Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Right from the off, the opening credits had me sitting up, because coming immediately after the film's title we see the words 'BY PADDY CHAYEFSKY'.  So what?  Well, Chayefsky was 'merely' the guy who wrote the words to this 1976 classic (directed by Sidney Lumet) and screenwriters don't normally get this kind of accolade.  As someone who thinks screenwriters are often undervalued I found this gratifying. Mind you, if any screenwriter deserved the red carpet treatment, it is surely Chayefsky, the only person to win three Oscars for his screenplays, and especially for this one, a masterpiece. Where to start with its brilliance? How about a five-minute scene so well written that it gave Beatrice Straight the opportunity of a lifetime to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar? Or the spectacular  monologues, mainly by the deranged news anchor, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) but also one delivered by Ned Beattie's plutocrat, setting out his vision of global co...

Although this 2005 film by James Mangold only covers Johnny Cash’s life up to the late 1960s it still manages to include all the familiar tropes that we expect from a music biopic: the early struggle to break through, followed by meteoric success, a broken marriage, drugs and other temptations on the road. The result is that I never got emotionally invested in the story.  In fact my favourite scene was a small and rather inconsequential one early on when Cash is auditioning to the legendary Sam Phillips (owner of Sun Records). After that I was entertained OK but nothing more.  Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do a fine job of imitating Cash and June Carter on stage but their relationship offstage, which is the main emotional focus of the film, never achieved lift-off for me.  Ultimately I didn’t buy Phoenix as Cash, nor did I find him particularly engaging.  I would guess that the real Johnny Cash had presence and charm to spare but that didn’t come across to me...

It's a long time since I've watched a film quite as intense as this one, which is weird given that when all's said and done it's just about an IT guy, and there are no life-and-death issues at stake. We spend the entire running time with Jobs, just before product launch presentations at three key points in his career.  In each one he has to handle  people who are important to him in either his personal or professional life.  They all seem to want something from him, which he can't or won't provide.  This tight and repetitive structure makes for a claustrophobic and gripping  viewing experience. It also makes for a very wordy film, just one damn conversation after another.  Fortunately the words are provided by Aaron Sorkin. We know that Sorkin can deliver witty and sparkling dialogue.  Here though that wouldn't work, given that Jobs is portrayed as an uncompromising pain-in-the-arse.  Sorkin rises to the challenge.  T he screenplay is a maste...

Whether or not I saw this 1975 conspiracy thriller by Sydney Pollack back in the day I've always had the impression that it is a bit lightweight compared with the classics of the genre, but I was interested to see if this was indeed the case. The film starts off promisingly, as we are introduced to Robert Redford's character Joe, working in the offices of the 'American Literary Historical Society' which we readily surmise is a cover for some government intelligence operation.  Joe is a researcher who has just filed a report to HQ about a book that has some puzzling attributes,  and we can guess that this will have significance later on plot-wise.  Suspense is established from the outset due to a somewhat sinister character watching from the outside street, checking which employees have arrived.  When Joe pops out the building using an unseen rear entrance to pick up lunch we are not surprised when intruders choose that moment to enter the building, proceeding to kill...

I'm a huge fan of Raymond Chandler's novels featuring private detective Philip Marlowe, and back in the 1970s director Robert Altman could do no wrong as far as I was concerned.  So naturally I loved his updating of what was maybe Chandler's masterpiece, notwithstanding that some fuddy-duddy critics (as I saw them then) felt that Eliot Gould's portrayal of Marlowe in a contemporary setting was so distant from the original as to be downright disrespectful. I decided to treat myself by both rewatching the film and rereading the novel. For most of the film's running time I had little trouble with Altman's Marlowe.  Sure he is a slovenly loser, shambling from one situation to the next.  But Chandler's Marlowe was an outsider too, who often invited ridicule for putting his principles before material gain.  And this Marlowe, despite the outward appearance of a clown, sticks by his friend Terry Lennox at some personal risk, and is no fool when it comes to judging s...

At the risk of coming across as a Boring Old Fart, I do enjoy a film where the makers are sufficiently confident in the story, and in the actors, and in the audience's patience, that they just let it enfold at the right pace, allowing characters and relationships to be properly developed. Admittedly the story here might seem a bit thin on paper, but it does have the merit of being based on something that actually happened back in the early 1960s when the Cold War was at its coldest, and there were real fears of a global nuclear war breaking out. Greville Wynne, an ordinary British businessman (played by Benedìct Cumberbatch), reluctantly agrees to help British and US intelligence by getting important information out of Moscow which could help prevent war.  The info is provided by Oleg Penkovsky, a senior Soviet officer (played by Merab Ninidze). The film takes the time to show us their relationship developing into mutual respect and ultimately friendship.  We believe in it and...

