Midnight Express (1978)

The best thing to do is to get your ass out of here. Best way that you can. American college student Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) is caught smuggling hashish when he’s travelling out of Turkey with girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle). He is prosecuted and jailed for four years. When his sentence is increased to 30 years, Billy, along with other inmates including British heroin addict Max (John Hurt) and American candle thief Jimmy (Randy Quaid), makes a plan to escape but local prisoners betray their plans to vicious guard Hamidou (Paul L. Smith)… It’s not a train. It’s a prison word for… escape. But it doesn’t stop around here. Adapted by Oliver Stone from Billy Hayes’ memoir (written with William Hoffer), this is a high wire act of male melodrama and violence with an astonishing, poundingly graphic series of setpieces that will definitely curdle your view of Turkey, even knowing that much of this was deliberately fabricated for effect. The searing heat, the horrendous conditions and the appalling locals will give pause to even the most strident anti-drugs campaigner. Director Alan Parker has a muscular, energetic style and brilliantly choreographs scenes big and small with the tragic and brilliant Davis (an appealing latterday James Dean-type performer) perfectly cast and Hurt a marvel as the shortsighted druggie whom he protects. The big scene where Davis totally loses it shocks to this day. Shot in Malta (permission to shoot in Istanbul was not granted, unsurprisingly) by Michael Seresin with a throbbing electronic score by Giorgio Moroder. Everyone runs around stabbing everyone else in the ass. That’s what they call Turkish revenge. I know it must all sound crazy to you, but this place is crazy

Les enfants terribles (1950)

Aka The Strange Ones. Beauty enjoys immense privileges, even from those unaware of it. Elisabeth (Nicole Stéphane) and her brother Paul (Edouard Dermithe) live isolated from much of the world after Paul is injured in a snowball fight at school. As a coping mechanism, the two conjure up a hermetically sealed dream of their own making filled with fetish objects and strange obsessions. Their relationship, however, isn’t exactly wholesome and when their ailing mother (Karin Lannby) dies the wider world intrudes and they are taken on holiday to the seaside to try to readjust. Back home their friend Gérard (Jacques Bernard) moves in and jealousy and a malevolent undercurrent intrude on their fantasy life:  he secretly likes her but she proves difficult to know.  Elisabeth starts modelling for Gerard’s uncle’s (Roger Gaillard) company and invites the strange girl from work Agathe (Renée Cosima) to stay with them – and Paul is immediately attracted to her:  she resembles all the images of the people – male and female – he hero-worships, as well as his nemesis, Dargelos. Elisabeth marries Michael (Melvyn Martin) a rich Jewish American man but he is killed immediately after their wedding and she inherits a large apartment. There, Paul tries to replicate the bedroom he shared with Elisabeth and reveals his love of Agathe to the shock of his sister  … Elisabeth never thanked anyone. She was used to miracles, also they came as no surprise. She expected them, and they never failed to happen. Jean Cocteau’s poetic 1929 novel translates to the screen as a mesmerising study in adolescence, obsession and solitude, testing the limits of imagination, impossible wish-fulfillment and the consequences. Director Jean-Pierre Melville directs Stéphane to the height of controlled hysteria and betrayal with the insinuations of many sexual inclinations subtly inflected in the text. The dream sequences are perfectly announced in the use of Vivaldi – such a startling and memorable combination in a narrative told by Cocteau himself. She married him for his death

High Life (2018)

Nothing can grow inside us. Monte (Robert Pattinson) and a baby girl called Willow (Scarlett Lindsey) are the last survivors of a dangerous mission on the edge of the solar system. He dumps bodies in astronaut suits into space and rears the child as he continues his work. Flashbacks reveal that it is a spaceship filled with prisoners, chief among them mad scientist Dr Dibs (Juliette Binoche) who wants to breed a new generation of humans and gives the male criminals (André Benjamin, Ewan Mitchell) drugs in exchange for their semen on a trip that will not end in survival. Captain (Lars Eidinger) appears ineffectual while the women (Mia Goth, Claire Tran, Agata Buzek) resist male attention and don’t want to be forcibly impregnated. As the reproductive experiment takes shape a storm of cosmic rays hits the ship and tempers run high … You’ve become a shaman of sperm. Filmmakers can take a funny turn when they start making films in a language not their own. This screenplay by that singular director Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau with collaboration by Geoff Cox and additional writing credited to Andrew Litvack (and an uncredited contribution by Nick Laird) is a case in point as her first excursion into English is deeply strange and a reworking of many tropes and themes in the genre. For the first half hour you have to really like the sound of a baby crying;  the rest of the film is mostly about bodily fluids – their source, their harvesting, their destination – interspersed with acts of violence. Pattinson lends it his intensity but to what end? Well, a black hole, if you must know. Not so much a space mission as emission, this is really a hymn to onanism:  truly a mystery, all coming and no going in an exploration of sci-fi as inner space, in and out of hand. She is perfection

