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Reviews
Sweet Charity (1969)
Worth it for the musical numbers alone
Sweet Charity is a little strange. It's part Hollywood musical, part bitter-sweet love story, part trippy hippy film. It's well worth it for the dancing alone. The scene in the club is truly superb. Once seen you'll realise how many times it has been copied. The 'religion of the month club' is like a number out of Hair. The story is a sad one in large parts but has a basic upbeat message at its heart. It's funny, sad, touching and weird. It lacks the big, bold look and feel of the classic Hollywood musical and is a trifle dark, but is well worth catching.
The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (1960)
Classic gentle heart-warming humour
There is something beautifully reassuring and warm about this film. The story is almost incidental to the characters. It is packed with superb performances and is a feast of character actors. The comedy is often subtle, but beautifully presented. It ranges from slapstick to the pure surrealism. The bizarre military bath unit stationed in the desert, the ballet-dancing civil servants, the desert island cookery - all superb. The civil servant chap handing over his wallet had me in stitches too. Its innocence is wonderful, although if you look a little closer the darker side is visible, along with lots of little touches that give the whole thing surprising depth. It isn't going to suit everybody. I don't expect too many Americans or teenagers to get the point. It is however a superb piece of work.
Braveheart (1995)
Flawed mediocrity
Had this film been set in a mythical land with fictional characters it wouldn't be too bad a film. But it has ideas, well above its station, about being a historical film, about being a film with a message. This turns an average good vs evil yarn into a bit of a joke. The trouble with real life is that it doesn't fit the Hollywood mould. So it gets bent out of shape. No film is completely historically accurate but Braveheart has a mass of cringingly bad mistakes. It gets his name right and puts some battles in and has him killed. The rest is fiction, almost nothing it right - from the blue paint that is supposed to be woad through to the romance with the English Queen and the siege of York, all wrong. It's a film that will annoy those who value history and still cling to the idea that modern films are capable of showing it. All this aside, it's not a bad film, just don't take it on the level it wants to be taken on and you'll be okay. History and what people want as history are two very different things and this film panders to all the worst fantasy, revisionist and nationalistic views on the past.
Good throw-away fun.