Asteroid City (2023)

Am I in this? In a retro-futurist kind of 1950s, a television host (Bryan Cranston) introduces a documentary about the creation and production of Asteroid City, a play by the famed playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). The play’s events are depicted in widescreen and stylised colour, while the television special is seen in monochrome Academy ratio. In the play, a youth astronomy convention is held in the fictional desert town of Asteroid City in the American Southwest. War photojournalist Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) arrives early to the Junior Stargazer convention with his teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) a would-be intellectual and his three younger daughters Andromeda (Ellie Faris), Pandora (Gracie Faris) and Cassiopeia (Willan Faris) . When their car breaks down, Augie phones his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks) asking for his help. Stanley, who dislikes his son-in-law, persuades him to tell the children about their mother’s (Margot Robbie) recent death, which Augie had concealed. Augie and Woodrow meet famous and disillusioned actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and her daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) who, like Woodrow, will be honoured at the convention. Augie and Midge and Woodrow and Dinah, gradually fall in love throughout the play. The other convention participants arrive: five-star General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), astronomer Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton), three additional teenaged honorees Clifford (Aristou Meehan), Shelly (Sophia Lillis) and Ricky (Ethan Josh) and their parents J.J.(Liev Schreiber) Sandy (Hope Davis) and Roger (Stephen Park), a busload of elementary-school children chaperoned by young teacher June Douglas (Maya Hawke) and a cowboy band led by singer Montana (Rupert Friend). A local motel manager (Stephen Carell) provides everyone’s accommodations. Gibson welcomes the attendees at the Asteroid City crater where the teenagers are to receive awards for various inventions. A UFO suddenly appears above the crater; an alien (Jeff Goldblum) emerges and steals the remnant of the meteorite that created the crater. Augie photographs the alien. Gibson, with instructions from the president, places the town under military quarantine, and everyone is subjected to medical and psychiatric examinations. Meanwhile, a romance blossoms between Montana and June, who assure the students that the alien is likely peaceful. The Stargazer honourees use Dr. Hickenlooper’s equipment to attempt to contact the alien. Tricking the guard watching the pay phone, Ricky calls his school newspaper to relay the quarantine details and cover-up to the outside world … They’re strange, aren’t they, your children. Compared to normal people. What is this, exactly? A faux-documentary about a play about a 1950s junior stargazer convention in the Southwest. After that indigestible meta-in-joke construction is absorbed, what is this – exactly? The latest Wes Anderson production is more ironic with flatter backdrops than usual, presumably to (ironically) play on the flatness of the desert itself with the theatrical sets, the drama is only truly enlivened by two performances, those of Cranston (primarily in black and white) who breaks the fourth wall by intruding on a scene in colour, and Hanks, appropriately whose charisma warms up a setting that is paradoxically stifling in the desert heat – well, as the film within the play within the documentary. I don’t understand that emotion. I’ve played it, of course. It’s difficult to know where to look but as a dramatic rule, when in doubt, follow the emotion, which leads back to the three delightful little girls who learn their mother has died and are determined to give her a funeral in the dust which their estranged grandfather (Hanks) eventually commits to performing even if the kids call themselves witches. I still don’t understand the play. There is probably a bigger point being made about political theatre with a Kazan-like narcissist director Schubert Green (Adrien Brody) leading the TV production and a needy self-conscious Methody movie star (Johansson) who, accompanied by that giant bottle of Chanel No. 5, can only be a parody Marilyn but this is ultimately confused. It’s not entirely unlikeable, not with those triplets, but it’s not very funny either. A real curate’s egg of shallow smugness from a story by those arch space cadets Anderson and Roman Coppola. You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep

Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950)

