Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

I probably saw this film when it came out, but if so it made zero impact.   Given that it was a commercial and critical hit I thought I should check it out again. I associate director Tim Burton with dark, gothic material (such as 'Batman') so I was surprised that for much of the running time this fantasy is light and airy.  Edward (Johnny Depp) is stuck in a castle until Peg (Dianne Wiest) arrives and welcomes him into her home and family.   She's not at all bothered that he's a synthetic creature with large scissor blades for hands.  In fact everyone in her community takes a liking to Edward right from the off.   That's not terribly believable but it's OK because this is a fantasy version of suburban America, complete with pastel-coloured houses. Whilst Edward's 'hands' are an obstacle to carrying out simple tasks, providing some Chaplinesque humour (such as Edward trying valiantly to eat peas), they are incredibly deft at topiary, and coiffure,...

Judging by this film, seventeenth-century England was a rough time to be a woman. Take young Sarah for example. She lives with her uncle, a priest, and is happily betrothed to Richard, a handsome and dashing Roundhead soldier (yes, we're in the Civil War).  When he pops by on leave, and hears that she and her uncle are concerned that they might be the target of local lawlessness he promises he will protect her.  Great!  Except he then has to re-join his regiment, and isn't at all concerned when on his way out of the village he meets Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price sporting an evil haircut) coming the other way. Hopkins is going from place to place torturing  interrogating suspected witches before executing them, and receiving payment from the local magistrate into the bargain.  And he has no problem with any of his victims offering their bodies to him in the vain hope of being let off. Sure enough he sets his sights on Sarah's uncle (witches are not exclusively f...

This horror classic from Brian de Palma is so good I felt I had to rewatch it even though, as someone who hates bullying, I find some scenes hard to watch.     After a short scene that establishes that Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is useless at sports and derided by her classmates,  we switch unexpectedly to a borderline soft porn sequence wherein the camera pans lovingly across the girls' changing room as they move in slow motion in varying states of undress.   This lulls us into a false sense of security before the girls bully Carrie unmercifully when she freaks out as a result of experiencing her first period - it's a brutal scene to watch. Carrie's mother hadn't forewarned her daughter about periods and the like, because she (the mother) is a religious fanatic who regards anything to do with sex as sinful.  Poor Carrie's homelife seems to consist of being on the receiving end of diatribes about sinful boys, and whenever she offends her mother (a frequent ...

Apparently Randolph Scott appeared in over 60 Westerns, but this is the first I've seen, and (spoiler alert) it's probably going to be the last. Scott plays Ben, a bounty hunter who is trying to deliver a young murderer, Billy, to Santa Cruz, despite various obstacles which he has to overcome. Firstly there's some pesky Native Americans (or to be more specific Mescalores) who are apt to pop up at any time.  For a film made in 1959 the portrayal of Native Americans here is not very progressive.   Then there's a guy called Sam.  Although they are now on opposite sides of the law, he and Ben know each other from way back and there's a mutual respect bordering on friendship between them.   Sam and his sidekick Whit (James Coburn in his debut performance) are tagging along because Sam would desperately like to be the one to bring Billy into Santa Cruz.  This would be n ot so much for the money as for the amnesty he would receive that would wipe out his outl...

This  was Robert Redford’s last film role and given his recent death this seemed like a good time to view it. One way of framing it would be Happy Crook vs Sad Cop.  Redford plays Forrest Tucker a compulsive bank robber, specialising in small jobs.  He has an effective MO which has served him happily for many years whereby he relies on his gentlemanly charm so as to avoid using his gun.   Casey Affleck plays disillusioned Detective John Hunt who is thinking of leaving the force but for whom the pursuit of Tucker provides some purpose. Hunt’s pursuit of Tucker isn’t that gripping especially since I found Affleck’s performance unengaging.  In fact the presence of Affleck is my biggest problem with this film.  It’s probably the case that the sexual harassment allegations against Affleck were colouring my response but anyway for whatever reason I didn't enjoy any scene in which he appeared.  That includes a strange and implausible scene in which Tucke...

