead Poets Society for example). Boys Town looks at Tracy's Father Flanagan who decided to start a society for young boys who would otherwise be getting into fights and ending up in young offender's institutes. After several succesful years with the Father almost going bankrupt the society becomes a success but Flanagan gets a call from a gang boss asking him to look after his younger brother before he turns to the gang life. That boy is Mickey Rooney's Whitey the stereotypical badlad stirring up trouble by smoking and fighting in the peacful society. Although Whitey tries to escape something always keeps dragging him away and that get's him into more trouble finally getting in the way of one of his brother's mob hits but ultimately he is saved by the boys from boys town.
The thing that surprised me with Boys Town was how little impact Spencer Tracy had. Sure he was the inspirational figure but a lot of the time he sat back and watched the boys slug it out. Obviously this happened in real life but for a performance that won Tracy the Best Actor Oscar I really didn't think it was up to much. The film itself was much as you'd expect in a film where the majority of the performers are teenage boys. Mickey Rooney for his part wasn't as annoying as other films that I'd seen him in up to this point and was almost bearable in the other lead role. But I just felt this lacked something and especially in a year where La Grande Illusion and The Adventures of Robin Hood were both nominated and You Can't Take It With You won this almost feels a little stuck in the past compared to the modern feel of those other films.
Back from Portugal now, but way behind schedule so going to have to step it up a little bit. More Frank Capra for me first with Lady for A Day. This film contains a lot of firsts Oscar wise, its the first Capra film to be nominated for an Oscar, losing to Cavalcade, as well as the first film to win him an Oscar nod. It was also the first film to ever be nominated for an Oscar that was distributed by Columbia studios. Unlike Lost Horizon this is definite Capra material it deals with Annie an aging apple-selling woman who gave up a daughter at birth. Annie has been writing to her daughter, telling her that she is an aristrocratic lady and that she lives in a fancy hotel. When her daughter is to be married to the son of a Spanish count, Annie frets and is absent from her post, which angers gangster Dave the Dude who doesn't do a deal without buying an apple from Annie. With Dave's help Annie is able to get an apartment, a makeover courtesy of Dave's nightclub singer girlfriend and a 'husband' in Dave's pool hustler friend. Short-term they are able to fool the daughter, fiancee and count but when a party is suggested the police get suspicious as all of Dave's gang gathers together to pretend to be dignitaries. All of Dave's friends are arrested under suspicion of kidnapping some journalists but Dave tells the governer and the mayor the story and Annie doesn't have to reveal the truth to her daughter. All the Capra themes are there - the poor trying to get one over on the rich, the representation of common folk as salt of the earth and the large part that journalists play in the plot once again.
The film ticks along pretty nicely but is no classic and certainly isn't as groundbreaking or interesting as Cavalcade, that year's winner. The film was also nominated for screenplay and May Robinson's performance as Annie but also lost both of these. However the Annie plot-line gets eclipsed by the dealings of Dave The Dude and is underworld associates and there's just as fine a performance from Warren William as Dude. At the end of the day this was a good beginning for Capra and marked the style that he would perfect to win him three director Oscars in this decade.
The debut film from Brass Eye's Chris Morris had to be controversial and the material of Four Lions has definitely done that. The film looks at the world of suicide bombers but portrays most of them as bumbling brainwashed idiots or slightly psychotic guys who don't really understand the cause that they're fighting for. Riz Ahmed plays Omar the only one of a group of five extremists who actually knows what he's fighting for. The scenes featuring Omar's home life aren't often the most funny ones but are the ones with the most heart and poignancy. Friends Waj and Fessal aren't quite with it and therefore have been brainwashed by the only white member of the group and slightly psychotic Barry. It is Barry who possibly gets the most laughs in the film but at the same time is probably the most dillusional of the group. The film has plenty of laughs as the men struggle to even film a simple threatening video tape or transport explosives from one area to another. The final ache London Marathon is po men intned to blow up the London Marathon is possibly where the material gets a bit close to the bone as comparisons have been made to the 7/7 attacks however Morris and co-writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong always manage to keep the material light enough and show the bombs not inflicting much damage to the general public. The film is incredibly funny so when something horrible happens, it makes you sit back and think in shock and that's what Morris is good for.
Riz Ahmed is brilliant in the main role he kind of holds things together and shows that suicide bombers can be normal level-headed men with families and steady jobs. The scene in which he tries to explain 'the cause' to his young son by using the analogy of the Lion King is strangely touching. Nigel Lindsay is incredibly scary as Barry as he interjects humour and full on hatred into his performance. But Kayvan Novak as Waj is the star of the show, he is a loveable simpleton not quite sure what he's doing but trying to please those around him, you'll certainly never think about Alton Towers quite the same again after his speech. British comedy regulars such as Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon and The Thick of It's Alex McQueen round off the cast displaying the general ignorance towards the Muslim faith and the incomptence of both the police and MPs.
While its not ever as funny as it thinks it is, this is still a brave film about a bunch of bumbling guys who just happen to want to blow themselves up. Morris is an accomplished director and has created a story that will stick with you long after you leave the cinema.