I am afraid you are going to have to take the evening off after all. Private detective Paul Temple (John Bentley) and his lovely wife Steve (Dinah Sheridan) are searching for the missing scientist Professor Hardwick (Andrew Leigh) behind a pioneering nuclear missile shield when their friend, his daughter Celia (Anne Hayes), appeals to them for help. When they find her dead at the family home they eventually find out it’s got something to do with a shadowy crime organisation known only by the initial Z. There are Teutonic boffins, petrol smugglers, snooping reporters and French singer Jacqueline Giraud (Jenny Mathot) armed with doped cigarettes distracting the Temples from cracking the case but time is running out and the bodies are piling up … Never should have sent it from Rangoon. The poor man’s British take on Nick and Nora Charles has a convoluted plot, so many bodies we couldn’t keep count and Sheridan dripping in full length furs. She also looks good with a gun. And great in trousers. She knows too much. It’s a rare film indeed that has a credit that reads, Cars by Aston-Martin and Lagonda. It’s an even rarer one whose turning point into the third act is The Radio Times! But, as the World Service broadcast Europe Today triggers catastrophic events that elicit little more than blithe cheeriness from our protagonists – even moments after finding the body of their good friend – this rattles on, damn it, whether we can keep up with developments or not. The late arrival of Peter Butterworth raises a smile in a story where virtually nobody is who they say they are and the villains really are ruthless people. The third in the popular series this B-movie entry was adapted by A. R. Rawlinson from the Francis Durbridge novel which was also a radio serial, News of Paul Temple , this works like a low rent James Bond episode with pertinent post-war references including rationing. Celebrity spotters might recognise Hayes (whose only feature credit this was) as the first wife of Peter Sellers. Produced by Ernest G. Roy and directed by Maclean Rogers at Nettlefold Studios with location shooting at Hillingdon, Northolt Airport, Walton-on-Thames, Beaulieu, Shepperton and East Horsley. What have you got in here – cast iron camisoles?

Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

Aka Survival. All normal forms of communications appear to have broken down. Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland), his wife Ann (Jean Hagen), their son Rick (Frankie Avalon) and daughter Karen (Mary Mitchel) leave suburban Los Angeles at sunrise to go on a fishing trip to the Sierra Nevada wilderness, bringing with them a small camping trailer. After a couple of hours on the road, Harry and Ann are startled by an unusually bright light, accompanied by the radio station going to static. Tuning through stations, they hear a sporadic news report broadcast on CONELRAD that hint at the start of a nuclear war, confirmed when the Baldwins see a large mushroom cloud from a hydrogen bomb rising over Los Angeles, now many miles away. The family attempt to return home to rescue Ann’s mother but Harry soon realises that the roads will be clogged by panicked people and what is left of the city will be saturated in atomic fallout. Stopping at a small diner to get food and find out what is happening, Harry hears that Los Angeles was hit by two hydrogen bombs: One over Downtown Los Angeles, the other at the  Port of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco were also targets. With this news, deciding that his family’s