The Fall Guy (2024)

You fall down, you get right back up. How far would you go for the one that you love? Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) works as the double for famous action star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor Johnson) who always says he does his own stunts. However, he is severely injured during a stunt gone wrong and he abandons his career and his girlfriend camerawoman Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). 18 months later, Colt, now a valet for a small Mexican restaurant, is contacted by Tom’s film producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham). She informs him that Jody is directing her first film, sci-fi epic Metalstorm, and wants him to work on the production in Sydney Australia. After arriving on set, Colt learns that Jody never requested him and is still angry about their breakup. Gail reveals that Tom has disappeared after getting involved with drugs: she wants Colt to find him before his absence causes the film’s cancellation. Not wanting Jody’s directorial debut ruined, Colt visits Tom’s hotel room and a nightclub, where he gets into fights. In the hotel room, he finds a dead body in a bathtub full of ice. When Colt returns with the police, he finds the body has disappeared. Meanwhile, as production of Metalstorm continues, Colt and Jody begin to rekindle their relationship until Gail abruptly informs him that he has to go back to the US. Instead, he continues looking for Tom by tracking down his PA Alma Milan (Stephanie Hsu) and they are both attacked by people looking for a phone belonging to Tom in Alma’s possession. Colt defeats them after an extended chase through Sydney involving a rubbish truck. He and his friend Dan Tucker (Winston Duke), the stunt coordinator on Metalstorm, unlock the phone at Tom’s apartment. They discover a video of an intoxicated Tom accidentally killing his previous stuntman Henry. The henchmen attack Colt and Dan, destroying the phone with shotgun pellets. Dan escapes, but Colt is captured and brought face-to-face with Tom, who has been hiding out on a yacht on Gail’s instructions. He reveals that Gail is framing Colt for the murder using deepfake technology to replace Tom’s face with Colt’s on the incriminating video. Tom also reveals that Colt and Henry’s ‘accidents’ were orchestrated by himself. Henry’s body is discovered and the doctored video is released on news media, while Gail tries to convince Jody that he is guilty. Colt escapes and is presumed dead after a boat chase, though he swims to safety … I’m the director. You’re a stunt guy. We need to keep it super profesh. If last year was the Summer of Barbenheimer, that compound of mutually assured box office billionairedom, the films’ respective supporting stars are the whole show of this decade’s Romancing the Stone, at least its descendant by way of Howard Hawks and screwball. Much has been written concerncing memed-about Gosling’s super-ironic commentary on modern masculinity, a career pivot which makes him – in the words of a Guardian writer’s recent article – the most important Hollywood star, so we’ll go with it. Dry supercilious wit being a thing Blunt does well, they’re a great pairing in a story that both sends up Hollywood and mines its great romantic inclinations. Adapted very loosely by Drew Pearce from the beloved Eighties TV show created by Glen A. Larson which starred Lee Majors, Heather Thomas and Jo Ann Pflug/Markie Post not to mention a Rounded-Line Wideside truck (and an outdoor bathtub). Stuntman turned director David Leitch cut his teeth on great action movies and is responsible for helming John Wick among others and this is not just the most recent ode to the craft (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Gosling’s own turn in Drive, Burt Reynolds was Hooper, then there’s The Stunt Man, to name the most outstanding in this sub-genre) which is due to be honoured at the Academy Awards one of these years, it’s a clever metatextual behind-the-scenes examination of the business, the deceptive nature of stars’ PR, and the pitiless nature of the production machine when you’re not flavour of the month (or fit to work). It’s all of that but mostly it’s a crash-bang-wallop action movie with ever more spectacular sequences. This is a precision-tooled mainstream hit with something for everyone, a genuinely warm and funny knowing adventure-satire with finely tuned star performances. Unlike the show, when Majors got to croon The Unknown Stuntman (covered here by Blake Shelton in a great soundtrack featuring AC/DC and Kiss), Gosling hasn’t got a theme song – this year’s showbiz highlight has got to be his Oscars rendition of I’m Just Ken, but he doesn’t need another tune, that’s already part of his star text so everyone just incorporates it and tucks it away into what they know about supposedly the most important Hollywood star, the self-deprecating caring sharing modern action man. And, since this is about stuntmen, big up to Logan Holladay for all those rolls. Huzzah! It ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Aka Ariane. I always tell you what I’m doing, but you never tell me what you’re doing. Paris. Young cello student Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn) eavesdrops on a conversation between her father, Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) a widowed private detective who specializes in tracking unfaithful spouses, and his client, Monsieur X (John McGiver). After Claude gives his client proof of his wife’s daily trysts with American business magnate Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper) in Room 14 at the Ritz Hotel, Monsieur X announces he will shoot Flannagan later that evening. Claude is nonchalant, regretting only the business he will lose, since Flannagan is a well-known international playboy with a long history of casual affairs. When Ariane cannot get the Ritz to put her through to Flannagan on the phone, and the police decline to intervene until after a crime has been committed, she decides to warn him herself, and leaves for the hotel. When Monsieur X breaks into Flannagan’s hotel suite, he finds Flannagan with Ariane – not his wife (Lise Bourdin), carefully making her escape on an outside ledge. Flannagan is intrigued by the mysterious girl, who refuses to give him any information about herself, even her name. He starts guessing her name from the initial A on her handbag, and when she declines to tell him he resorts to calling her thin girl. She has no romantic history but pretends to be a femme fatale to interest him, and soon falls in love with the considerably older man. She agrees to meet him the