Leeandkate Reviews

The Alan Clark Diaries (2004)

A worthy effort. . .

[15 January 2004]

. . . almost. The BBC's new six-part serialisation fails to answer the basic question, Who is Alan Clark? We all know his public persona, the flamboyant, outspoken, womanising Conservative MP - but that's all we get here. The series starts with his election victory in 1983, but it's not made clear whether this is a re-election or his first time in Government. His past remains a mystery, with no clue as to how he's gotten where he is apart from a few reminiscences of sexual conquests past.

John Hurt did criticise the speed of filming and the budget, and it's easy to see why. Every set is claustrophobic and bare, Clark seems to inhabit his own little world in which people come and go without really making much impression. Is this meant to give us some idea of his mental state, or is it just filming on the cheap? There's certainly very little period detail beyond his secretary's clothes and hair.

Ultimately it comes down to casting. John Hurt is perfect as Clark (as is Jenny Agutter as his wife Jane), but if it were all down to nothing but imitation then Alan Clark might as well have been immortalised in a one-man show, something along the lines of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads.

Moment (1968)

Master Of Her Domain

[11 January 2004]

Short film which focuses in close-up on a reclining woman's face for its entirety. Occasionally her hand appears in the frame as she draws on a cigarette. And after about five minutes it's pretty obvious what she's doing. To herself, if you get my meaning. There's no soundtrack apart from a background hum, not even her (heavy) breathing. Typical 60's experimental short film, really; is it trying to tell us anything? Apart from "this is what a woman looks like when she has an orgasm?" What if she was faking it?

The Battle of the Sexes (1960)

Clumsily Re-branded?

[7 January 2004]

While the plot and characters are as described above, two things puzzle me. The film's title, for one - at no point is this a battle of the sexes, the fact that protagonist and antagonist are of differing gender matters little until Mr. Martin's clumsy attempts at murder are mistaken for seduction by his intended victim.

And then there's the coda of the piece, where a voice-over suggests that maybe Mr. Martin has won the battle, but may lose the war, as Mrs. Barrows' tears stir something within him. The entire sequence feels tacked-on, and the American accent of the v/o artist (Sam Wanamaker) suggests the film, extolling as it does traditional values over modern ways, perhaps wouldn't play well in the progress-obsessed 1950's America, and was hastily re-branded as a quirky sex comedy. Incorrect though such an assumption may be, it does leave one wondering. . .

Grim Prairie Tales (1990)

Great Pairing

[1 October 2001]

It's true, none of the stories told in this strange campfire chat are particularly scary. Jones' tales of vengeful Indians, mysterious pregnant drifters, and undead gunslingers fail to chill the marrow, with only the middle tale of the three providing a certain "gross-out" factor. Dourif's single tale of family and bigotry shows true horror can lie not in the supernatural but in everyday life.

However, it's the play-off between these two great actors that gives the greatest joy in this film. The contrast (and unlikely rapport) between prim clerk Dourif and grizzled bounty hunter Jones - the latter playing against type in a way that'll surprise those used to his supporting roles in, say, the Jack Ryan films - makes them a "buddy" pairing to rival Riggs and Murtaugh. Give them their own series!

Heart of the Deal (1991)

Chilling

[15 August 2001]

Short film which has Ruben Blades as a loving husband approached by the representative of a rich family, who hope to persuade him to agree to have his wife killed and her organs transplanted to save a member of that family - all for a very nice fee, of course. With all sorts of subtle blandishments - appeals to his greed, attempts to undermine his confidence in their relationship - the agent starts to wear him down, building to a truly harrowing and horrifying climax. Watch it if you ever get the chance.

Manhunter (1986)

Bad soundtrack, but. . .

[8 December 2000]

I've read the other comments that have been made about this film and I agree with the general impression - that it's a great film, superior to "Silence of the Lambs," and all-in-all a fairly faithful adaptation of the book. Sure, not everything is included - the horror-movie ending jarred me when I first read it, and while the movie happy ending isn't much better, it at least gives us the sense that maybe the central character will find peace and redemption, something he surely deserves.

As for Dolarhyde's motivations, I think I was able to follow them pretty well - although that might be because I read the book first. His desire to be part of a family, to be seen in their eyes as loved, ties perfectly with his burgeoning relationship with a blind woman who can NEVER see him. And as for the incredible sequence with the tiger. . .

But the music still sucks. Sure, one or two tracks work in context with the scene they're accompanying, but for the most part it's awful. Dated, and no-one listened to this c*** even in 1986. The climactic gunfight to "In A Gadda Da Vida" isn't too bad, but these days one hears it and can only think of the '"In The Garden of Eden" by I. Ron Butterfly' hymn sequence from the Simpsons. And if I never hear the "Heartbeat" song from the end titles ever again, it'll be too soon!

Babylon 5: The River of Souls (1998 TV Movie)

Lovejoy in Space!

[14 September 2000]

I wonder whether Ian McShane's long-running role as antiques dealer Lovejoy on BBC TV influenced in any way his casting here. You'd think he'd be a bit more comfortable in the role, anyway.

