Change Your Image
Carl Halling
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Follow a Star (1959)
Classic Norman Wisdom comedy with a beautiful song and a touching romance at its heart
Norman Wisdom was an English comedian much loved during much of the Fifties, and while his success persisted well into the Swinging Sixties, it did so in a spirit redolent of the previous far more innocent decade. His image was that of a perilously naive and inept, yet wholly adorable little man whose sweetness of nature could be said to somehow put the pretensions of souls less humble and self-sacrificing than he to shame. The "Norman" character being a pure-hearted soul for a time when the West's traditional moral values, rooted in its Judeo-Christian foundation, yet possessed considerable influence. And while "Follow a Star", directed by Robert Asher in 1959, with Wisdom appearing as worker and aspiring singer Norman Truscott, is perhaps among his less well-known movies, few are quite so successful in showcasing his incredible talents. While among its many delights are the melodic and moving title song, written by the great man himself, and sung by him in a surprisingly mature baritone crooning voice. Also starring are superb Wisdom regular Jerry Desmonde as irasible fading singer Vernon Carew; Hattie Jacques as Norman's well-meaning but somewhat over-enthusiastic singing teacher Miss Dobson; and the lovely June Laverick, as his sweetheart Judy, who provides Wisdom with the opportunity to present his more serious and romantic side. And who can blame him. While several stalwarts of a classic age of British comedy also appear, including Richard Wattis, as the pompous psychiatrist Dr Chatterway; John Le Mesurier, as the redoubtable waiter Birkett; Fenella Fielding as the elegant Lady Finchington; and Pat Coombs uncredited as a young woman in a theatre. But the movie as a whole is a joy from a simpler time, when Rock and Roll had been more or less shorn of its initial threat, and Beatlemania almost half a decade away.
Titanic (1997)
Star-making blockbuster
Until "Titanic", Kate Winslet and Leo DiCapprio had been the most gifted young actors of their generation, both capable of quite extraordinarily profound insights into the human soul, given their tender years. In James Cameron's Oscar-winning film, they constitute one of the most attractive couples in movie history. And so they became world superstars. But as I see it, they deserve their fame. It is a tragic thing to see acting greatness remain more or less unsung, or underrated. And in "Titanic" Kate Winslet supplies a magnetic and powerful performance. Moreover, The scenes depicting the sinking of the ship are thrilling to behold. "Titanic" is in short a fine film, which made megastars out of two magnificent young artists, a compromise between artistic integrity and commercial clout.
My Name Is Bill W. (1989)
Career-best performance by James Woods as the founder of A.A.
James Woods puts in the most magnetic performance of his career in this stunning neglected classic. Normally known as a tough guy, Woods is profoundly affecting, and heartrendingly vulnerable as the charming and brilliant young stockbroker who succumbs to alcoholism, before going on to found AA, and help so many to find the strength to stay sober. It is wonderfully well directed, but of course the subject matter would prevent it from being a "classic" in the commercial sense. Artistically however, it is a triumph, well-paced and almost hypnotically powerful, with an Oscar-meriting performance.
Hamlet (1996)
The definitive filmic version of the finest play in history.
It is a measure of Branagh's brilliance as an actor that despite not being a typical "Hamlet" in most peoples' minds, he produces the greatest cinematic portrayal of the tormented Dane I have ever witnessed. It is a film that reminds one precisely why Shakespeare is rated so highly. The tragic introspective, philosophical speeches are so suffused with poetic magnificence as to border on the intoxicating.
Shakespeare is in my opinion less succesful as a comic writer (I prefer Moliere), and Hamlet's witty speeches are somewhat cloying. All that cutesy-cutesy word play! But the tragic sections are mindboggling rich with literary genius. But let us not forget Branagh's magnificence as a director. He elicits a quite sublime performance from Kate Winslet as Ophelia...and this girl, barely out of her teens, evokes a sorrow so deep in the madness scene as to leave one breathless. She is a jewel, deep and magnetic beyond reason, given her extreme youth, and apparent angelic innocence. And there are other marvellous performances... by some of this country's most treasured actors: Jacobi, Briers, Spall, all brilliant. And if ever there was any doubt that Julie Christie is a great English actress, her Gertrude will dispel it. Branagh's Hamlet is charismatic, but eminently unsympathetic. Sensitive and intelligent, with a tendency towards piety, he chooses nonetheless to obey his baser nature rather than seek a loftier form of justice, and yield to criminal brutality. If earlier films have glamorised Hamlet, Branagh's version sees him for what he is: a potentially righteous man who throws it all away. One of an elite of cinematic masterpieces of the last twenty years, and one of the greatest artistic triumphs of the silver screen, demonstrating just how high an art the cinema can be, when it's in the hands of a master..................
The English Patient (1996)
The definitive romantic masterpiece of our time.
The structure is almost symphonically immaculate...the music transcendentally lovely...the cinematography almost beyond words. "The English Patient" makes gloriously full use of late twentieth century cinematic technology to produce a commentary upon amorous passion of a percipience that verges on the unearthly. The performances are uniformally magnificent, with Juliette Binoche especially affecting.
Like Kate Winslet, Binoche is a romantic tragedienne of genius. But Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas are hardly less magnificent. The film gives proof of the potential aesthetic and emotional power at the disposal of contemporary film-makers, and it makes full use of it. The final quarter of an hour puts this film in the category of the greatest of all time...such is the sublimity of direction, editing, acting, music, structure...But is it the greatest film ever? Reservations have to be expressed; moral ones for instance; the lead characters are hardly admirable, even if they are eminently pitiable. And then there is the sexual content, which is strong in parts. But "The English Patient" can be seen as a profoundly moral commentary on the doomed nature of love deceptive and adulterous. It is almost certainly the greatest film of the last twenty years......
All Quiet on the Western Front (1979)
Excellent remake of the Lewis Milestone classic
It is difficult to go wrong with such a magnificent story, one of the most affecting literary anatomisations of the tragedy of young men destroyed by war. And yet, this 1979 television remake of the Lewis Milestone original adds many elements to cherish of its own. Most notably, the casting of Richard Thomas, best known for being John-Boy Walton, in the role of Richard Baume. His characterisation is wonderfully profound, and poignant, and the scene in the trench with the French soldier is a virtual masterclass of compassionate acting. Thomas has never become a superstar; and for this reason he is one of an evergrowing army of neglected romantic leading men. The battle scenes are breathlessly exciting; and yet they do not dwell on carnage, and it is to their credit...and yet still they elicit pity and horror from the viewer. The music is magnificent, the structure craftmanlike, the acting (by Thomas, Borgnine, Holm) superlative, and the work itself suffused through with compassion.......
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
Under-rated version of the Hardy classic.
For many the casting of sixties beauty Julie Christie as the vulnerable heartbreaker Bathsheba Everdene was erroneous, but Christie does a fine job, and makes the role her own. Schlesinger remains faithful to the romantic spirit of Hardy, drenching the magnificent cinematography in the exquisite pastoral music of Richard Rodney Bennett, who clearly wrote under the influence of Vaughan Williams and Delius, while interpreting the story for the cinema very much in his own way. The film is long; but craftmanlike, and characterised by superb performances, with Peter Finch as the tormented Boldwood, and Alan Bates as Gabriel, who is the moral force within the story, particularly excellent. The film's climax is one of the most hauntingly poignant in sixties cinema.
I like to see it as an oblique commentary on the essentially tragical (and doomed) nature of selfish or sensual or possessive love; and the innate nobility of the marriage state buttressed by genuine mutual respect, with Gabriel as the agent of reason and decency amid so much unbridled passionateness....