Picnic (1955)

Why should anyone be interested in him? Former college football star and failed Hollywood actor Hal Carter (William Holden) is drifting through Kansas and stops in Neewollah where his old fraternity buddy Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson) is dating beauty queen Madge Owens (Kim Novak) whom Hal meets when he’s doing chores for her elderly neighbour Mrs Potts (Verna Felton) who immediately sees he’s hungry and has fallen on hard times. Alan’s father owns the grain elevators in the town and Alan promises Hal a job but it’s Labor Day and Alan says his date at the town picnic can be Madge’s little sister Millie (Susan Strasberg). The Owens’ boarder, unmarried teacher Rosemary (Rosalind Russell) gets drunk on the whisky that store owner Howard Bevens (Arthur O’Connell) brings and her violent jealousy of Madge and Hal’s obvious romantic attraction causes a commotion and disrupts Alan and Madge’s relationship to Mrs Owens’ (Betty Field) horror, who wants Madge to marry well, unlike her …  I liked you from the first time I saw you. This lushly romantic if rather heavy-handed adaptation of William Inge’s play by Daniel Taradash retains its power principally through the expressive masculinity of Holden as the overgrown hunk and the several phases of womanhood represented by the female cast. Russell is shocking as the put-out spinster and O’Connell impresses as her trapped bird of a suitor. Strasberg is fantastic as beautiful Madge’s pigtailed little sister. Novak is Novak – a smalltown girl with a future due to her exquisite looks. What is stunning still is the big scene between Novak and Holden – that dance, to Moonglow, one of the most sensual ever captured on film. It’s simply breathtaking. What a perfect mid-century moment in a film of such feeling, capturing the difference between night and day like few other movies. Directed by Josh Logan, scored by George Duning with Robertson in his debut. You love me. You love me!

Wonder (2017)

There are no nice ones. After two dozen surgeries to get 10-year old August ‘Auggie’ Pullman (Jacob Tremblay) seeing and speaking he’s still terribly disfigured but mom Isabelle (Julia Roberts) has decided it’s time for him to go to regular school after years of educating him at home. It’s the first time he’s gone out without wearing his astronaut helmet. Dad Nate (Owen Wilson) and older sister Via (Izabela Vidovic) help out but it’s mainly been Isabelle who’s done the heavy lifting and Via has been left out and retreats to her estranged grandmother (Sonia Braga) in Coney Island when she needs attention. Auggie meets the wise and kind school principal Mr Tushman (Mandy Patinkin) who has him introduced around the school by some kids but Auggie still gets bullied terribly. He wins over some students through his smarts, especially at science where he’s top dog. However when he wears a different Halloween costume than the one his friend Jack Will (Noah Jupe) expects, Auggie overhears him saying something terrible and it seems like everything is lost … Not everything in this world is about you. A film about facial disfigurement that manages to be truly humane without ever stooping to the mawkish or trite? Surely some mistake. And maybe it’s Mask. Well, that was then, this is now. This adaptation of R.J. Palacio’s 2012 novel is a kind of miracle of text and performance and not just by that fine young actor Tremblay. Everyone here gets their moment in a family that has other problems – sister Via is overlooked, Isabelle doesn’t speak to her mother, the marriage is strained because of the constant caring needed for Auggie. Isabelle had a promising career and was mid-thesis when Auggie came along and her life was put on hold. Roberts never looks for pity in the role and the plot keeps everyone afloat.  Even Daisy the dog needs more from the family members than they realise. That’s good writing. The screenplay is by Jack Thorne, Steven Conrad and director Steven Chbosky, who knows something about young people as we know from that other marvellous film about kids, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on his own book. Right here the issues of middle school, our responsibilities to others, competitive friendship and rivalries are nailed with precision. Auggie can’t change the way he looks so maybe we can change the way we see