However, the one role that always seems to get overlooked is Richard Biggs' near-cameo as Dr. Stephen Franklin - or at least someone who looks like him. Speaking in a bizarre "Kobayashi-from-The-Usual-Suspects" accent, and with a completely different set of mannerisms, you feel the hair on the back of your neck rise as you realise this isn't the Dr. Franklin we all know and love.

For me, that is the most memorable scene of this film, it beats Tracy Scoggins in lingerie anytime. This IS the Internet, remember - it's possible to see her with a lot less on!

Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998 TV Movie)

A Salutory Lesson

[14 September 2000]

Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 have one more thing in common (to add to a large list that detractors of either or both trot out regularly) - they're candidates for having theatrical movies released which are set during the run of the show but made after the runs have finished. This option is favoured because both ended on rather a final note. Thirdspace, though only a TV film, and actually released while B5 was still showing, is the perfect example of why such an idea wouldn't work.

The X-Files film was made to fit into a certain point of the show, and as such was perfect. Thirdspace was shown more than a year after the point at which it was set, and so loses a lot of context and leaves you thinking "so what?" If the show's brief cancellation during the 4th season, which required them to brutally truncate the Shadow War in order to fit in a lot of events which would have then appeared in the 5th season, then maybe this story would have been shown in its rightful place, perhaps as a Voyager-style ("Dark Frontier") TV film, much as "A Voice in the Wilderness" was in Season 1.

Instead we get another reminder that Claudia Christian was far better than Tracy Scoggins ever was, and just as we were getting used to the latter. William Sanderson's return is wasted, there are too many fistfights, the battle scenes seem cluttered, and Sheridan solves ANOTHER problem with a nuclear weapon.

Straczynski, Piller, Berman, et al, take note. Go forward, not back. I've an idea for a DS9 movie if anyone wants to hear it. . .

House by the River (1950)

Atmospheric

[25 August 2000]

Chilling and spellbinding, with supernatural elements which are so underplayed and low-key that you discount them until the end. Not to give anything away here, but if you watch this film - and you should - you'll be amazed as a denouement that anywhere else might seem hopelessly clichéd works here to the films advantage.

The bizarre love triangle of evil husband, faithful (and unsuspecting) wife, and his likewise faithful (yet secretly in love with her) brother does sometimes seems at odds with the eerie shots of the titular river, beautifully lit in black and white (which adds to the effect), but not to the detriment of the film.

Event Horizon (1997)

What's wrong with this film?

[26 July 2000]

I wanted to like it. Part of the problem is that it was misrepresented. People were expecting an Alien-style Sci-Fi epic but got this gothic Barkeresque haunted-house-in-space arty piece instead. The design and visual effects are stunning (although the techno-gothic look of the Event Horizon's interiors gets to be a bit too much - exterior-wise, though, it's one my favourite SF ships ever).

It's got a great cast - Neill, Fishburne and Isaacs in particular stand out. Pertwee is maybe a bit too blunt and hard-edged, Quinlan's character doesn't gel and Richardson doesn't have anything to do. I suspect it's the material they have to work with that presents the problem - Neill is great doing the obsessed scientist bit, but not his deranged Pinhead-from-Hellraiser turn.

The editing/pacing is definitely wrong - the little bits of printout that establish the story at the beginning are initially useful, but get to be annoying and clumsy, especially when the important bits get re-told later in dialogue. They have a 20-hour countdown, which they keep referring to, cutting off chunks of the remaining time with gay abandon - one minute they're down to 17 hours, then 4, all without doing them anything or any time seeming to really have passed.

And lastly, there's the shocks. All signposted with blaring blasts of sound that tell you THIS BIT IS SCARY. Those bits aren't scary, and you soon get bored (and a little deaf).

Final analysis? Blame the director. There's the germ of a good film here, but not in the hands of Paul Anderson, responsible for four incredibly schlock-y films (the others being Shopping, Mortal Kombat and Soldier).

Project U.F.O. (1978–1979)

More Scooby-Doo than Mulder & Scully

[19 July 2000]

Pretty formulaic episode structure. Typical 70's TV Guest-of-the-Week sees UFO, faintly homoerotic Air Force duo arrive to investigate, quickly debunk claim, and that's it. Brief twist at the end - often revealed only to audience, not characters - suggests maybe the UFO was real.

Ice Cold in Alex (1958)

The Ultimate Beer Movie!

[17 July 2000]

Terrific! John Mills looks tortured as always, Harry Andrews carries off one of the best portrayals of a British Army sergeant (the best soldier in the world), Sylvia Sims is ethereally beautiful, and Anthony Quayle is memorable as a mysterious South African officer. But the best bit is at the end. ..

It's difficult to write about it without giving away what happens, but it involves the titular pint of beer that our hero has promised his crew. By the time you get to where he fulfils his promise (well, come on! This is Johnny Mills we're talking about! You KNOW he'll pull them through!) you're ready for a draft yourself, and I always try to have a can of Carlsberg (for that's what it is; they even used the scene as a TV advert once) stuck in the fridge for when I watch this film.