next afternoon, not mentioning that she has orchestral practice in the evenings. She arrives with mixed feelings but spends the evening while waiting for him to leave for the airport. Ariane’s father, who has tried unsuccessfully to protect her from knowing about the tawdry domestic surveillance details in his files, notices her change of mood but has no idea that it proceeds from one of his cases. A year later, Flannagan returns to Paris and the Ritz. Ariane, who has kept track of Flannagan’s womanising exploits through the news media, meets him again when she sees him at an opera while surveying the crowd from a balcony. She puts herself in his path in the lobby, and they start seeing each other again … He who loves and runs away, lives to love another day. The first of twelve collaborations between Billy Wilder and screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond, this sprightly adaptation of Claude Anet’s 1920 novel Ariane, jeune fille russe is in fact the fourth screen version of the story, the second of which (1932) had a screenplay co-written by Wilder and the third which supposedly inspired this was made in Germany in 1931 by Paul Czinner. The attraction for Wilder is clearly in the potential for making a film along the lines of his hero Ernst Lubitsch with his fabled ‘touch’ and aside from the judicious use of eavesdropping (a suggestive trope Lubitsch loved), key to this is the casting. For Wilder, Hepburn was kissed by the angels and it was their second film following Sabrina. She shines here as the music student with ideas beyond those of the older men around her, curiosity stoked by those amorous files in her father’s office. According to her biographer Alexander Walker, there were alterations to the screenplay, so “Wilder had a heroine who behaved with the serene composure of a self-confident schoolgirl. It would work, he was sure. Truant and pert, Audrey bubbles along, sticking her oval chin out as if to invite love, the putting up her guard just in time.” Cooper remains an epic iteration of masculinity but wasn’t Wilder’s first choice – that would have been Cary Grant, who never agreed to appear in any of his productions. He comes to Paris every year and I always know because my business improves noticeably. Cooper, however was affable company for a location shoot in a city Wilder loved that had given him respite and a career after fleeing Nazi Germany. It was their second collaboration too because in 1938 Cooper had appeared for Lubitsch as another womaniser in France in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife on which Wilder had done some writing and that had also marked his first collaboration with previous writing partner and producer Charles Brackett. Now he tailored Cooper’s role more specifically to how he appeared twenty years later. There was a problem, though. “The day I cast Cooper, he got old,” Wilder told Charlotte Chandler. For Chevalier this gave him his first non-singing screen role in a decade. It restored his popularity following his conduct during the war – like many in the French film industry, he agreed to work in tandem with the occupying Germans. He wasn’t especially popular on set however, and Wilder left him out of the cocktails he hosted each evening (just as he had done with Humphrey Bogart on Sabrina).  In Paris, people make love – well, perhaps not better, but certainly more often. They do it any time, any place. On the left bank, on the right bank, and in between! They do it by day, and they do it by night. The butcher, the baker, and the friendly undertaker. They do it in motion, they do it sitting absolutely still. Poodles do it. Tourists do it. Generals do it. Once in a while even existentialists do it. There is young love, and old love. Married love, and illicit love.  It was a tricky shoot not merely because of unseasonable weather and mosquitoes but also because of the street demonstrations and violence in Paris following the Russian invasion of Hungary and the Suez crisis, forcing Wilder to speed up filming and organise evacuation plans if the worst occurred. The amoral tale is softened somewhat by the use of music and songs, almost as melodrama (in the original meaning) including Charles Trenet’s L’ame Des Poètes, Henri Betti’s C’est si bon and Fascination, a motif which is hummed throughout the film by Ariane in a score supervised by Franz Waxman and played by those obliging gypsies who also serve as a Greek chorus, discreetly disappearing when the action hots up. Cooper’s advancing age (56) and haggard appearance (he would have a full face lift two years later) made this stylish and witty exploration of sex a hard sell in the US market where the straightforward philandering didn’t go down well at a time when Lolita had just been published. However the content is mitigated by that lightness of touch that disguises discomfort while Hepburn performs beautifully as the naive daughter opposite Chevalier as her concerned father and of course Cooper who is taken in by her assumed identity in a story of double standards and hypocrisy. And a coda was added to the American production to make things right. You could fly in the twins from Stockholm. Hepburn remarked that the enterprise might have made more sense had the men’s roles been swapped. She discarded the possibility of playing Gigi on the big screen in part because Chevalier was in the cast – that twinkle in his eye didn’t seem paternal at all. She was drinking too much during production and presumed guilt led to a bout of the anorexia that plagued her. She’s a very peculiar girl. Not my type at all. As is the custom with Hepburn’s roles, there’s a fairy tale transformation here but it’s really that of Flannagan’s Don Juan – albeit there’s a fun reference to Cinderella when Ariane mislays her shoe in his hotel room. You know who I am, Mr. Flannagan, I’m the girl in the afternoon. Hepburn was outfitted by Hubert de Givenchy (and an uncredited Jay A. Morley) but her hairdo was altered from her previous urchin look in Funny Face with a centre parting introduced to a soft pageboy bob by Grazia di Rossi. She retained the look off the set, which caused quite the fashion brouhaha, and the Yorkie, Mr. Famous, which absent real life husband Mel Ferrer had bought to keep her company and wound up having a co-starring role here. The tiny creature gets smacked so much! For all its issues and complications, this is an irresistible, seductive, tart, wistfully romantic and sophisticated delight with an absurdly moving ending (plus that coda to emphasise a morally correct conclusion). And isn’t the Saul Bass poster ingenious? We did have a good time, didn’t we?