survival must come first, Harry decides to continue to their secluded holiday spot in the mountains, abandoning Ann’s mother back in LA and weather the crisis from there. In the next few days we’re going to have the kind of togetherness we never dreamt of. The Baldwins stop to buy supplies at a small town off the main road, which has not yet been inundated by refugees from the city. Harry attempts to purchase tools and guns from hardware store owner Ed Johnson (Richard Garland) with a combination of $200 cash and a personal cheque for the remainder. However, Johnson believes only Los Angeles has been hit and the government remains intact, so he insists on following state law and withholding the guns for a 24 hours while Harry’s cheques are verified. Harry absconds with the weapons with Rick’s help but he tells Johnson that he will eventually return and pay for them in full. Back on the road, the family encounter three threatening young hoodlums, Carl (Richard Bakalyan), Mickey (Rex Holman) and Andy (Neil Nephew) but manage to fend them off. There must be some good people left. After a harrowing journey, the Baldwins reach their destination. Realising their trailer offers no protection from radioactive fallout, they take the contents of the trailer and find shelter in a cave where they settle in and wait for civil order to be restored. On their portable radio, they listen to war news and learn that what remains of the UN has declared this to be Year Zero … I guess there’s no such thing as complete isolation. Based on a screenplay by John Morton and Jay Simms from a story by Simms, this is tough stuff, particularly for its era and feels rather close to the knuckle in these dangerous days. It pulls no punches in the rapid descent to aggressive and brutal dissent. This realistic portrait of the aftermath of an atomic bomb is notable for its commitment to the idea that society will immediately fragment and the term ‘civilisation’ figures largely. Director and star Milland as pragmatic Harry ruefully admits, I looked for the worst in others and I found it in myself. His relationship with wife Ann (an underused Hagen – initially!) fractures when he takes charge in a radical way and we can only presume Avalon was cast as his son due to his fan base, an attractive factor for producers American International Pictures who had him tour the US when it went out across the states after making its money back in LA. Mitchel is attacked horrifically by the violent hoodlums whose situation is finally avenged but in the doing another young woman is discovered and it is Rick’s idea to rescue her, not his father’s. It’s an unusual role for Milland and he’s the better for it, a wannabe warrior whose instincts are correct but sometime his judgment is lacking. Intelligent people don’t just turn their back on the rest of the world, Ann reasons. As much as Harry wants to protect his family he ultimately realises his limitations but there is humour here too. Nothing like eating under an open sky, even if it is radioactive, muses Rick. The use of sex as a weapon in what is essentially civil war has a grim outcome for this close knit family. And when mom Ann finally takes action in a story that deprives her of input or consequence for the first two-thirds of the story, it’s decisive. This isn’t exactly optimistic about mankind and save for a few obvious studio shots Milland the director marshals the action well. A striking, serious and atmospheric work, filled with foreboding – and guns. Our country is still full of thieving, murdering patriots

