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daphne4242
Reviews
The Drowning Pool (1975)
Intelligent and absorbing thriller
This is one of the best films Newman made in a very distinguished career. It's his second performance as Lew Harper and this time he is away from his usual California stamping grounds. There are some very fine performances including a knock-out appearance from a very young Melanie Griffith. Ross MacDonald was one of the most thoughtful detective writers, with great plots and strong characterisations. If I had to choose one performance to highlight it would be Tony Franciosa as a tough but decent police chief. But there are no bad performances at all. And in this story, as with many others MacDonald wrote, the motive driving the villainous Kilbourne (brilliantly played by Murray Hamilton,) is big enough to justify the story. But something even darker is at work as we discover. A great and underrated film.
Rats in the Ranks (1996)
Best film about politics ever
This film does for politics what Spinal; Tap did for rock music. Only difference is that this is a real documentary, not a mockumentary with scripted jokes. It has pretty much everything to recommend it. Some brilliant lines, some amazing twists in the events and a great ending. If everyone saw this film, politics would be far more popular. Larry Hand is the left-wing Mayor of Leichardt, a small township outside Sydney. Once a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), he was obviously expelled at some point but took that in his stride, saying "I've always felt you haven't really joined the ALP until you've been expelled from it." Now his term is up and it looks as if he won't be re-elected by the council as Labor runs a candidate against him. But he decides to fight to keep the job with a mix of charm and cheating. Absolutely compulsive whether or not you are interested in politics or Australia or neither.
Marple: The Sittaford Mystery (2006)
Geraldine McEwan plays Miss Marple. Miss Marple loses.
They say that if 10,000 monkeys typed for long enough they would produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare. The script for this travesty of a Christie adaptation was probably one of their early efforts. ITV has now settled down into a disastrous pattern with these Miss Marple books. Almost all the characters have the same names as characters in a Christie book, often the book which is allegedly being adapted. But none of the characters is anything like the book. Only the names have been kept the same to protect the guilty. (The producers and scriptwriters.) None of the plot, if that is the right term for it, resembles the Christie plot. And the final denouement is obviously chosen just for its absurdity. Most of the cast seek to cover their shame at being in this programme by sending it up. Carey Mulligan for some reason does not do that and gives a stunningly good performance. When she is on screen she almost succeeds in blocking out the horror which surrounds her. Big word, almost. Those in charge of handling Agatha Christie's estate should ask themselves some moral questions about this debacle. Is the money that ITV pays worth the damage which these shows do to Christie's reputation? For anyone who based their judgement on Christie on the adaptations would decide she had no sense of place, no sense of plot and no sense of dialogue. Buy the book. There is some debate on this site about how much it matters that the adaptation and the book are so different. It wouldn't matter at all if the final product were good. For example, Hitchcock's film of The 39 Steps is totally different from the novel. LA Confidential cuts much of the book, makes some minor characters more important and some major characters almost invisible but produces one of the masterpieces of modern movies.But changes this big usually work when they take a complex book and make it simpler. This adaptation, like most of the ITV Marple series, makes it much more complicated. It's as if they had a very large budget and wanted to find ways to spend it on well-known faces. American co-production money probably plays a malign part here, inducing a desire to make the programme like an American send-up of a British country house murder. But there is also British tradition of spending too much and covering up the plot with too much detail and scenery. Look at how many police hanging around doing nothing you see after a murder in Lewis or Midsomer Murders; compare that with the Swedish version of Wallander. Now maybe Sweden has fewer cops or maybe the British version is more accurate. But all those bodies do nothing for the real story and they eat up the cash and clutter up the screen. But there
Marple: Sleeping Murder (2006)
Completely loses the plot
ITV seem to have a strange hatred for Agatha Christie, except in the generally excellent Poirot series. They have spent large amounts to buy the rights to all her books and then trash them. Christie is above all famous because of her plots. Yet those are the very things the clowns put in charge of these adaptations seem most keen to ignore. Of course, it must be annoying to know that the book has already been done perfectly by the BBC with Joan Hickson in the lead role. but no one forced them to do it again. And it is irritating that Geraldine McEwan seems too think that being a slightly conspiratorial pixie is the right way to play the part. But no one forced them to cast her. And above all no one forced them to dump a plot that already pushed things to the limit and replace it with something totally absurd. There are some quite good acting talents buried under the rubble here but for their sakes as much as yours give this one a miss lest it turn you against them.
The Pale Horse (1997)
Should have stuck to the book
This would have been better without some completely pointless changes brought in to the plot. At the start there is a completely implausible attempt to suggest that Mark is suspected of being the killer. Nothing in the show suggests the police would suspect him in this way and the plot line dies quietly, having wasted a fair amount of time. Most of the performances are adequate at worst but the dialogue is often poor. One of the things which made the book successful was the way it at least played with the idea of the supernatural. No one could be fooled by the witches here. Agatha Christie was usually luckier than this in her adaptors for the screen.
Very Annie Mary (2001)
Very nice but not what I expected
I think some of the negative reviews come from people who expected this to be another sunshine funny film romance. It is funny but not light-hearted. It's actually quite dark. There's crippling illness and death and no boyfriend at the end of it. But mixed in with that are some very funny scenes, some excellent cameo performances and some super music. I'm from South Wales and everyone from there that I know loves this film and finds it very resonant. Jonatahn Pryce's Welsh accent seemed fine, just what you hear every day in the shop. I think this film might get a better reception in Britain now that Gavin and Stacey has softened up the rest of the country for both the Welsh accent and people.
Faubourg 36 (2008)
Lovely Film
This is a beautiful film which captures much of the feel of great French films of the 1930's. It's also a love poem to Paris. It helps that Nora Arnzeder is so gorgeous and all the actors give strong performances. The story is really a fairy story with a political twist. A small music hall in Paris is forced to close down in 1936. Because this is is the year of the Popular front in France, when factory occupations spread across the country, the performers decide to take over the theatre and run it themselves. They get an extraordinary stroke of luck when a young girl, Douce, turns up hoping to get a break in the theatre. Double luck because not only is she a brilliant performer but the local boss fancies her and allows the theatre to stay open. There are some serious themes touched on, including the pervasive anti-Semitism of the extreme Right at this period but the film is overwhelmingly joyous, which is as it should be. The Popular Front didn't happily, which was a tragedy for France, but this film does, as do all good fairy tales.
Le bonheur (1965)
Beautiful film
There's something dreamlike about the way the main male character of this film drifts through it. And it is a treat to look at. Both his wife and his mistress are beautiful, as is some of the scenery. Note the extraordinary way Varda uses colour to distinguish the female characters, the clothes of wife sunflower yellow, of the mistress cornflower blue. That colour coding extends to the places around them. The only film I have seen with an even remotely similar colour sense is "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" by Jacques Demy, Varda's husband. Le Bonheur never gives us a clear guide to what the main characters really fee. They live on the surface of their emotions but as an aesthetic experience the film is outstanding.