elis_jones

I watched this movie on TV, so I am prepared to make some allowances. I knew nothing about it until it appeared in the TV schedules. The opening few minutes hooked me. I always enjoy George Clooney's performances. He is a consummate actor, and brings class to everything he is involved with. To continue the fishing analogy: I wrote that the opening few minutes hooked me. But the film failed to reel me in. The more I watched the less I was interested in the characters. A poor little rich family struggling with issues of infidelity does not arouse much sympathy in me. The film began to resemble a travelogue: beautiful scenery, loving lingering shots of stunning landscapes. But in all honesty it could have lost 10-15 minutes without anyone noticing. I found myself looking out for Magnum PI and Higgins. Moreover the music soon became very distracting.

So why did I watch to the end? I am not sure if I can answer that question. Maybe it was because of the Oscar-winning screenplay. Maybe it was out of respect for a strong cast. But all in all I was disappointed.

I must have watched this when it was first transmitted in 1975. It was one of a series of plays called Eleventh Hour - a script written rehearsed and transmitted within a short period of time - so it had only limited relevance.

I remember the basic premise of the play: a room in total disarray, with papers lying all over the place. The papers belonged to a lexicographer, who was in the process of compiling a new dictionary or thesaurus. The lexicographer's work was ruined - all his carefully arranged pieces of paper strewn about a room.

There was a french window - and in the french window a shattered pane of glass. Who had wrought this havoc? Was it a burglar, or merely some passing vandal? Vaguely in the background one could hear the dulcet sounds of a cricket match - a typical English summer's day. The main protagonist - played by the peerless Frank Thornton - laments the destruction of his work. And gradually he begins to mix up his words: malapropisms abound.

Which is why I thought of The Boundary this evening. I was eating a macaroon... and for me the word macaroon is now forever associated with the word octoroon, since I saw this play. The script was co-authored by Tom Stoppard, and bears the hallmark of his playful use of the English language.

And I remember the end moments. A transistor radio sits on a table amongst the chaos, and from it comes the dulcet voice of the famous cricket commentator John Arlott - he too is making a mess of his words! So it now becomes clear what caused the broken pane of glass - and the draft which has blown all the paper about the room.

Does a tape of this transmission still exist? Or even a copy of the script?

I thought that I had already seen this western, so I wasn't expecting much when I tuned in to it recently. Maybe I had already seen it, but it must have been so long ago that the UK was transmitting television in black-and-white only, for I am sure that I would have remembered the dazzling colour photography if nothing else.

But there is so much else: a taut script, piling irony upon irony; fine character acting, not only from Randolph Scott but also from Lee Marvin, Walter Reed and Gail Russell. The ambivalence of Lee Marvin's character Bill Masters is a tour-de-force, especially the scene in which he takes a light for his cigarette from the smouldering remains of one resting on the lips of the man he has just killed.

A film that packs so much action and human interest into less than 80 minutes.

A classic.

I like to think that they had fun making this movie. I don't know what the budget was, but the producers deserve to recoup their investment by fair means or foul. Yes, it's retro, but not in the style of something like the 1980 version FLASH GORDON. It plays on the knowledge and love of things 1930s - that strange kind of optimism for the future of science that existed in that decade.

And it teases us: we know that there was never a HINDENBURG III, because something nasty happened to the first one. There doesn't seem to have been a World War 2 in this story(at least not yet - and there is a reference somewhere in there to the First World War, so maybe they're not telling us something?) And Sky Captain himself is a sort of Biggles, full of derring-do against the Evil in the world.

What it reminded me of mostly was some Japanese Anime. Technology has advanced, but not as we know it, Jim. The 2000 film THE BOY WHO SAW THE WIND portrays dirigibles as the main form of international transportation, and has a very similar 1930s-but-not-quite-1930s feel to it. The impression created by the CGI adds very much to it.

Nobody is out-of-place. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are straight out of a 1930s screwball comedy. Angelina Jolie hams it up for all it's worth. Giovanni Ribisi is a great straight man, and Michael Gambon looks as if he's stepped right over from Dennis Potter's THE SINGING DETECTIVE.

I recommend anybody who loves movies to watch this one. Just suspend your disbelief and let the film wash over you. No value judgments, no preconceptions...

Just enjoy!

GOLLOCKS! played in UK cinemas for a brief while in the 1970s/early 1980s (I saw it as a supporting short for FLESH GORDON), but I don't know whether it's still obtainable in any shape or form - such is the sorry fate meted out to short films.

The action (such as it is - GOLLOCKS! is a slow-burning film which grows on you as you watch it) centres on a seemingly typical middle-class family living in a nightmare part of west London: within spitting distance of the A4, the M4, the main railway line out of Paddington - and under a flightpath into Heathrow airport.

So a quiet house it isn't! George Armstrong - the dad (the wonderful Freddie Jones) - is always sending off letters of complaint to the local council about the noise; Mrs Armstrong - the mum (Avril Angers) - chatters incessantly about nothing in particular; and their son Edward (Robert Longden) seems to be a right layabout.

But Dad seems also to be spending a lot of time in his shed at the bottom of the garden...

And who are the mysterious men who may (or may not) be watching the house?

GOLLOCKS! is a slow, low-key movie that has stayed in my mind for over 25 years - no mean feat! Whether that is a reflection of the state of my mind (what mind?) or something else I do not know... but it would be nice if others could have the opportunity to see this film and judge for themselves?