Leap Year (2010)

A day for desperate women. Successful Boston real estate stager Anna Brady (Amy Adams) is frustrated that her long term boyfriend cardiologist Jeremy Sloane (Adam Scott) still has not proposed to her after four years. She decides to travel from to Dublin to propose to him on February 29,  Leap Day, while he is attending a conference. Anna plans to invoke an Irish tradition, when a woman may propose to a man on leap day. During the flight, a storm diverts the plane to Cardiff  in Wales. Anna hires a boat to take her west across the Irish Sea to Cork. The severity of the storm results in her being put ashore at a small seaside village of Dingle. Anna requests surly Irish innkeeper Declan O’Callaghan (Matthew Goode) to give her a lift to Dublin. At first he refuses, but as his tavern is threatened with foreclosure, he agrees to drive her for 500 euros. Along the way, he mocks her belief in a leap year tradition of women proposing to men. A herd of cows blocks the road. Anna steps in cow dung while attempting to move the animals and tries to clean her shoes while leaning on Declan’s car, which causes it to roll downhill into a stream. Continuing on foot, Anna flags down a van with three travellers who offer her a lift. Ignoring Declan’s warning, Anna hands them her luggage. They drive off without her. Anna and Declan make their way on foot to a roadside pub, where they find the thieves going through Anna’s luggage. Declan fights them and retrieves Anna’s bag. While waiting for a train in Tipperary, they ask each other what they would grab if their homes were on fire and they had only 60 seconds to flee. They lose track of time and miss the train. They are forced to stay at a B&B  where they pretend to be married so that their conservative hosts will allow them to stay. During dinner, when the other couples kiss to show their love for each other, Anna and Declan are forced to kiss as well  … Why don’t you try and stop trying to control everything in the known universe? The screenplay by Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont unearths a previously unknown Oirish custom called ‘Bachelor’s Day’ throwing together two mismatched romantic protagonists into a tiny car (of a marque last seen in Ireland maybe forty years ago) and hurtling them around the country in a screwball road movie that hits more posts than goals in terms of plausibility or indeed verisimilitude. A cast of redoubtable local performers including Pat Laffan, Alan Devlin, Ian McElhinney and Dominique McElligott do their best with mindless if inoffensive comedy (if you’re not Irish) and the scenery as shot by Newton Thomas Sigel is curiously muddy throughout. Made variously in Counties Wicklow, Dublin, Mayo Galway and Kildare, filming took place in and around the Aran Islands (Caragh’s Inn in Kilmurvey on Inishmore) and Dun Aonghasa Cliffs, Connemara, Temple Bar, Georgian Dublin, the Rock of Dunamase in County Laois, Enniskerry and Glendalough National Park in Wicklow, Carton House Hotel in County Kildare and Olaf Street in Waterford City. A romcom that never rises above the sum of its parts but certainly provides a lens into the tourist view of the island. It’s so bad it’s enjoyable and has become a major cult. This eventually bounces along with a fun soundtrack of popular songs in a score by Randy Edelman. Directed by Anand Tucker. You just surprised me. You keep doing that