Fun is not necessarily the first word that comes to mind when I think of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, ‘Boogie Nights’ notwithstanding.    But right from the outset this film signals that it is going to have a comedic or satiric edge to it, with a frankly bizarre scene between a black and fearsome freedom fighter Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) and the very white Colonel Stephen J Lockjaw (played wonderfully well by an almost unrecognisable Sean Penn), in which the latter becomes sexually aroused in a ridiculous manner which had me worried about where the film might be going tone-wise. Perfidia is in a relationship with Pat (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), both of them being members of a resistance group named the French 75.  When she  gives birth to a baby girl he naturally assumes he is the father, oblivious to the fact that she has been enjoying sexual high jinks with Lockjaw.    We then get some quickfire scenes, leading to Perfidia ratting on fellow French 75 m...

By a strange coincidence 1944 saw the release of two film noirs starring Edward G Robinson which have some similarities in plot. In 'Double Indemnity' he plays an insurance investigator who doesn't realise that the salesman he trusts and keeps informed is actually the murderer in the case he is looking into. In this film, it is Robinson himself who is the murderer who is kept informed as to how the police investigation is proceeding by his friend who happens to be the DA. But whereas the Billy Wilder picture is a classic and in my opinion the definitive film noir , this Fritz Lang movie is merely entertaining. Anton Chekhov, had he still been alive in 1944, might have been astonished at how liberally his Chekhov's Gun concept is being applied in this film. We start off with overhearing part of a psychology lecture by assistant professor Wanley (Robinson) in which he refers to murder in self defence, and sure enough not that long afterwards he himself is committing just...

This is a slight comedy drama set in 1970 from director Kelly Reichardt about a character, JB, played by Josh O'Connor, who can best be described as a waster.   At least that's how his father, an eminent judge, sees him, lambasting JB in an early scene for not making more of himself.  JB's wife is also not a fan; she seems to have given up on him and the marriage, but staying with him  for the sake of their twin boys.   But hold on!  Maybe they (and we) have misjudged JB because it turns out that he has been quietly putting together a masterplan to steal some paintings from a local art gallery, which has required him to put in some effort casing the joint and assembling a ragtag team of ne'er-do-wells.  Needless to say the heist doesn't go smoothly (the title of the film is clearly intended to be ironic).  For starters JB has to unexpectedly look after his boys because of a teachers' work day, but despite various mishaps it seems he has got a...

I remember seeing this British disaster film on TV in my youth, and it having quite an impact which has remained with me ever since.   The premise (that a couple of nuclear bomb tests have changed the Earth's orbit, sending it towards the Sun) may be ridiculous, but the main strength of this picture is that it succeeds in making this seem a scarily realistic scenario. This is despite the small budget for special effects, which is evident at one point where we see what are clearly model boats being passed off as the real thing.  But overall the director (and co-writer) Val Guest does a good job of using stock footage and matte paintings to portray a world suffering from extreme weather, especially (of course) heat. It’s a clever idea to have the entire tale be told from the point of view of journalists because it helps give the unfolding events a veneer of verisimilitude.   An actual newspaper editor plays the fictional editor, and I thought he was...

This 1988 science fiction film by John Carpenter combines elements of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'The Matrix'. Unfortunately it suffers badly in comparison with those classics, due to low-budget special effects, mediocre acting, and an under-developed story. The protagonist is a drifter, George Nada, who finds a pair of sunglasses which when worn reveal the true nature of reality: some humans are really aliens who are controlling us all by the transmission of subliminal messages urging people to sleep, consume and breed. Even though the total running time barely exceeds 90 minutes, it takes an inordinately long time before Nada puts on the sunglasses. When he does it's fun for a while to see the aliens (which to be fair to the special effects department are effective enough), and to see the subliminal messages plastered over every possible wall.  Kurt Russell wasn't available to play Nada, so instead Carpenter cast a professional wrestler.  This came i...

Having given Pinocchio a makeover it was only natural that Guillermo del Toro would turn his attention to another classic story about a creature who wants to be human. Just how radical would del Toro's take be?  Well, for starters he completely inverts the structure of the novel, so that instead of the Creature wronging Victor, who then seeks revenge, here it is the Creature who suffers at the hands of Victor, and who then pursues him to the Arctic circle.   He wants Victor to create a companion for him (as in the novel), or if that is not possible to  find a way of killing him (the monster), because i n this version the Creature is literally indestructible and is therefore doomed to wander the earth forever in his loneliness.  Del Toro further loads the dice in favour of the Creature by making him surprisingly easy on the eye (no bolts in the neck, for example).   In contrast Victor is portrayed  as a borderline egotistical maniac who is arrogant...