Hide and Seek (1964)

Very clever the Russians, aren’t they. Cambridge University. Astrophysics professor David Garrett (Ian Carmichael) is working on tracking Russian rocket launches. He meets up with an old mentor and friend, Professor Frank Melnicker (George Pravda) who is playing multiple games of chess at a display of simultaneous play at a local temperance hall. Garrett is confused by the apparently secretive way that one player, Paul Richter (Kieron Morre) transfers the knight chess piece to Melnicker. When Melnicker notices two individuals enter the hall he is distracted and excuses himself for the lunch break. Garrett offers to drive Melnicker to his hotel. There are two men (James Houlihand and Leslie Crawford) waiting for Melnicker outside. When Garrett intimates that since they are in England that Melnicker could find safety, Melnicker cryptically tells Garrett that he should recall his seventh chess move. Garrett’s driver (Judy Parfitt) informs him that Major McPherson (Edward Chapman) wishes to meet with him. The Major tells Garrett that he must stop socialising with Melnicker since he is a known East German communist. Garrett arrives at the Ministry of Defence for a meeting, and while in the bathroom a box of chess pieces is dropped off to him that his driver believes he mistakenly left in the car. In fact, it was left by Melnicker. It contains the knight chess piece and a money belt containing a large amount of cash. Garrett takes the chess piece and money belt with him and leaves the building to return to the hall where the chess demonstration was happening. When he arrives at the hall he finds the display being torn down, with the demonstration cancelled due to Melnicker not returning after lunch. Garrett remembers the moves Melnicker had made and comes up with king’s square four. When he says this to a cabby, the man suggests they drive to King’s Square, an address in Chelsea, Garrett rings the doorbell and a young woman named Maggie (Janet Munro) calls to him from the second floor. She is apparently expecting him and throws down keys so he can let himself in. Others arrive, – there for a wedding reception. Garrett is starting to wonder if he’s in the right place, when he sees Maggie talking to Richter and finds a room upstairs with a chessboard that is missing the knight piece he has in his pocket. Garrett talks with Maggie and finds out she does know of Melnicker. Maggie then says she has to leave and Garrett leaves alone after copying down Maggie’s phone number. Outside Garrett realises two men are following him. A running chase happens, with Garrett escaping by hiding in a children’s sandbox in Royal Chelsea Gardens which is packed with nannies and their charges. He phones Maggie and says he must meet up with her so he can return the money to Melnicker. Maggie tells Garrett to meet her at the train station at Watford, where she convinces him to board the train with her. On the train, Garrett continues to ask Maggie where Melnicker is and where they are travelling to but they’re going through Grantham. Maggie seems to be avoiding committing to anything and Garrett resigns himself to continuing on the train for the time being. Sometime later Maggie goes out into the corridor to smoke a cigarette and notices two men she identifies as secret police that they must avoid. They are chased around in the train until Maggie pulls the emergency stop cord and she and Garrett jump off the train. After a series of mishaps they are picked up by a bargeman called Wilkins (Hugh Griffith) who’s travelling with a menagerie, escaping potential nuclear disaster to what he calls his Magical Island … I think the game would have turned out quite differently if you had realised the importance of my seventh move. A Cold War picaresque, you say? We have just the thing! This jaunty jape-filled English travelogue is replete with Noah’s Ark (on a barge), a pixie-like love interest who is just this short of manic dream girl, a scientist who can’t swim but manages to rig a bomb in a boat and sexier-than-thou Curt Jurgens posing political equivocations in a series of chess moves but manages to get himself checkmated. Carmichael is of course an unlikely romantic hero but in his early Sixties customary comic-satiric mode he’s quite the dashing Hannay-style wrong man protagonist in a film that owes probably as much to Hitchcock and Buchan as the source novel by Harold Greene, adapted for the screen by Robert Foshko and David Stone. When our (eventually) romantic couple goes walkabout and winds up being picked up by Wilkins on a barge which transpires is filled with pairs of animals and 136 bottles of Jamaican rum it’s a highly diverting interlude filled with references to Shakespeare as this former teacher bemoans the colleague who advised in case of nuclear armageddon, cover your head with a brown paper bag. Garrett is inclined to agree with his colleague. Rather amusingly, there’s a graphic of the H-bomb behind this prepper declaring Annihilation Imminent. After a spell hitchhiking and meeting their nemesis Richter which winds up in a literal cliffhanger and apparent death, things can only conclude by meeting the main man, Hubert Marek (Jurgens), at a fortress-like hostelry where mind games matter as much as chess before Garrett uses his own little grey cells after being confronted Poirot-like by every player in the story. Then he goes all Tintin (L’Ile Noire) and figures things out. It’s an ingenious plot that might have been a bit better handled but the constant trickery, chess moves, the toilet and sex references, the theatrical quotes and the sheer chutzpah of the twist are all to be cherished in a film that has a deceptive tone all its own. This is billed as (producer) Hal E. Chester’s Hide and Seek which is a bit of a cheek even in these days of possessory credits. Beautifully shot in black and white by Gilbert Taylor, this is directed by Cy Endfield and was made before Zulu but released months after that fabled film. This probably wasn’t his wheelhouse but he makes a pretty good fist of a tongue in cheek Cold War movie that is as far from Bond as we could imagine even if starts off with a stonking rocket launch. What is all this horseplay?