Argylle (2024)

You need to stay on target. Introverted spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) has almost finished writing her fifth book about Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill), the title character of the Argylle spy series. On a train journey with her cat Alfie (Chip) to go and visit her mother Ruth (Catherine O’Hara) home in Chicago, Elly is saved from an ambush by an actual spy, Aidan Wylde (Sam Rockwell) who explains to her that a devious organisation, known as the Division, headed by Ritter (Bryan Cranston) has targeted her because her novels seemingly predict their future. Aidan travels with Elly to England, hoping that her next chapter will reveal how to stop the Division. In London, the duo searches for a Masterkey that would help expose the Division that Elly had also referenced in her novels. Suspecting Aidan wants to kill her too, Elly calls her mother for help and she immediately travels to rescue her daughter. There’s a knock at the door and it’s Elly’s father (Bryan Cranston). Then Aidan arrives and reveals that her parents are both operatives of the Division, forcing him and Elly to fend them off before fleeing. Who’s the only person who hasn’t tried to kill you in the past seventy-two hours? Escaping to France, Aidan and former CIA deputy director Alfie Solomon reveal that Argylle is not entirely fictional: Elly is in fact agent Rachel Kylle (‘Argylle’ having been derived from ‘R. Kylle’), who was captured and brainwashed by the Division five years ago and made to believe that Dr. Margaret Vogeler (Ruth) and Director Ritter (Barry) were her real parents. Elly put her suppressed memories into her novels in modified form … We’re on our own now. Cats. Writers. Spies. A recipe for success! Starwise it’s essentially Bryce versus Bryan – with a lot of Sam and Henry to spice things up. Even John Cena and pop star Dua Lipa show up in the great opening sequence and later Samuel L. Jackson and Ariana DeBose enter the fray. There’s an argument to be made for a director with such clear gifts as Matthew Vaughn that he should be making serious films – that is, narratives with more significant content and in reality it would appear he is painting himself into a corner of ridiculousness if not necessarily one of large scale likeable silliness. But we might mention that here he’s making a film about the inside of a woman’s mind (and even her eyelids) – kudos for that. Spies lie. It’s part of the game. As the perennially youthful Rockwell morphs into the amusingly Action Man-like Cavill we understand how a writer thinks, the rules of the espionage genre and enjoy Vaughn’s permanently witty point of view as Ellie figures out how to do adventure and spying in the real world (again). You’re just a character I made up. As usual in a Vaughn production, everything looks beautiful courtesy of DoP George Richmond and production designers Russell De Rozario and Daniel Taylor, the action is well managed and there are even some meta references (Argylle is definitely suited and booted by Kingsman). There’s an impressive score by Lorne Balfe with an astute use of the Beatles’ final song to lend poignancy. The midpoint reveal is great fun. Thereafter the conventions necessarily come into play. The greater the spy – the bigger the lie. There’s an easy bond (James?!) between our principals: You’re one hell of a spy, Ellie. Not a bad writer, either. And it’s a jolly sight indeed to have Howard spend most of the film carting her cat Alfie around in a posh backpack – and you know what they say about cats in dramatic structure (Save the Cat?!) – if there’s one in the first act, it has to go off in the third! It makes us think Vaughn is precisely the director to reinvigorate that moribund franchise albeit this is the first in a series of its own to perhaps be fused with Kingsman at a later date. Bonkers, nutty and fun, to be honest, this had us at Cat. Just tell us what happens in the next chapter

Ernest Shackleton Born 150 Years Ago Today 15th February 2024

The great Anglo-Irish polar explorer Ernest Shackleton was born in Kilkea, County Kildare on this day in 1874.

His teens spent in the Merchant Navy where he earned his stripes as a Master Mariner, he braved three separate British Antarctic expeditions and during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition when the Endurance smashed in pack ice in 1915 he travelled 800 miles to rescue his crew.

Men are not made from easy victories, but based on great defeats

He later returned to the South Atlantic but died in South Georgia when his boat was moored there in 1921 and is buried in Grytviken.

Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton

The Secret of Seagull Island (1980)

Has anyone ever told you you have the most beautiful eyes? Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome) flies to Italy to visit her blind sister Mary Ann (Sherry Buchanan) but arrives in Rome to discover she has apparently disappeared, last seen three weeks earlier, putting a concert at the music academy where she trains in jeopardy. Barbara approaches the British Consul for help in this uncharacteristic and worrying situation and Martin Foster(Nicky Henson) assists her. People don’t just disappear. He’s reluctant at first but then thinks a rather louche Italian Enzo Lombardi (Gabriele Tinti) might know of Mary Ann’s whereabouts but Lombardi denies all knowledge and Barbara doesn’t believe him, getting into a scrap on his boat which might turn into something much worse when Martin turns up and rescues her. Local police believe they might have found Mary Ann’s body with eyes gouged out and then when it’s not her, link Mary Ann with another blind woman who is in hospital after a marine accident, found adrift in a dinghy – that’s not her either. It’s suggested that a reclusive rich man called David Malcolm (Jeremy Brett) the owner of a private island between Corsica and Sardinia might hold the answer to the mysterious murder of a series of blind women. When Barbara visits the blind woman in hospital a weird high pitched recording of birds is played in her room and the woman throws herself out of the window while Barbara is hit on the head. She now is apparently blind and introduces herself to Malcolm who has a thing for blind women. Then she visits his island where his disfigured son makes her acquaintance despite the fact that along with Malcolm’s first wife he’s supposedly dead. Malcolm’s wife Carol (Pamela Salem) isn’t too happy at the new arrival on her patch … I don’t know what it is about you but ever since we met I’ve been behaving like James Bond. Once upon a time, the Summer of 1981 to be precise, ITV showed a compelling British-Italian drama miniseries at teatime on Saturday called Seagull Island. And we wanted to see it again. It has cropped up all these years later thanks to the Talking Pictures channel, but in an entirely different form, a feature film, meaning that a couple of hours of drama (actually somewhere in the region of 200 minutes) have been lost to editing antiquity. Barbara is constantly in jeopardy and physically attacked and her situation pivots on Malcolm’s storytelling and behaviour with Brett turning into an expansive and thrillingly evil bad guy and Henson rolling up now and again to save the day. The plot is a lot less clear in this version than in the original series but the generic ancestry is happily in the suspenseful giallo tradition where American actress Buchanan originally made her name with What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974). It’s satisfyingly glamorous, delighting in the setting and the trophies of wealth – speedboats, lovely production design and costuming. There are some very good underwater scenes but there’s also a deal of gore and violence. We know it’s more than forty years since this was made but it’s still rather sad that the four leads (Ransome, Brett, Henson, Tinti) are long departed this earthly realm. Directed by Nestore Ungaro who co-wrote the screenplay with Jeremy Burnham and Augusto Caminito. The score is by Tony Hatch. The island isn’t large enough to make one feel lonely

Jerry & Marge Go Large (2022)

It’s a math problem, really. Evart, Michigan. Jerry (Bryan Cranston) and Marge Selbee (Annette Bening) live a quiet life in their small town home. Jerry, recently retired after forty-two years working in the local factory, spends his days unwillingly tinkering with the new motorboat his kids Dawn (Anna Camp) and Doug (Jake McDorman) bought him. But an accidental crash at the lake turns his attention elsewhere. One day, while at the local gas station, Jerry overhears a conversation about the WinFall lottery’s rolldown weeks. A mathematician at heart, he quickly figures out a statistical loophole. He realises that during rolldowns buying a large number of tickets almost guarantees a win. He does it in secret and hides the money all over the house but Marge wonders what’s going on. Sceptical at first, she soon gets on board with the plan: finally they have something together other than watching Jeopardy. They start small but Marge’s encouragement leads Jerry to go all in. They empty their savings, and the risk pays off – their $8,000 investment turns into $15,000. Excited by their success, they can’t keep it a secret for long. When WinFall closes in Michigan, the Selbees don’t give up. Marge organises a 10-hour road trip to Massachusetts, where the lottery is still active. They spend days at a small liquor store run by Bill (Rainn Wilson), printing ticket after ticket, doubling their money once again. They spend their nights at the Pick and Shovel Motel and eventually get their relationship back on an even keel. Back in Evart, they decide to share their secret. Their widowed accountant Steve (Larry Willmore) is the first one to get on board. They create GS Investment Strategies, allowing their friends and neighbours to invest. Daughter Dawn joins them one week but messes up the ticket checking. The investment reinvigorates the town. Old businesses reopen, and the local Jazz Fest venue is restored, all thanks to the lottery winnings. But their success attracts unwanted attention. Do you really think we’re the only ones who know? A group of Harvard students, led by Tyler Langford (Uly Schlesinger) have also discovered the loophole. They confront Jerry and Marge, arrogantly suggesting they combine forces. The Selbees refuse, standing firm in their methods and morals and Jerry points out Tyler’s shortcoming in relying on binomial distribution alone. As tensions rise, Tyler threatens Jerry, turning up in Evart and demanding he stop playing WinFall. Jerry almost gives in when he believes Tyler could hack all their bank accounts and expose them but the support of his son Doug and the community strengthens his resolve. They won’t be bullied out of their endeavour. Then Maya (Tracie Thoms) a reporter for the Spotlight section of The Boston Globe starts sniffing around when she finds out the lottery game is being gamed … Good luck happens same as bad. We’ve been fangirling over writer/director David Frankel since Miami Rhapsody (1995) so naturally we’ll beat a path to anything he makes. That sweet spot between drama and ironic comedy is where he lives. Here it’s a true story that turns on the issue of a retirement that works for both halves of a married couple. We need something for us. The process by which this is arrived at and how it is solved by becoming a project for the common good is neat and plausible – probably because it really happened. Frankel’s screenplay is adapted from the true story as written by Jason Fagone for HuffPost in 2018. We can’t win if we can’t play. The twist provided by the Harvard betting group as worthy smartass antagonists also gives grit to the otherwise wholesome plot (in a weird way we might infer that the outcome is a retrofitting of what we wish might have happened to Mark Zuckerberg, another alum). Jerry has to resort to figuring out people not math in order to get through the crisis presented when Harvard turns nasty. This may not hit all the heavily ironised story beats we’re accustomed to from this filmmaking source but it has a deal of them that it handles with care and heart. We know Cranston can do the crazy obsessive suburban entrepreneur from Breaking Bad but this plays it safe probably because it’s true albeit he has some moments where you believe he just might lose it. So the major irony is that unlike its protagonists the film doesn’t gamble at all. That aside, isn’t it nice to see a portrait of a married couple who stay together over the decades for the right reasons and end up living the dream. Beautifully performed. He finally got to use his gift to connect to people