Eighth Grade (2018)

The topic of today’s video is being yourself. With weeks left before entering high school, Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) realises the upbeat motivational videos she is posting online do not reflect who she truly is – an insecure 14-year old daughter of an overly concerned divorced father Mark (Josh Hamilton) who has to be invited to the cool kids’ parties by their parents. She falls head over heels for Aiden (Luke Prael) but gets turned off by his desire for a blow job and freaks out when high schooler Riley (Daniel Zolghadri) offers to give her some real life sexual experience.  She settles for friendship with nerdy Gabe (Jake Ryan) … The topic of today’s video which is supercool is how to be confident. Yet another film that proves the hoary old adage that only occurs to you when this period of your life is past:  youth is entirely wasted on the young. Writer/director Bo Burnham mines the dreadful narcissism (medicalised as ‘anxiety’) that plagues a generation seemingly terminally unable to function without nailing the most fleeting of silly thoughts to the interweb where their shadow haunts them to the death. If I had a social media channel I’d use it to advise this kid, See an orthodontist.  And, as she figures out, Fake it till you make it, which is the ironic lesson here but it doesn’t come from the wussy dad (I mean…). There is a fantastic film about a girl adopting a contrary personality and sex history to suit the gossip mongers winging her way through the peer pressure Hell that is school and it’s not this humourless navel-gaze of misery, it’s Easy A, a hilarious satirical exercise that also critiques Hawthorne with an upturned finger. Watch that instead. What is it, when society has come to this? Goodness only knows. Millennials suck. Whatever happened to homework? Exams? Like. Etc. Growing up is really scary and weird

Code Name: Emerald (1985)

I was expecting Peter Lorre. Augustus Lang aka Emerald (Ed Harris) is a spy for the Allies working undercover in Nazi-Occupied Paris during World War II but the Nazis believe he’s their man. With his assistance they capture Wheeler (Eric Stoltz) an ‘Overlord’ thought to know the plans for D-Day. Lang is planted as his cell mate and their conversations are monitored by Gestapo officer Walter Hoffman (Horst Buchholz) who is constantly at odds with his SS colleague Ernst Ritter (Helmut Berger) but retains friendly relations with decent Jurgen Brausch (Max Von Sydow).  Outside the cell in everyday Paris, Lang is in contact with Claire Jouvet  (Cyrielle Clair) who is trying to help him engineer Wheeler’s escape. But Wheeler is weakening under threat of torture and Hoffman suspects there might be more than one spy in the wings … Averages aren’t everything. There’s such a thing as grace. A really good premise in a terrific screenplay by Ronald Bass from his novel is largely laid waste by miscasting and some underpowered directing. That makes a change! Harris is not expressive enough to elicit our sympathy as the hero of the piece and Stoltz is unconvincing and probably too young in his role; paradoxically it’s Buchholz who has the most interesting character to play – how often do we see Nazis in civvies in WW2 films? Von Sydow is good as a vitally placed German officer and Clair does very well as the woman at the centre of the romance/resistance storyline. While the tension isn’t strictly maintained, the magnificent score by John Addison goes a long way to giving this a sense of urgency that isn’t necessarily in the dénouement – the outcome of the war is at stake but you wouldn’t know it from the way this is staged. C’est la guerre. Directed by Jonathan Sanger for NBC in their first theatrical production. One of these Krauts is on our side. Problem is, I don’t which one it is

 

Walk, Don’t Run (1966)