This is  a labyrinthine neo-noir, an impressive debut film from  the Coens that offers the sort of pleasures you would expect: a combination of black humour and violence, superior dialogue and cinematography, and an array of flawed characters. That being said, I did find it dragged a bit after a while and the violent climax left me cold.  Maybe when few of the characters are sympathetic (to put it mildly) the film needs to offer something else to hold the viewer.  The convoluted plot held my interest to begin with but it wasn't enough.  RATING :  ✓ Cheers

This is one of Billy Wilder's last films, made in 1972, from a play by Samuel Taylor, and as such it was with some trepidation that I finally got around to seeing it, given that his films towards the end of his illustrious career are variable in quality, to say the least. Regrettably even a Wilder-completist like me wasn't able to make it to the midpoint let alone the end of this 140-minute 'comedy'. So my thoughts are necessarily subject to the caveat that the film might pick up in the second half, but I doubt it.  In fact, from the plot synopsis, it seems I gave up at just the right time thereby avoiding some subplots that don't sound essential. The basic setup has some promise: Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills play two strangers who meet in Italy when they go there to arrange the funerals of his father and her mother, who have died in a car accident, only to discover that they (the parents) have been conducting a love affair at the same hotel each summer for the last...

After decades of films portraying women as having no agency, just there to support the male protagonist, it's great that we now have films like this one where a woman is the uncompromising and unsentimental lead character. Emily, played by Aubrey Plaza (April from 'Parks and Recreation'), is struggling to get by in the gig economy, given that she can’t get a regular job because of a minor felony in her past. The film has an unadorned style throughout in terms of the visual quality and the minimal use of music.  Especially in the early scenes this helps to ground the film in Emily’s reality, as she tries to keep her life from spinning out of control. When an opportunity arises to make some easy money, albeit illegally, using fake credit cards she is unable to resist.  Not before long she is trying to move on up within this 'business' and also getting into a relationship of sorts with Youcef, one of the guys running the criminal operation. Unfortunately Youcef's c...

I’m always a bit apprehensive when an actor picks up an Oscar for playing someone with some form of disability or illness.  In this case however there’s no doubting the quality of Anthony Hopkins’ performance as someone (Anthony) with dementia. And since Olivia Colman plays his daughter (Anne) one can watch this film knowing that the acting is going to be top notch. Which is not to say that I was necessarily looking forward to the experience of sitting through this film.  Might it be too depressing or too predictable? No need to worry.  Far from being predictable this film has a novel approach to portraying dementia which wasn’t immediately obvious but which meant I was never sure what was coming.  Initially nothing seems amiss.  But soon our grip on reality is undermined by things like two actors playing the same role, or conversely an actor playing more than one role. And then we notice that  Anthony’s surroundings keep changing in subtle ways so we are a...

This 1954 romantic comedy directed by Billy Wilder was adapted from a successful play ‘Sabrina Fair’ by Samuel Taylor.  It features a romance between Sabrina, the daughter of a chauffeur, and Linus Larrabee, a wealthy individual whose family employs Sabrina's father. Although Taylor was initially involved in the adaptation he departed the scene because he didn’t like the changes Wilder was making.  Comparing the film with the plot synopsis of the play my  guess is that the changes Taylor objected to relate to the central relationship between Sabrina and Linus. Sabrina and Linus in the play  are financial and intellectual equals, and committed idealists.  Sabrina spends a couple of years in Paris as a private secretary, before returning to the US transformed into a sophisticated, beautiful and self-confident woman. And a s a bonus it turns out that her father has been amassing a fortune on the stock market. Whereas in the film Sabrina goes to Paris to attend a m...

One of the pleasures of a foreign film is getting a glimpse of a different culture, and that is certainly the case with this unusual and excellent political thriller. Apparently in Egypt the Grand Imam is as important a political figure as the President, so when the incumbent dies at the start of the film the government’s national security force, in the form of Colonel Ibrahim, is keen to influence, by fair means or foul (mainly the latter), the subsequent election so that the government’s preferred candidate wins.  Thrown into this murky world of intrigue where no one can be trusted is the other main character, Adam, a naïve student who leaves his native fishing village to start his religious studies at the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo.  He is soon a helpless pawn in the power struggle between the government and various religious factions. That the stakes are high is made clear early on by the murder of a student, which adds to the tension. Although the film start...

My bible on American and British films before 1970, and one of my most treasured possessions from my youth,  is ‘The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on Television’ by Angela and Elkan Allen. They don’t care much for Otto Preminger’s films, so I wasn’t surprised to find that they didn’t like this 1953 film noir. Nevertheless I gave it a go, because sometimes even bad films can be enjoyable.  Jean Simmons plays Diane, a pretty and intelligent 20-year old who worships her father, a not very industrious writer, but resents her wealthy stepmother.  The latter is mainly interested in her bridge club and doesn’t seem to mind financially supporting Diane and her father. Robert Mitchum plays Frank, an ambulance driver who happens to come to Diane’s attention. She soon lures him away from his girlfriend and has him installed as the family’s chauffeur. I enjoyed the first half of the film, as characters are established quickly and efficiently, intrigued as to where we were heading. And...