Soft & Quiet (2022)

We’re all brainwashed. All of us. Kindergarten teacher Emily (Stefanie Estes) organises the first-time meeting of the Daughters for Aryan Unity,’ an organisation of white supremacist Caucasian women, which includes  ex-con Leslie (Olivia Luccardi), grocery store owner Kim (Dana Millican) and disgruntled single girl retail worker Marjorie (Eleanore Pienta). The members present have various grievances against immigrants, Jews, feminists, diversity quotas, and organisations like Black Lives Matter. The meeting, held in a church building, is cut short when the church pastor (Josh Peters, the film’s producer) uncomfortable with the topic of the group insists Emily leave. To save face, Emily decides to invite the others to her home; Leslie, Kim, and Marjorie accept. The four travel to Kim’s store for food and drink. While Emily is selecting wine, Asian-American sisters Anne (Melissa Paulo) and Lily (Cissy Ly) arrive. Unaware that the shop was closed, they try to purchase wine but are refused service by Kim. Lily confronts Kim refusing service, causing Emily to intervene. Anne attempts to defuse the situation, only to be intimidated by Emily into purchasing the most expensive wine on the shelf. As the two sisters leave, Marjorie initiates a verbal confrontation with Anne which degenerates into violence. Kim arms herself with a pistol and forces the sisters out at gunpoint; while leaving Lily taunts Emily about her brother, who is currently in a county prison serving time for raping Anne. Emily’s husband Craig (Jon Beavers) arrives and attempts to defuse the situation but Leslie is incensed and suggests going to Anne’s home to vandalise the property and steal her passport Craig initially refuses but is embarrassed by Emily into going along. Emily mentions certain details about the house, such as Anne’s living there alone and that she inherited it when her mother died. Craig tells Emily he is disturbed that she’s been keeping track of Anne like this. The four women and Craig arrive at the lakeside home and perform acts of petty vandalism before Kim finds Anne’s passport. Before they can leave, Anne and Lily suddenly arrive home and discover the intruders. They weren’t supposed to be fucking home! Confused and unsure of what to do, the home invaders bind and gag Anne and Lily at gunpoint and discuss their options. Unable to condone the situation, Craig leaves. Leslie suggests cleaning up the property to remove physical evidence of their presence and intimidating the sisters to keep them quiet. While drinking, Leslie and Marjorie beat Anne and Lily and force-feed Lily various food and drink. Then Lily begins to choke … The first thing you’ve got to do is take the media back from the Jews. This audacious and disturbing debut written, produced and directed by Beth de Araujo shocks and disturbs from the get go: when Emily arrives at the mixer she gets the first piece of the cherry pie she’s brought. It has a swastika cut into it. The camera lingers on that pie for an awfully long time. Our minds think, Nice as pie. American Pie. This is a meeting of Daughters for Aryan Unity. That’s just the first jaw drop: this isn’t some allegory, this is about actual American Nazis. And they’re all women. When they’re booted out of the church the solution for Emily is to get some wine and make an evening of it but then a girl surfaces who reminds the jittery Emily of what happened to her brother. She instigates a vile prank that goes horribly wrong and results in torture, rape and murder. Her husband exits early as the marital differences that were manifest in a failure to get pregnant now reflect on his masculinity – he’s just concerned that he’s being embroiled in a felony and doesn’t want to go to jail. He’s already participated in kidnapping. It’s the escalation to extreme violence at warp speed that’s so compelling. It’s paralleled and to an extent driven by envy: those apparently mixed race girls (Leslie accuses them of having had a wetback father) have a piano. They have a lot of cash. They live in a really nice house. They can afford a $300 bottle of wine. But Ann is a waitress. So what gives? The screenplay pulls no punches about the older women’s class and financial positions – they’re cheap people with dodgy records, their politics are on the nose and directly confrontational. The aesthetic choice to shoot this entire film in one take (kudos to cinematographer Greta Zozula) gives this a striking urgency. We just can’t look away as we are immersed in awfulness. The media loves to portray us as big scary monsters. Am I really that scary? The rape and murder occur literally just under the camera. The contrast between how Emily looks – she moves like a ballerina, she could be a model with those symmetrical features, lean body and long straight blonde hair – and what she says and how Leslie carries out what Emily really wants to happen couldn’t be starker. And it seems like she’s doing it as a quid pro quo to get Emily to pose in her vintage clothes online. The stakes are high for everyone concerned – Kim is freaking out about losing her kids – but they each just go along with the unfolding horror. White people are the worst! As a comment about the state of race relations in the US this presents a spectrum in terms of representation. One woman is the daughter of a KKK member, another is a housewife stuck at home with her kids, one is a baby boomer, another can’t have babies – and she’s the protagonist, the kindergarten teacher telling a little boy to have a go at an immigrant cleaning lady at the school. The politics they espouse are ‘soft and quiet’ and other than punky crim Leslie they look like butter wouldn’t melt but they’re participating in a gendered race war. It slides straight into genre action territory for the last half hour and there’s even a twist. It’s horrible but like we said – this is made from the perspective of racists and you just can’t take your eyes off it because the viewer is implicated from the off. A Blumhouse production. We all have great genes