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Aka WW84. Nothing good is born from lies. And greatness is not what you think. As a young girl, immortal Amazon demi-goddess and princess Diana (Lily Aspell) competes in an athletic competition on Themyscira Island against older Amazons. She falls from her horse, misses a stage, and is disqualified after trying to take a shortcut. Diana’s mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and her aunt Antiope (Robin Wright) who is general of the Amazon army lecture her on the importance of truth. In 1984 adult Diana (Gal Gadot) works as a senior anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. She specialises in the culture of ancient Mediterranean civilisations and studies languages for fun. She continues to fight crime as Wonder Woman, albeit while trying to maintain some anonymity, rescuing people from a botched jewellery heist in a local mall. Diana meets new co-worker, gemologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) an insecure woman who idolises Diana and tries to befriend her. Aspiring businessman and charismatic TV huckster Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) visits the museum to try to acquire a mysterious Dreamstone which grants wishes to anyone who touches it. It is one of the artifacts found as part of the black market the jewellery store engages in and both of the women unwittingly use it for their own desires: Diana wants to be reunited with her dead WW1 pilot lover Steve Trevor (Chris Pine); while Barbara wants to be like Diana. She gets a makeover at a local boutique and Lord turns up at a Smithsonian gala and manipulates her in order to retrieve the stone. Once it’s in his possession he wishes to become its embodiment and gains its power to grant wishes, while also able to take whatever he desires from others: he’s been selling shares in oil without striking it yet and in a matter of days becomes a powerful and influential global figure leaving chaos and destruction in his wake. Barbara, Diana and Steve try to investigate the Dreamstone’s power further, and discover it was created by the God of Treachery and Mischief; the stone grants a user their wish but takes their most cherished possession in return, and the only way to reverse the condition is by renouncing their wish, or destroying the stone itself. Steve realises that his existence comes at the cost of Diana’s power. Both Diana and Barbara are unwilling to renounce their wishes, and try to figure out another solution. Maxwell, upon learning from the U.S. President (Stuart Milligan) of a satellite broadcast system that can transmit signals globally, decides to use it to communicate to the entire world, offering to grant their wishes. Barbara/Cheetah joins forces with Maxwell to prevent Diana from harming him. Steve convinces Diana to let him go and renounce her wish so that she can regain her strength and save the world. She returns home and dons the armour of the legendary Amazon warrior Asteria, then heads to the broadcast station and battles Barbara, who has made another wish with Maxwell to become an apex predator, transforming her into a cheetah-woman. After defeating Barbara, Diana confronts Maxwell and uses her Lasso of Truth to communicate with the world … Does everybody parachute now? What a great welcome this film deserves: a charming, heartfelt feminist superhero sequel with a message of peace, love and understanding – but not before the world comes close to annihilation. Adapted from William Moulton Marston’s DC Comics character with a screenplay by director Patty Jenkins & Geoff Johns & Dave Callaham, this starts out very well but tellingly goes straight from a prehistoric setpiece into an Eighties mall sequence and the first half hour is fantastic. Then … there’s character development when the klutzy Barbara arrives and her transformation to Cheetah takes its sweet time while odious businessman Lord is also introduced with his own backstory. The wheels don’t come off, exactly. The scenes are fractionally overlong and the two villain stories don’t mesh precisely with excursions into politics (the Middle East and a bit of an anti-Irish scene in London) which then escalates when Lord introduces himself to the US President (Reagan himself though he’s unnamed) at the height of the Star Wars policy (and we don’t mean sci fi movies). The winged one then learns the beauty of flight from her reincarnated boyfriend; while Barbara becomes more feline and vicious, an apex predator as she puts it. And Lord gets greedy while alienating his little son. So there are three somewhat diverging narrative threads. This is a structural flaw in an otherwise rather wonderful story. An exhilarating pair of back to back introductory setpieces followed by a Superman tribute that is exceedingly pleasant but doesn’t capitalise on all the characters’ considerable potential, this is a half hour too long (like all superhero outings) with scenes that need to be cut and political commentary that doesn’t sit quite right. Some of the jokes about the Eighties (in Pine’s scenes) get a little lost (directing or editing issues?) but the costuming is on the money and given that Diana lives in the Watergate Complex it’s a little surprising more wasn’t made of this or that it wasn’t set a decade earlier. Otherwise DC is nicely established in terms of geography and obviously it’s plundered for story. There are jokes that land rather well, like the Ponzi scheme; and when Steve gets into a modern aeroplane and Diana suddenly remembers that radar exists. In effect, this is a movie about the conflict in using your powers – there is a time and a place and it’s not always appropriate to get what you want because there are consequences and making a choice implies potentially terrible consequences and sometimes loss of life. It also engages with rape culture, sexism and the dangers of TV, taking down cheap salesmen and televangelists. Witty, moralistic and humane this has everything you want in a superhero movie and it looks beautiful courtesy of cinematographer Matthew Jensen and production designer Aline Bonetto. There’s a neat coda in the end credits. And how nice is it that the late great Dawn Steel’s daughter Rebecca Steel Roven is a producer alongside her father Charles Roven? You go Gal! You’ve always had everything while people like me have had nothing. Well now it’s my turn. Get used to it

