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BROADWAY DANNY ROSE

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In this delightful 1984 comedy Woody Allen plays the title character, a small-time theatrical agent, who is extremely loyal and dedicated to his clients, no matter how hopeless they are. Sadly that loyalty is rarely reciprocated on the rare occasions when one of his clients hits the big time, and the  plot concerns one such client, Lou Canova, a singer who once was big and who is now attempting a comeback. The other main character is Lou's mistress, Tina Vitale, played by Mia Farrow.  Lou wants her to be present at a big concert he has coming up, with Danny pretending to be her boyfriend. As a result of T ina having an ex-boyfriend who still loves her, and who happens to be a gangster, c omplications ensue in which the gangster wants Danny killed. It's a light and entertaining story in which Farrow shines, partly down to the simple fact that she is playing very much against type as the brassy, fast-talking Tina. Allen extracts the humour you would expect from his roster of unp...
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LES DIABOLIQUES

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The setting for this 1955 psychological thriller, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, is a Parisian boarding school for boys, run by a headmaster who is both married to one of the teachers and having an indiscreet affair with another (it is France after all). He’s a nasty piece of work who physically and emotionally abuses his wife, Christina, who he only seems to have married  for her money (apparently she owns the school which stuck me as weird but never mind). Because he is so unpleasant it seems at the start of the film that the mistress, Nicole, has taken Christina under her wing, even to the extent of concocting a plan to murder the guy.  Christina has a  bad heart condition and is rather weak-willed but Nicole (who has a very strong personality) manages to persuade her to be an accomplice to the crime. There is considerable suspense in the first half of the film arising from whether the plan will succeed.  In essence it is to drug the husband so as to be able t...
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THUNDER ROCK

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I wasn’t expecting much from this obscure 1942 film by the Boulting brothers (Roy directed it, John produced it) especially since it seemed like it had a supernatural element to it.   It starts with an amusing scene in Chicago of all places which serves to establish that the British lighthouse keeper at Thunder Rock in Lake Michigan is an odd cove (he hasn’t been cashing his pay cheques). So we’re off to the lighthouse by way of a seaplane piloted by Streeter (played by James Mason) who is an old friend of Charleston, the lighthouse keeper (played by Michael Redgrave). The two friends have an argument because Streeter disapproves of his friend trying to become a recluse when Streeter has himself enlisted in the Chinese air force to help them in their war with Japan (this film is set in 1939). Anyway the visitors leave so that we can spend the rest of the film at the lighthouse with just Charleston for company. Except that it’s not quite accurate to say that Charleston is alone...
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THE FALLEN IDOL

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This highly regarded film from 1948 has the unusual setting of a foreign embassy in London.  Ralph Richardson plays Baines, the butler there who is unhappily married to the head housekeeper, and who has for a few months been conducting an affair with Julie, a foreign typist at the embassy. Things come to a head one weekend when Julie, realising that Mrs Baines will never agree to a divorce, tells Baines that she is returning home.  Around the same time Mrs Baines learns of the affair, leading to a violent argument with her husband.   When she then falls to her death unseen by anyone B aines assumed she slipped and fell down the huge staircase at the embassy.  The police are brought in and when their investigation reveals that Baines’ explanation is inconsistent with her injuries, and then they learn of the affair, they suspect foul play. Things are looking bad for Baines, and he is about to be escorted from the embassy when fortunately the police discover evidence th...
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T2 TRAINSPOTTING

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Twenty years have elapsed since we saw Renton walking into the sunset with drug money he has stolen from Begbie and Sick Boy.  And unsurprisingly it is Renton who in the intervening years had made the best go of leading a normal life.  He has been living in Amsterdam, got married, and has held down an accountancy-type job. But now his wife is divorcing him and he is about to lose his job, so he is back in town to look up his old mates, just in time in fact to stop Spud killing himself. Spud has tried and failed to get off drugs, and as a result he is estranged from Gail and his son Fergus, and he has just about reached the end of the line. Likewise Sick Boy has a wife and child in London he never sees, so he now has the crazy idea of setting up a brothel to be run by a young Bulgarian woman, Veronika, whom he is in a very casual relationship with. Meanwhile Begbie has just escaped from prison, and still has the old anger management problems, so what his reaction will be if and...
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TRAINSPOTTING

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If you wrote out a bare bones plot summary of this film it might sound as though it is a sad tale of heroin addicts, in which inevitably there are a couple of fatalities, one of a baby. So the fact that it's often very funny and in a weird way uplifting is testament to the screenplay (an adaptation by John Hodge of the novel by Irvine Welsh) and to how Danny Boyle manages to bring it to life in surprising and surreal ways which had stuck in my memory even if I struggled to recall much about the story. Although it could be said to be an ensemble piece, none of the characters had stayed with me other than the narrator, Renton, and Begbie, the one guy who doesn't take drugs but who has severe anger management issues.   Renton is played in uncompromising fashion by Ewan MacGregor.  He's not an actor I naturally warm to but there's no doubt that his energy is a key element in the film's success.  I appreciated that the film doesn't try to make Renton especially likea...
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GLORY

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In 1863 an all-black regiment in the Union army suffered heavy losses in a futile attack on a Confederate fort, and their courage inspired many other black Americans to enlist, helping the Union side to eventually triumph in the Civil War. This film tells the story of the regiment and their young white colonel, Robert Gould Shaw.   This is done in a conventional manner and therefore the result might have been a rather dull piece of hagiography, but f ortunately this is not the case, thanks to the unobtrusive direction by Edward Zwick and to some fine performances. When we first meet Shaw he is a fresh faced 23-year old who is a captain in the Union army due to his parents being wealthy and well connected Bostonians. Shaw’s first experience of warfare is an ignominious one in which his men are routed and he falls to the ground, pretending to be dead. But back home he is made colonel of the first ever black regiment.  It’s a promotion but a daunting one given that his men l...
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