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

I felt I had to tell you even if it would interrupt your writing. Four family members take their holiday on a remote Swedish island, shortly after one of them, Karin (Harriet Andersson) is released from a mental hospital where she has been treated for schizophrenia. Karin’s husband Martin (Max von Sydow), a doctor, tells her widowed father David (Gunnar Björnstrand) that Karin’s disease is almost incurable. Meanwhile, Minus (Lars Passgård), Karin’s 17-year-old brother, tells Karin that he wishes he could have a real conversation with their father and feels deprived of his father’s affection. David is a novelist suffering from writer’s block who has just returned from a long trip to Switzerland. He announces he will leave again in a month, this time for Dubrovnik, though he promised he would stay around. The other three perform a play for him that Minus has written. David feigns his approval but takes offence since the play could be interpreted as an attack on his character. That night, after rejecting Martin’s erotic overtures, Karin wakes up and follows the sound of a foghorn to the attic. She faints after she hears voices behind the peeling wallpaper. She then enters David’s room and after he puts her to sleep on the couch and leaves the room she looks through his desk and finds his diary, seeing his description of her disease as incurable. She discovers his desire to record the details of her deterioration. The following morning, David and Martin, while fishing, confront each other over Karin. Martin accuses David of sacrificing his daughter for his art and of being self-absorbed, callous, cowardly and phony. You’re trying to fill your void with Karin’s extinction. David is evasive but admits that much of what Martin says is true. David says that he recently tried to kill himself by driving over a cliff during his stay in Switzerland but was saved by a faulty transmission. He says that after that, he discovered that he loves Karin, Minus and Martin, and this gives him hope. Meanwhile, Karin tells Minus about her episodes, and that she is waiting for God to appear behind the wallpaper in the attic. Minus is somewhat sexually frustrated, and Karin teases him, even more so after she discovers that he hides a porn magazine. Later, on the beach, when Karin sees that a storm is coming, she runs into a wrecked ship and huddles in fear. Minus goes to her and she embraces him incestuously before recoiling in shock at her overture. Minus tells his father about the incident in the ship and Martin calls for an ambulance. Karin asks to speak with her father alone. She confesses her misconduct toward Martin and Minus, saying that a voice told her to act that way and also to search David’s desk. She tells David she would like to remain at the hospital, because she cannot go back and forth between two realities but must choose one … Am I little or has the illness made a child of me? Do you think I’m strange? The first in Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman’s Faith trilogy, this is a precise portrait of family, isolation, mental illness and the vicious vaunting ambition of writers. You’re hunting for themes. Your own daughter’s mental illness! This horrible exchange around 52 minutes in reminds us of the famous Nora Ephron saying, Everything is copy. The first of Bergman’s films to be shot on the island of Faro (at the suggestion of his regular collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist), this quite personal four-hander was conceived as a Strindbergian three-act play, featuring the steady acceleration of tension as the daughter succumbs to the worst aspects of mental illness following a major discovery and each act forming a mirror panel to reveal the drama from different angles. It’s always about you and yours. Your callousness is perverse, say von Sydow as the son-in-law to the remote novelist heartlessly exploiting his daughter’s condition for his writerly ends. I think it’s God who shall reveal himself to us, declares Karin, before admitting she has seen God and he is a spider. What the hell can I do? wails her younger brother having escaped her clutches yet wanting her to regain her health. Eventually as Karin descends into the depths of madness her father recognises the re-enacting of history – Karin is going the way of her late mother and he finally understands his own role in the women’s demise. Utterly desolate and merciless, with Andersson unforgettable as the young woman who finally loses her mind. I can’t live in two worlds

