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Reviews
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1973)
Oh what a horrible mess!
First of all I am biased as the autobiographical novel on which this film is based is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of Milligan's career and the funniest thing I have ever read.
The film has a strong cast (but see below), but the script and direction are weak. It's as though they had no idea how to approach the material. Most of the time it's played as a "Carry On" style farce: then we get crude and jarring interludes of fashionable anti-war propaganda. The two styles just do not mesh or integrate.
As for the actors, they do their best, but the "recruits" are all too obviously in their mid-to-late-thirties, rather than the 18-22 year olds they are supposed to be. This problem makes their attempts at silliness and slapstick rather embarrassing, and the coming-of-age theme seems misplaced and irrelevant. Arthur Lowe is excellent as always, but could have been given much more to do. Jim Dale is just too cuddly to capture the central character, and has to resort to pulling faces and speaking in silly voices to compensate.
The one highlight comes very early, with Spike playing his own father- it's downhill from there.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Very bad indeed
I rented the DVD. It may be that everything that happened after the first hour or so was cinematic gold; maybe the characters suddenly burst into life; maybe someone said something that was devastatingly funny; maybe a series of brilliantly executed plot twists would have left me gasping in astonishment. I'll never know. After an hour of flat, insipid, self-indulgent crap I put my eyes, ears and brain out of their collective misery and pressed STOP. My theory on the production of this film is as follows: that gifted auteur, Mr Anderson, secretly scanned my brain and detected all the things that I find funny, moving or intellectually stimulating- he then ensured that his film included none of these features. He then double-checked for all the things that I find boring, crass, pretentious and irritating and ensured that all of these features were emphatically stressed in his shooting script.
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
The one thing they forgot
Picture the scene: there's a building the size of Cheshire where the costumes are designed; another building twice the size where they are working on the effects; there are a row of twenty luxury trailers for the all star cast and a suite of state-of-the-art studios working on the soundtrack. Sir Ian arrives on set and says "Sorry loves, I hate to be a bit of an old-fashioned bore, but isn't a film, or "movie" as I believe you call them over here, supposed to have a script?". Panic!. The word goes out; "Get the work-experience kid. Give him ten comic books (not necessarily in the right order)and tell him we need a full screenplay by lunch." OK it may not have happened exactly like that, but that's certainly how it came over to me.
'Breaker' Morant (1980)
Can You Handle The Truth?
A military trial. We have seen it before(The Caine Mutiny), we have seen it since (A Few Good Men) and we will certainly see it again, but I can't think of a time when we've seen it presented with such raw emotional impact. The narrative has a horrible inevitability to it; we can see that the men are going to be subjected to a dreadful injustice, we vainly hope that there will be a way out, whilst secretly knowing that there isn't. The highlight is the extraordinary performance of Edward Woodward in the title role. Put this performance alongside his interpretation of the Sergeant in The Wicker Man and you realise that Woodward is one of the greatest and most criminally underused leading men in cinema history. And what about that ending? BANG! Not allowed in Hollywood...
Wilde (1997)
great cast, awful script
"Wilde" is a competent and interesting movie, well worth watching, despite its obvious flaws. If you expect a careful consideration and analysis of Wilde's life and work, you will be disappointed: this film jumps straight to the "juicy bits" regarding Wilde's homosexuality. You can't really blame the makers for this- I don't remember any successful biopics of Wilde's near contemporary, the celibate George Bernard Shaw! The main strength of the film is its excellent cast. The brilliant comic actor Stephen Fry may not have much of a range when it comes to a straight (in one sense) role, but he really inhabits the character and puts in a most affecting performance. Jude Law is just perfect as the physically exquisite but morally repulsive "Bosie". All the minor characters are played by top drawer British talent, and cannot be faulted.
Unfortunately, the production values are a good deal less impressive, with the sets, costumes and make-up looking adequate for a television movie, but falling well short of the standards expected of a major cinematic feature.
The biggest problem with "Wilde" however, is the script. The pacing seems all wrong: the trial scenes which ought to have been the centrepiece are just thrown away. The device of using "The Selfish Giant" as a unifying conceit just doesn't work, and the fans of the story will be disappointed by the omission of the story's conclusion. Bosie is written as such an unsympathetic character that we can't begin to understand why Wilde loves him so sincerely and deeply, as opposed to simply lusting after his beauty. The character of Queensberry is a crude cartoon. We see him chatting amiably to Wilde and enjoying his company over dinner, and then in the VERY NEXT SCENE, he forbids Bosie to ever see Wilde again, and launches into one of his many homophobic diatribes. Poor Tom Wilkinson also has to battle against the handicap of the least convincing facial hair since Groucho Marx's moustache.