This 1947 film is a psychological drama which would like to think it is scarier than it is. Never mind, it’s well enough put together to hold my attention (just) although a bit of pruning here and there from screenwriter Dudley Nichols wouldn’t have gone amiss, just to cut out some repetition and make it tauter. Edward G Robinson and Judith Anderson play Pete and Ellen, a brother and sister who live on an isolated farm, with teenage Meg who they have adopted. Meg's parents supposedly left the area when she was a baby and then subsequently died.  Around the same time, Pete had an accident whereby he fell into a nearby quarry, losing a leg in the process.  It’s no great surprise when eventually we learn that there is a sinister explanation for the disappearance of Meg's parents.   But let’s not run ahead of ourselves. The film starts gently enough with Pete and Ellen taking on a teenage lad Nath to help out on the farm in the evenings. Meg is sweet on Nath but he only ...

This is a rather odd film noir directed by Fritz Lang. It starts off predictably enough. Middle-aged Chris (Edward G Robinson), who has a low paying job as a bank cashier and a very unpleasant wife, meets pretty young Kitty (Joan Bennett). He falls madly in love with her, not realising that she is just humouring him.  She has a grifter for a boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea) who immediately sees the opportunity for some easy money.  Very quickly Chris is persuaded to set Kitty up in an apartment even though their relationship is so chaste they haven’t even kissed.  Chris is an amateur painter who pretends to Kitty that he is successful and well-off.  In reality the only way he can fund her lifestyle is to steal money from both his wife and his bank.  It’s at this point that the story takes a bizarre turn.  Johnny takes it into his head to try to sell some of Chris' paintings, and through an improbable series of events an eminent art critic sees them and, very...

The setting for this film, directed and cowritten by Peter Bogdanovich, is a small oil town in Texas in 1951.  As one of the characters says, the place is ‘flat and empty’, a description that equally well applies to life there.   So it’s not surprising that most of the characters spend a lot of time hankering after sex even if in virtually all cases the reality is sterile and unsatisfactory.  It's appropriate that Hank Williams’ ‘Cold Cold Heart’ is heard playing in the background at least a couple of times. The only sexual liaison we see that has some genuine warmth and affection to it is an affair between young Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and middle-aged Ruth (an Oscar-winning performance by Cloris Leachman) who is trapped in an unhappy marriage.  Indeed all of the marriages we see are unhappy.  As one of the characters observes, “80% of married life is misery.” The main object of lust among the young folk is Jacy (a perfectly cast Cybill Shepherd making her ...

I'm not really into this genre so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this film didn't do much for me, despite it being directed by Francis Ford Coppola. On the plus side it is a visually stunning experience, due not just to the cinematography but also to the overall production design and the costumes. I liked the idea of making this a kind of love story, between Dracula and Mina, Jonathan Harker's fiancée, who reminds him of his wife Elizabeth back in the day when he was a prince defending Christendom.  It was Elizabeth's suicide that drove him to become what he now is. Unfortunately whilst Gary Oldman gives a towering performance which carries the entire film, there's not much chemistry between him and Winona Ryder as Mina.   Perhaps the fact that she fell out with him during filming contributed to this, but I can't help feeling that she is miscast - she has her strengths as an actress but maybe she's incapable of providing the erotic energy needed f...

The best way to describe this 2011 adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play is 'exquisitely bleak'. I t was a rare pleasure to experience a film so masterly in its execution.  Everyone involved should have got every accolade going, but of course they didn't.   I get that the deeply moving music wasn't eligible for an Oscar nomination given that it is a violin concerto by Samuel Barber. But what about, for example, Florian Hoffmeister (who later got an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography for his work on Tár)?   E very frame here is beautifully composed and shot.  Or Rachel Weisz, who gives a phenomenal lead performance as Hester, a woman driven near to suicide by her somewhat unrequited love for an ex-RAF pilot (Tom Hiddlestone)?   At least the New York Film Critics had the good sense to give her the best actress award.  I can always happily watch Simon Russell Beale, and needless to say his performance as Hester's husband is note perfe...