Night Game (1989)

Before "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven. . ."

[2 July 2000]

. . . this what the serial killer movie looked like. The plot is leaky to say the least: someone would have picked up on the fact that the murders only occur when the local team plays, and when a certain player scores. The fact that he kills with a hook would get out, and someone would immediately remember a disaffected loner with a hook for a hand. FBI Behavioural Sciences would solve this in a day.

The director seems immensely impressed with the fact he's filming in Texas, far from the gaze of Studio execs, and packs in endless loving aerial vistas. His visual style is stuck in TV Movie Lite, and along with the soundtrack could have originated from anytime since 1972. Only the clothes and hairstyles suggest its 80's dating, and even those seem stuck in a timewarp from 1985 rather than 1989.

Roy Scheider looks embarrassed, Karen Young flashes her breasts in the first 10 minutes. Subplots about Scheider's character's father's links to organised crime and tension with his girlfriend's mother (who he dated in High School) detract from the story and go unresolved. One face to watch out for: the blonde victim in the Hall of Mirrors is played by Renee O'Connor, Xena's sidekick Gabrielle. I only watched the rest of the film because I thought I recognised her face and wanted to check the credits!

Field of Dreams (1989)

The Ultimate Baseball Film

[16 June 2000]

I'm a Brit. We don't get baseball and we don't get baseball films. The Natural? Huh? Major League? Funny, but what's the game about? Cobb? Babe? Who? For Love of The Game? I'll catch it on TV sometime. Stealing Home? How come Jodie Foster doesn't age at all?

But this film transcends all that. A simple elegy to family, the good old days and the value of dreams. It captures perfectly the magic of long summer evenings that never seem to end.

Oh, heck. I forgot Bull Durham and Eight Men Out. They're good, but Fields of Dreams is, and I hope always will be, the best.

The Killers (1964)

The first TV Movie. . .

[13 June 2000]

. . . and it shows. The direction is static and uninvolving, the flashbacks are overlong, and there's a lot of bad acting. Most of it by a subsequent leader of the free world, natch. But it's not just Reagan to blame: Cassavetes just doesn't gel as the racing driver brought low by a femme fatale; and what IS Clu Gallagher's hitman meant to be about? Only Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin (the latter having nowhere neat the amount of screentime he should) carry off their roles convincingly - but if that's what you're after, then Point Blank is probably the film you should see.

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

Don 'No Soul' Simmons is God!

[17 March 2000]

It's not a brilliant movie - any kind of sketch compilation is going to be variable at best (look at Monty Python's "And Now for Something Completely Different" and "The Meaning of Life") but this has more standout moments than "Kentucky Fried Movie" (with which it's often unfavourably compared).

Highlights for me include the Great Mysteries Of Our Time documentary show, "Bullshit or Not?" The revelation that Jack the Ripper was actually the Loch Ness Monster makes more sense than some theories I've heard. ..

Monique Gabrielle is gorgeous as the Pethouse Video Pet trying to appear intelligent by going to art galleries (but doing it naked because that's what people are watching the tape for).

If there's one let-down it's the framing film which gives the compilation it's name - the movie it parodies, "Queen of Outer Space" featuring Zsa-Zsa Gabor, is simultaneously better AND worse and a lot funnier!

By the way, Don has his own Usenet newsgroup, alt.fan.don.no.soul.simmons. No-one posts to it, which seems fitting somehow.

Shopping (1994)

You Don't Turn Down The Chance to S**g Sadie Frost!

[22 February 2000]

This film just plain doesn't work. The protagonists are a bunch of losers - just out for thrills, like joyriders are meant to be, yes - but it attempts to glamourise and politicise them - to give them deeper motives - in a way that completely fails to come across.

Meanwhile, you have the Sean Pertwee character, who's meant to be a sell-out, who is violating the spirit of the life they lead by going 'legit' and forming associations with true organised crime. But instead, next to this bunch of anarchistic, narcissistic overgrown children, he appears to be the only responsible, sympathetic, adult character. Meanwhile, Jonathan Pryce's paternal policeman is completely ineffective in what is meant to be the true adult presence of the film.

There's one scene which epitomises the failings of the film - Billy's rebuff of Jo's attempted seduction by saying sex is too dangerous in the 90's. Never mind that he'd already attempted to chat up a stranger in a club! It reinforces one's perception of him as a big kid unwilling to grow up. . . Characters' actions have to be believable, and his aren't. No wonder one TV version I saw cut the scene short, it's almost embarrassing to watch. Hence the title I've chosen for this review!

Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

Boy meets girl, Boy loses son, Boy sinks German battleship?

[28 December 1999]

That's it in a nutshell, as the fictional character played by Kenneth More oversees the hunt for the Bismarck. Good effects for the time, good characterization, and even the Germans are treated sympathetically except for Admiral Lutjens who's portrayed as a raving Hitlerophile.