Nevertheless, the film is well acted, historically accurate and emotionally engaging.
Saw (2004)
Sick & Messy & Flawed & Derivative... but Good
Let's get the negatives out of the way first. The film does draw heavily on classic horror/slasher themes: it's not much more than "take a bunch of people and chop 'em up". Secondly the film seems padded; every time we move away from the room and the two main character the intensity drops. Also, I didn't find Cary Elwes remotely convincing. He is acted off the screen by an unknown! Even the "corpse" shows more personality! And yet.... the shocks keep coming, and there are some real shocks in this film. The gore is not as extreme as I had been led to believe, but it is used effectively and judiciously. The plot twists make you jump, even when you wonder why you hadn't seen them coming. I was saying to myself "so who is the dead man?" and "why is Jigsaw such an nonthreatening geek?" but still didn't crack the code until the final scene. It's also the kind of movie that makes you realise what you can do with a tiny budget and some balls.
Repossessed (1990)
as bad as it gets
Some reasons why this is one of the worst films ever made:
1. Leslie Nielson is a great comic actor when deadpanning in absurd situations. For some reason, the makers of this monstrosity thought that he would be even funnier if he mugged and did double takes every 30 seconds. WRONG! Maybe a "funny" foreign accent would help? WRONG AGAIN! 2. The film was marketed as if it were in some way linked to the Police Squad/Naked Gun series; the poster even showed Nielson in a "Drebin" pose, wielding a crucifix and rosary beads. 3. The script was obviously the last thing anyone thought about: big joke number one; woman works out on apparatus; her breasts expand; her breasts explode! big joke number two: Linda Blair cooks dinner for her family and guess what? It's pea soup! 4.The production values are rock bottom; everything looks cheap or re-used.
This is a really horrible piece of trash, one of the very few movies I felt ashamed of returning to my local rental store; AVOID!!
To Kill a King (2003)
Brave but cheap
My heart bleeds for almost everyone involved in this film. They obviously tried VERY hard but the low budget shows in every frame. There is an epic movie to be made about the English Civil War ("Cromwell", with Burton and Guinness is by far the best so far), but to do the subject justice you need decent funding. Battle scenes involving 10 actors shot in close up and "can't be bothered" extras are just embarrassing. The other big problem is the casting of the enormous Rupert Everett as the tiny King Charles I. Everett is a good actor and does his best, but his casting is completely inappropriate. Just about everyone in this enterprise deserved to be praised, but it's still a rotten film. 10/10 for effort, but 4/10 for the finished product.
Les triplettes de Belleville (2003)
Waking from a dream
Sometimes you wake up in the morning with bits of a dream bouncing around your head: you remember that it was weird and funny and emotional and important and you think "Damn, there's a movie in there somewhere!". By the time you've had breakfast and got to work the bits of dream have faded. The makers of "Belleville Rendez-vous" (English title) gathered up all their bits of weird dream and made a movie out of them. Plot: Four old ladies- the eponymous triplets plus granny, take on the Mafia to recover a kidnapped cyclist. Not a lot of the plot makes any sense in conventional terms, but that's dreams for you! Visuals: Consistently stunning; the palette may tend towards dull greens and browns, but every frame is lovingly drawn with astonishing detail, and lots of little jokes thrown in. Characters: In Bruno, we have the doggiest old dog ever committed to film. You just know that he smells bad, and that you'd put up with his hygiene problems. The way his legs wobble and tremble at key moments is beautifully observed. If you have ever had to care for a smelly, old, lovable mutt, you will instantly connect. Granny (Madame Souza) is an indomitable dwarf, endlessly resourceful, courageous against the odds, and brilliantly realized by the animators. The Triplets are frightening: I was reminded of the witches in Macbeth, but, of course these weird sisters are on our side. (WARNING: do not watch the Frog scene when sitting down to eat). I'm not quite so impressed by Champion- the goal of the quest. He doesn't have much of a personality: I suppose this could reflect the one-dimensional focus of a high-achieving sportsman, but he didn't have much emotional resonance for me. He didn't even respond to being rescued! All in all, this is a startling film, if not a great one, and don't be put off by it's French origin- there isn't a line of meaningful dialogue in the movie- the whole story is related through visuals and non-verbal sounds.
My Rating- 8.5 out of 10