The Vengeance of She (1968)

Everything was going great until that bloody girl came on board. Beautiful young European girl Carol (Olinka Berova) is drawn through mental telepathy to the ancient lost city of Kuma, there to become the reincarnation of its lost former ruler, Ayesha and consort of her predecessor’s lover, Kallikrates (John Richardson. In return, Men-Hari (Derek Godfrey) a member of the Magi, the ancient Chaldean race of wise men, will also be allowed to enter the sacred flame and become immortal, which will expand his already formidable mental powers to the point where he will be able to take over the entire world. To achieve this, however, he must bring Carol to Kallikrates before the sacred flame is ignited during a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical alignment. Men-Hari therefore uses his powers ruthlessly to compel Carol to come to Kuma. Men-Hari is opposed by his father, Za-Tor (Noel Willman) longtime leader of the Magi and by psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Smith (Edward Judd) who meets and falls in love with Carol during her journey. In the course of their travels, Carol and Phillip are separated. Kassim (Andre Morrell) a local mystic, attempts to put a stop to Men-Hari’s control over Carol but Men-Hari finds out about his efforts. Partly at Kallikrates’ bidding, Men-Hari wrests the leadership of the Magi away from Za-Tor, and leads the rest of the Magi in a forbidden occult ritual to overpower and destroy Kassim. Shortly afterwards, Carol and Phillip are re-united, and they continue their journey to Kuma. On arrival, Carol is welcomed but Phillip – whom Men-Hari rightly perceives as a threat to his evil scheme – is imprisoned. Za-Tor comes to Phillip and discusses the situation with him and realises the danger in Men-Hari’s plot. He agrees to do whatever he can to help Phillip and then departs. Sharna, one of Kallikrates’ servant girls who is in love with Kallikrates, helps Phillip to escape, while Za-Tor speaks to his assistant in an effort to incite a rebellion against Men-Hari. The plot succeeds to some extent and Phillip arrives at Kallikrates’ chambers just as the sacred flame is ignited … When the flame goes cold you will pass through it and be made immortal. Roughly adapted from the H. Rider Haggard story Ayesha: The Return of She by Modesty Blaise creator Peter O’Donnell, this is mainly fascinating for the performance of the thoroughly beautiful star (who would go on to marry Hollywood maven John Calley, a producer at Warners and Sony Pictures). She is simply impossible to photograph badly. The admixture of British class, ancient rituals and a semi-hippy dippy foreign chick is irresistible. In the first and probably the most interesting part of the film featuring Colin Blakeley in a significant role everything starts with the kind of disruption we know from boat movies like Polanski’s Knife in the Water and concludes with the death of a major character. It then returns us to Ursula Andress territory (and there’s even a nod to her inimitable emergence from the sea in Dr No when Berova dons a white bikini) and transports us into another version of the time-clashing She with this modern temptress driving everyone a little crazy as she plays the role the ancients wish. Face it, who wouldn’t want to be worshipped? Berova (aka Olga Schoberova) wasn’t supposed to be the star but Andress’ contract with Hammer Films had run out. Judd said of his leading lady, Olinka had a physical resemblance to Ursula, except that Ursula could act a bit. Olinka’s knowledge of screen craft was somewhat limited. It was impossible to work with her. I realised, ‘Not a great deal between the ears here.’ But I bit my tongue and thought of the paycheck. Not very gentlemanly but Judd never had another leading role either! It’s a lot of fun with loads to look at. Directed by Cliff Owen. You’ve got to find out what’s at the end of your journey