After all the controversial allocations made about Roman Polanski over the last six months its easy to forget that he is at heart a film-maker. After making a version of Oliver Twist for some reason, Polanski is back at his storytelling best with a big screen version of Robet Harris' novel The Ghost. The plot sees Ewan McGregor's ghost writer hired to finish ghosting the memoirs of former prime minister Adam Lang after the previous ghost, and aide to Lang, died in mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile Lang has been accused of war crimes and McGregor starts to dig up clues that point to a secret past and may have been the reason that the former ghost writer perished. McGregor also starts to attract the attentions of Lang's neglected wife Ruth.
All the action takes place on a small island off Boston in which Lang has a reclusive property, and the island starts to take a characteristic of its own. Polanski is able to make the island central to the storytelling, the sea where the former ghost perished is forboding and the small houses and the scared villagers make it even more creepy. The score also plays a part in ramping up the tension and does it well. For what is essentially a noirish thriller, The Ghost is incredibly funny so when those shock moments come sometimes you are not really prepared for them. Although all the scenes do advance the plot in some way, I found some of them incredibly talky especially those involving The Ghost and Ruth Lang. I also found the final third of the film lacked a certain something and I felt the film lacked the adequate pay-off that had been set-up in the first two thirds of the film.
Ewan McGregor is great in the lead role, his London accent does falter at times but he does well portraying the outsider who doesn't really care about politics and just wants to get paid but gets sucked into the action once he gets to the island. Olivia Williams is actually used well in a film for once, as Ruth she flicks from ice cold to fairly warm and normal and at times incredibly sexy. Meanwhile despite being British, Kim Catrall struggles with a plummy accent there are also some good minor roles for Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach. However the big surprise is that Pierce Brosnan isnt' in that much. I got the impression that his character would have almost as much screen time as McGregor, but instead he spends a lot of the time away from where the action is. When he is on screen, however, he is a joy to watch as the sickly over-the-top former P.M.
Overall a well-crafted and carefully put together film from one of the best directors of all time which has some fine acting and cinematography but struggles to maintain its plot flow in the final act.
Originally Ridley Scott had planned to make a film starring Russell Crowe as The Sherrif of Nottingham who would be a sympathetic figure and he would portray Robin Hood as the villain of the piece. But when Scott revealled that he would call the film Nottingham, the studios realised that they would have to spend a lot of money explaining to everyone that it was a Robin Hood film. So in the end we are left with Crowe as Robin the soldier and the good guy of the piece and The Sherif of Nottingham reduced to being a sidenote as the main villians become King John and Mark Strong's French baddie Godfrey. But Scott still wants to tell an alternative tale so kind of gives us Robin Hood: Before he was an Outlaw. The tale sees Robin as a soldier who fights alongside King Richard and Robert of Loxley during The Crusades however when Richard and Loxley are killed Robin returns to Nottingham to give the news to Robert's father and his wife Marian. Meanwhile Godfrey, aide to Prince John, is secretly plotting a French invasion and these plots inevitably intertwined throughout the film.
The main problem with Scott's vision for Robin Hood is that it just seems a bit bogged down with trying to tell a story and has sacrificed entertainment in the process. There's only so many times you can watch Robin Hood riding round forrests with Dr Morris from ER and Martin Kimi from Lost before you start to drift off. For a film that aims to be a summer blockbuster it is incredibly talky and has little action to offer. The final battle scenes are fairly entertaining but eventually even they outstay their welcome. The main problem however is that the whole things just feels quite cold. The fact that it always seems to be bitterly cold in the forrest makes the film seem unengaging and quite stand offish. There are a few entertaining moments the banter between the Merry Men is always quite light and Mark Strong's villainous ramblings are always worth a look
Of the performances Russell Crowe doesn't really make for a likeable Hood. In Gladiator his character displayed heart and the performance was full of emotion and rightfully got him a Best Actor Oscar. Here he's gruff and just fairly uninspriing till his final scenes where he has to rally everyone into action. Another problem, that has been well reported in the press, is that of his accent a kind of cross breed between his native antipodean tongue and Michael Parkinson via Liverpool, Dublin and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Another problem is that most of the parts are not filled by English actors instead you have Cate Blanchett as Marian, Danny Huston as King Richard, William Hurt as the King's advisor and Max Von Sydow as Walter Loxley. Blanchett actually fairs pretty well as Marian playing her as an incredibly strong character and an equal to Robin. As already mentioned Mark Strong once again steals the show and proves that the bad guys in Robin Hood are always worth watching. There are also some good performances from the other Brits notably Oscar Isaac as King John, Eileen Atkins as his mother and Mark Addy providing the comic relief as Friar Tuck.
Overall though this incredibly flawed, if Crowe and Scott were planning to make another Gladiator then they failed. This has none of the excitement or heart that that film had instead this is a very plodding historical tale with little action or decent central performances.
ck is pulled back into action after an old friend of his disappears. His old friend Claude Wynant is the Thin Man of the series but he didn't really strike me as terribly thin. At the same time Claude's girlfriend and personal secretary is killed, possibly by him for taking money that didn't belong to her, so Nick has two cases to solve. Then follows a lot of scenes with Nick interviewing low lives, comic gangsters and almost being killed himself. The final scene sees Nick and Nora host a dinner party with all the suspects present before Nick reveals the culprit. This plot device has been used over and over again in Agatha Christie novels so its seems a bit passe here.
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