You remind me of myself a few years ago. Quite a few years ago. When British industrialist Sir William Rutland (Cary Grant) arrives days early for a meeting in Tokyo he doesn’t realise that due to the housing shortage throughout the 1964 Summer Olympics there’s nowhere to stay and even Julius Haversack (John Standing) at the British Embassy can’t be of assistance. He answers a small ad for an apartment share and when he arrives at the destination he finds British girl Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar) in a tiny place and she has a strict timetable to which Rutland must adhere. When he sublets to homeless American Olympic athlete Steve Davis (Jim Hutton) Christine has to put up with it because she’s already spent Rutland’s share of the rent. Then Rutland disagrees with her plans to marry Haversack and plays Cupid, while both he and Christine try to find out what sport Davis is competing in and resort to taking a cab and finding themselves in the middle of a race-walk … You’ve gone too far. And if you’ve any sense of decency you will leave. In the morning. A remake of the 1943 movie The More the Merrier, this is relocated from wartime Washington to the Tokyo Olympics and has neither the biting wit of the original screenplay by Sol Saks (and an uncredited Garson Kanin) nor the firm direction of George Stevens but is quite pleasant fluff although Eggar lacks comedy chops. There are some good moments – when Hutton is suspected of being a spy;  when the father of Eggar’s friend Aiko (Miiko Taka) is confused by the various relationships and mistakenly hands Grant a fertility symbol: Grant turns around to Standing, declaring I think we’re engaged, reminding us of his ad lib in Bringing Up Baby, I just went gay all of a sudden.  And given that it’s Grant’s final film it’s amusing to hear him humming the themes from both Charade and An Affair to Remember while he’s doing his shtick in Eggar’s tiny kitchen, thematically resonant as well as self-referential. There’s a nice bit at Aiko’s house when the TV is screening a Jimmy Stewart western – dubbed! Imagine a movie without his inimitable voice and in Japanese! Written by Robert Russell and Frank Ross and directed by Charles Walters with a score by Quincy Jones who co-wrote the songs Stay With Me and Happy Feet with singer Peggy Lee. He’s an Englishman, isn’t he?

Lady Macbeth (2016)

Could you do without me? Northern England 1865.  Newly sold into marriage to an older man, rich industrialist Alexander Lester (Paul Hilton), Katherine (Florence Pugh) finds herself confined to the house and starved of companionship. Her husband can’t or won’t have sex with her but makes her strip and masturbates while she faces a wall. Forced to spend her days in endless tedium, dining with his bullying father Boris (Christopher Fairbank), when her husband is called away to one of his collieries she starts to spend more time with maid Anna (Naomi Ackie) and begins a passionate and fiery relationship with a young groom Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) from the estate, beginning a conflict that will end in violence. Following her husband’s demise at her hands and after hiding his body, a surprise arrives on her doorstep in the form of her husband’s illegitimate son Teddy (Anton Palmer) accompanied by his grandmother Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel) throwing Katherine’s plans into disarray .… You’ve got fatter. Adapted by Alice Birch from Nikolai Leskov’s novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, this austere treatment of a rural tragedy is as contained as anti-heroine Pugh by corsetry and decency until sensuality spills forth and all hell breaks loose.  This is the distinctive Pugh’s breakout performance following The Falling and TV’s Marcella and her polarising character anchors a narrative which is ostensibly feminist but ultimately offers a critique of female power and how it is achieved and sustained. Perhaps the casting of black actors in the story complicates the issue of power by raising another issue, that of of race, in what is otherwise a melodrama of sex and class. Ultimately what happens when people are undone by desire can be murderous. It is a drama entirely without ornament. Directed by William Oldroyd. She is a disease

Legal Eagles (1986)

Objection, your honour. The defence has just fondled one of the jurors. Divorced New York City assistant District Attorney Tom Logan (Robert Redford) is busy alternately fighting and flirting with his defence lawyer adversary Laura Kelly (Deborah Winger) and her unpredictable artist client Chelsea Deardon (Daryl Hannah) who is on trial for a murder she did not commit and wraps Tom around her little finger as the case against her builds … I’m not going to lose him. Where is he? Truly a star vehicle from writer/director Ivan Reitman with Redford in his once-a-decade comedy but armed with a really good supporting cast too including Brian Dennehy, Terence Stamp, Christine Baranski and Davids Clennon and Hart. Styled as a Tracy-Hepburn battle of the sexes comedy it lacks the quickfire dialogue you’d expect and Winger plays her role kind of soft but Redford is really charming. The leads are slightly overwhelmed by Hannah, cast on point as the kooky performance artist in a story which recalls the scandal that descended upon the estate of Mark Rothko. The screenplay is by Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr., that powerhouse screenwriting partnership, from a story by Reitman and the screenwriters. It’s a bit overloaded for such lightweight fun but it does have a lovely sense of NYC and if you look quickly you’ll see a bottle of Newman’s Own salad dressing on Winger’s dining table. Do you always cross-examine people?/Only when they lie to me