John le Carre 19th October 1931 – 12th December 2020

The death has taken place of David Cornwell, otherwise known as John le Carre, the man who was in the British security service and then took to writing novels that enlightened the world about the Cold War and the machinations of spying. One of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, he was a superb communicator about the conditions of the world. His work has inspired film and television adaptations and frequently shone a light on the murky side of realpolitik and state-sponsored surveillance and violence. His most celebrated character, George Smiley, has been incarnated and reincarnated for big and small screen alike, a prism into the changing political landscape and the puppet masters behind it. We are the wiser for having been able to partake of his knowledge, his conscience and his elegant writing. Rest in peace.

Little Nikita (1988)

I was crossing into the west before you could spell bolshevik. Jeffrey Nicolas Grant (River Phoenix) is a cocky hyperactive teen living in a suburb of San Diego with his parents Richard (Richard Jenkins) and Elisabeth (Caroline Kava) who run a garden centre. Ambitious and keen to fly, Jeff has applied for entry to the Air Force Academy. During a routine background check on Jeff, FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Sidney Poitier) finds contradictory information on his parents, who have adopted identities of people dead a hundred years, making him suspect that all is not as it should be especially given the present whereabouts of a Soviet agent Konstantin Karpov (Richard Bradford) on the trail of a rogue agent Scuba (Richard Lynch) apparently killing off all the Soviet sleepers in the US. Further investigations reveal that the Grants may be sleeper agents too. Unable to arrest them as they have not done anything illegal, Roy continues his investigation, moves into the house across the street from the Grant family, and worms his way into Jeff’s confidence, eventually confronting Jeff with his suspicions and seeking his cooperation to learn more about his parents. Jeff is soon forced to accept the facts and discovers that his real name is Nikita. Meanwhile Karpov is moving closer to home and Scuba is heading straight for the Grants … Straight As. Tells his friends he gets Cs. A coming of age tale with a difference. Written by Bo Goldman and John Hill the intriguing premise is let down somewhat by the uneven directing from actor Richard Benjamin and the conclusion. Phoenix impresses as the brash teen who isn’t remotely what he thinks he is while Jenkins and Kava perfectly capture the fear implied by the big reveal. It all ends predictably enough with respect between Poitier and Bradford winning out over the presumed quarry. For Phoenix fans this is of course the perfect companion piece to the comparable but superior Running On Empty, released 6 months later, another story about a teenager on the cusp of adulthood whose parents’ politics are dangerously problematic. Shot by the legendary Laszlo Kovacs with an occasionally discordant score from Marvin Hamlisch, there’s a fabulous sequence of the Sleeping Beauty ballet choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan. You’re not my father. You’re not even my friend

The Teckman Mystery (1954)