This is a superb movie, suitable for all but the very youngest, though accessibility for younger people was marred (at least in the print which I saw) by the use of some unfortunate choice of English sub-titling! For much of the film it is almost impossible to guess in which time-period it is set - there is no modern technology shown, not even the ubiquitous Chinese bicycle, just a drab, almost monochrome, everyday life, against which is contrasted the dazzling display of the Sezuan Opera and of celebratory fireworks. Even when a group of soldiers refer to their imminent departure for a theatre of war, this could still be any time in the past 150 years.

But then we briefly see a motor car - late 30s, early 40s style - and we realise that we are watching a China on the verge of huge upheavals, and that much of the world we are seeing is about to be swept away in the cataclysm of World War 2 and the Communist revolution.

Which makes the central character's desire to adhere to old customs and traditions all the more poignant.

But the film also raises issues which are of vital importance even today, both within China and in other parts of the world: the inequality between boys and girls, men and women; the trade, for various purposes, in young children; corruption in society; injustice; the importance of friendship.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this film; but I don't think so! I also think that it is a scandal that films of this calibre are often not shown in the United Kingdom, whilst dross is passed off as quality material.

But don't get me started on that...

Jean Cocteau's most famous films, La belle et la bete, and Orphee, are both cinematic dreams, featuring excursions into the realms of, respectively, the Fairy Tale and the Underworld. (Cocteau would refer to Death as his 'mistress'.) His novel Thomas l'imposteur appeared in 1923, and was based in part on his experiences as an ambulance driver on the Belgian front during the Great War. The story, set in France during the First World War, is about a group of wealthy Parisians who, led by Clémence de Bormes, a widowed princess, bring some action into their boring everyday lives by transforming her palace into a hospital and organising an ambulance convoy to the devastated countryside. Clémence and her daughter Henriette make the acquaintance of Thomas Guillaume de Fontenoy, an exalted young man (actually an "imposter" for two reasons: i) he wears a fake uniform and pretends to be the nephew of a famous general; ii) aged only 16 he would anyway be too young to fight) who offers to join the charity group as a helper. Very soon the realities of war intrude and whilst Clémence is gradually infatuated by Guillaume, Henriette falls in love with him.

Georges Franju's film of Thomas l'Imposteur came to the screen in 1965, two years after the death of Jean Cocteau. I feel that Cocteau would have approved. The voice-over narrative is supplied by Jean Marais, Cocteau's longtime collaborator and lover. The music is by Georges Auric, who composed also for La belle et la bete and for Orphee. As befits both its source material and its director, the film has a sense of unreality which is maintained even as it reaches its too realistic, tragic climax.

This is a war film from the tradition of a poetic cinema. See it if you can.

I screened this movie to an audience of around 200 ten- and eleven-year-old school students. I suspect that for almost all of them it was the first subtitled film they had seen. Within ten minutes they were hooked,watching intently with no fidgeting or chatting. (And no - before you come out with the wisecrack: they were definitely NOT asleep!) The world which is portrayed is a mix of fascist state and mystic nature. As with many anime films what we are shown is a kind of parallel universe: there is violence in this film, and it is all caused by human beings.

The idea for the film comes from a story by C W Nicol, who was born in south Wales... about ten miles from where my audience of 200 students was watching the film. But you don't have to have that local connection to appreciate this gem.

Georges Franju is an unfairly neglected director - overshadowed by Godard and Truffaut, he fell quickly out of favour as a filmmaker, although he is revered as co-founder, with Henri Langlois, of the Cinematheque Française in Paris shortly before World War 2.

The influences to be seen in Franju's films are not those of New Wave directors: Hollywood film noir and trashy American novels. He is more in tune with German Expressionism and, as perhaps befits a film archivist, with silent cinema.

So JUDEX is a very affectionate tribute to Louis Feuillade, and shares its title with a 1916 serial. As the title character Franju cast a magician - Channing Pollock - and other actors include the wonderful Edith Scob (unforgettable in Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE), Andre Melies (son of Georges) and Theo Sarapo (one-time lover of Edith Piaf). The music is by Maurice Jarre, and adds to the dreamlike nature of the whole story.

JUDEX may not be a great film, but it is a truly wonderful film. Just let it wash over you, and the memory of it may haunt you for a surprisingly long time!

This movie is such a loving recreation of a bygone era that if you let yourself go with the flow - and with the body count - it's hard not to find pleasure in it. The music is lovingly recreated - with even a nod to Spike Jones and his City Slickers; the dialogue is fast and furious, with lessons learnt not only from the Marx Brothers but also from other screwball comedies of the 1930s. The plot - well, the best thing about the plot is the way in which it thickens nicely as each corpse is added!

And there is the King Kong pastiche - complete with biplane circling the top of the skyscraper. Though in this case it is not Beauty which kills the Beast, and the villain's fall is not as spectacular as that of the mighty Kong, though I liked the way that ant-like figures could be seen scurrying to the site of the impact far below.

The all-pervading chaos reminded me of HELLZAPOPPIN' - and it would make a nice double-feature with George Clooney's GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK!

Fashion models are not the usual type of people with whom I can relate, but I found myself strangely moved by the plight of Valerie, as she slowly comes to realise that her previously glamorous lifestyle was not all she thought it was, and the only person who shows her any sympathy is an attendant who works in the underground car park where she spends her lonely nights.

Agata Busek gives a strong, touching performance as Valerie, and Devid Striesow is contrastingly low-key as Andre, the car park attendant. The cold of a German Christmas is well conveyed by the direction and photography.

What may at first glance seem a slow, slight film is in fact well worth watching, and even repays watching more than once.