Maudie (2016)

Show me how you see the world. The story of Maud Lewis née Dowley, a folk artist from Nova Scotia. She (Sally Hawkins) is an arthritic woman living with her Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose) in the 1930s. Maud is shocked to learn that her brother Charles (Zachary Bennett) has sold their family home, which their parents had left to him. In the meantime, she is berated by Ida about going out to a local dance. At a store, Maud sees the inarticulate and rough fish peddler Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) place an advertisement for a cleaning lady. Maud answers the call and takes the position for room and board. Everett’s house is very small, and the two share a bed, causing scandal in the town, with gossip that Maud is offering sexual services. While attempting to clean the shack, Maud paints a shelf. She then begins painting flowers and birds on the walls to make it look better. She meets one of Everett’s customers, Sandra (Kari Matchett) from New York City, who is intrigued by Maud’s paintings and buys cards Maud has decorated. She later commissions Maud to make a larger painting for five dollars. Maud persuades Everett to marry her, while her paintings receive more exposure in print coverage and sales begin at the house. US VP Richard Nixon contacts the Lewises to obtain one. After the couple appears on TV news, Everett becomes disturbed that local viewers see him as cold and cruel. Ida, increasingly ill, also saw the coverage, and Maud wishes to see her before Ida dies. Ida tells Maud that she is the only Dowley who ever found happiness, and confesses Maud’s baby girl did not die deformed. Charles had sold her to an old couple.  Everett becomes convinced the relationship has brought nothing but emotional anguish to both of them. The two separate… It starts rather unpromisingly, this story of a strange, somewhat retarded woman whose existence has proven difficult for her aunt – the reference to ‘what happened last time’ after Maudie sneaks out to a dance hall and drinks is an illegitimate baby a late revelation which triggers the emotive last third, in which her difficult and occasionally violent husband seems to finally reconcile himself with his lot and brings Maudie to see her adopted daughter, now married and living in a pretty whiteboard house. The final scene in the hospital is diffident, as is much of the film, which cries out for a more in-depth treatment of this problem life and naive art. Stick with it even if Hawkins drives you potty. Shot in Newfoundland, for some reason. Written by Sherry Wright and directed by Aisling Walsh.

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Cool Runnings (1993)

Peace be the journey. Four Jamaican bobsledders (Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis and Malik Yoba) dream of competing in the Winter Olympics in Calgary despite never having seen snow. With the help of  Irv Blitzer (John Candy) a disgraced former champion desperate to redeem himself, the Jamaicans set out to become worthy of Olympic selection and go all out for glory… The real-life underdogs in the ’88 Games are given a sweetly (fictional) biographical treatment, complete with father-son conflict, rivalry with other teams, a real rackety set-up in an event riven with issues including the late great Candy (an invented character) who has his own past transgression to resolve without damaging his team’s prospects.  As sliding proceedings in Korea come to an end (sob!) this is simply irresistible.  Lynn Siefert & Michael Ritchie wrote the story and the screenplay is credited to Siefert and Tommy Swerdlow & Michael Goldberg. Directed by Jon Turteltaub.  The last time I saw this was when it was released exactly 24 years ago and Candy died just a fortnight later. What a sad loss.

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

It happened once, it happened twice. Cancel the dance, or it’ll happen thrice. Ten years ago, an inexperienced coal miner named Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles) caused an accident that killed five men and put a sixth, Harry Warden (Peter Cowper), into a coma. A year later, on Valentine’s Day, Harry woke up and murdered 22 people with a pickaxe before dying. Now Tom has returned home, still haunted by the past. And something else is back in Harmony: a pickaxe-wielding killer in a miner’s mask, who may be the ghost of Harry, come to claim Tom and his friends.  The accident long forgotten, the dance resumes. Many of the town’s younger residents are excited about it: Gretchen (Gina Dick), Dave (Carl Marotte), Hollis (Keith Knight), Patty (Cynthia Dale), Sylvia (Helene Udy), Howard (Alf Humphreys), Mike (Thomas Kovacs), John (Rob Stein), Tommy (Jim Murchison), and Harriet (Terry Waterland). Of this group, Sarah (Lori Hallier), Axel (Neil Affleck), and the mayor’s returning son T.J. (Paul Kelman) are involved in a tense love triangle. … This Canadian exploitationer is notorious for its gore and violence which led to it being heavily cut but it has become something of a cult item due to its status in the vanguard of the slasher genre. What’s striking about it at this distance is how it treats its subject – seriously! You may think twice about using a nail gun after this. Written by John Beaird with a story by Stephen Miller, this is directed by George Mihalka.  And this holiday serial killer flick gave a certain great band their name. For that at least we are grateful.

Videodrome (1983)

This has something you don’t have Max. It has a philosophy. And that’s what makes it dangerous. Max Renn (James Woods) is the director of a UHF TV channel operating out of Toronto in the early 80s looking for new material. He picks up a channel specialising in torture and violence which appears to be operating out of Pittsburgh. When his new girlfriend radio host Nikki Brand (Blondie’s Debbie Harry) disappears and turns up in one of their snuff movies he finds out too late that his violent hallucinations are happening because of what he’s been exposed to on videotapes which aren’t being broadcast at all – they’re being targeted at powerful people to exert mind control in a disintegrating society … David Cronenberg’s film has such a predictive quality despite some yucky special effects by Rick Baker. Made a decade before the internet became public, this is a satirical disquisition on the dangers of virtual reality and the closing of the distance between hard and soft technology – just watch what Woods does with his own abdomen, the new slot for a live VCR that has a direct connection with his brain! After Scanners made him famous this is the body horror that Cronenberg brought to bear on the idea of censorship and the belief run riot in those days that watching violent films bred violence in the viewer.  Woods’ ‘paranoid intellectualism’ as Cronenberg has it is just the disparaging stance that this subject needs to express this film’s very black comedy.  Long live the new flesh indeed.

Eddie the Eagle (2016)

This is the story of the worst ski jumper in British Olympic history. And that should warn off all but the most indulgent ski bunnies. But aside from the fact that I am OBSESSED with winter sports (did you see what happened in the slalom at Innsbruck last week?!) this is a winning, funny, deeply sympathetic and hellishly exciting film about  the need to compete above all. Simon Kelton adapted the story from Edwards’ life and wrote the screenplay with Sean Macaulay (Hitchcock) who some people will know for his film criticism. Famed Finn Matti Nykaner gets to expound on his philosophy which has an amazing effect on our hero, Hugh Jackman wears the same bleached denims and cowboy boots throughout as the reluctant and permanently drunken coach, and Taron Egerton screws up his gorgeous face to become the man who haunted the British winter Olympics team in Calgary in 1988 – and boy did he make idiots out of them. He is a winner through and through and so is this. Christopher Walken shows up and so does Keith Allen. It really is a bit of a lark and an uplifting one at that. The soundtrack is to die for – any film that puts Thin Lizzy’s The Cowboy to good use gets a thumbs up from Mondo Movies. What great things Dexter Fletcher has done since his childhood! Next thing you know they’ll go and make a movie about that year’s Jamaican bob sleigh team. Doh!