Why all the mystery about him? Novelist Philip Chance (John Justin) meets a beautiful woman named Helen (Margaret Leighton) on a flight from France to London just when it’s been announced he’s researching a biography on a pilot Martin Teckman (Michael Medwin) who died during the test flight of a new plane. He’s her brother. As Chance uncovers more about the test flight, people connected with the case begin to die: the engineer Garvin (George Coulouris) who used to work with Martin; and when Chance fails to fly to West Berlin for a high-paying magazine job calculated to divert his attentions,  he has a third meeting with the mysterious magazine publisher Reisz (Meier Tzelniker) but the man is dead on Chance’s arrival.  Scotland Yard inspectors (Roland Culver and Duncan Lamont) are on the case, uncovering Martin’s secret marriage to Ruth Wade (Jane Wenham) who might have persuaded him to join a conspiracy. Then the supposedly dead Martin makes contact with Chance … We don’t want anything political – no sir. From a story by Francis (Paul Temple) Durbridge and a screenplay he co-wrote with James Mathews, this is a nifty thriller cogitating on matters of family, loyalty and patriotism in the middle of the Cold War – not that our handsome but dim hero puts any of that together, always one step behind. Leighton is excellent as the potentially duplicitous femme fatale designer and Tzelniker has the juicy kind of role a bigger budget would have had Peter Lorre play. It all concludes at the Tower of London in a production which makes terrific use of its smog-free locations – practically all of which are shot in broad daylight. Justin was himself a test pilot during WW2 and appeared in The Sound Barrier! Directed by Wendy Toye. You’re asking me to kill you

 

 

 

Passport to China (1960)

Aka Visit to Canton. The city lives on whispers – all of spies. Former US pilot Don Benton (Richard Basehart) is running a profitable tour company out of Hong Kong when he is persuaded to perform a dangerous undercover mission following a plane crash in Formosa involving his good friend Jimmy (Burt Kwouk). He travels to Canton to rescue lovely American Lola Sanchez (Lila Gastoni) but following some dealings with casino operator Ivano Kong (Eric Pohlmann) she asks him to transport refugees out of Red China … I’ve never been so scared in my life. Suave Basehart puts his genial persona to good work in this unusual entry from Hammer – because it’s so conventional even as Cold War thrillers go. The screenplay by Gordon Wellesley has some nice quips and action and it’s quite a surprise to see Athene Seyler playing Mao Tai Tai, grandmother to Kwouk, not to mention Bernard Cribbins as a junior wheeler dealer type.  The sophomore outing from director Michael Carreras, such a huge figure at the studio, has some exotic backdrops to enhance a studio-bound production. A wise man never arrives too early – or too late

The Russia House (1990)

You live in a free society; you have no choice. Publisher Bartholomew ‘Barley’ Scott Blair (Sean Connery) is caught in a conspiracy when he receives manuscripts from a Russian scientist, Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer) claiming that the Russian nuclear programme is a sham. Ned (James Fox) from British intelligence and Russell (Roy Scheider) and Brady (John Mahoney) of the CIA have the book intercepted en route to Blair at his Lisbon home because they consider it to contain crucial information.  They recruit him to investigate its editor, Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer) a divorced mother of two. As Blair goes to Moscow and learns the origin of the manuscript and discovers Russian military secrets, he falls in love with Katya and fights to protect her family even as he realises that Katya may have another admirer. The two intelligence agencies have a shopping list of questions to check that Dante is for real but Ned begins to wonder where Barley’s loyalties really lie … How the fuck do you peddle an arms race when the only asshole you’ve got to race against is yourself? Adapted from John le Carre’s novel by Tom Stoppard, this elegant look at Russian-British relations at the tail end of the Glasnost Eighties may have been overtaken by real events but it’s nonetheless a wittily constructed espionage story with one of Connery’s best performances as the sax playing book publisher whose heart is stolen by Pfeiffer, an atypically stunning editor with Pfeiffer turning in a really nuanced performance as the semi-tragic Russian. Only the second major American film to be shot in the Soviet Union, it’s picturesque indeed, using so many beautiful settings in Leningrad and Moscow and enhanced by the fantastic cast among whom film director Ken Russell makes a splash as Walter, the Brit spy, in his inimitable fashion; while the tension between the British and American agencies supplies much of the suspense. A superior entertainment directed by Fred Schepisi. If there is to be a hope we must all betray our country, we have to save each other because all victims are equal and none is more equal than others. It’s everyone’s duty to start the avalanche