Age of Consent (1969)

Aka Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent. I think we’ve found a haven. We’ve got it made. Australian artist Bradley Morahan (James Mason) has become jaded by his life in New York City. His agent persuades him to rejuvenate his interest in painting and he takes off to an island on the Great Barrier Reef where he becomes acquainted with a young woman Cora (Helen Mirren) who sells fish to a local shop and whom he asks to model for him … You crazy virgin! Come back! It’s meant to be a compliment, you stupid bitch! The great Michael Powell’s next-to-last film, this is a breezy account of an artist, gamely played by Mason, who co-produced. The pair had wanted to work together for a long time before this came Powell’s way – he had even wanted to shoot a version of The Tempest with Mason and Mia Farrow. Another island story would have to do. Lindsay’s 1937 book was semi-autobiographical and while this is hardly a penetrating account of the production of great art it’s very attractive and nicely dramatised (with some significant changes to sybarite Lindsay’s material) by Peter Yeldham. Mason is typically convincing and empathetic but it’s Mirren in her first major role that you watch – this is a great showcase for her with its balance of comedy and drama including an excess of eroticism that proved too much for the censors back in the day.  Jack MacGowran has a lovely supporting role as Brad’s old flighty friend Nat and Neva Carr Glyn is larger than life as Cora’s coarse old gran, perhaps tilting the otherwise relaxed atmosphere somewhat. Mason has a lively sex scene with Clarissa Kaye whom he later married. This is a refreshing take on falling in love again with your art and your muse and nature and it’s beautifully shot by Hannes Staudinger with stunning underwater work by Ron and Valerie Taylor. Lindsay’s life would be revisited in Sirens.  Godfrey the dog is a delight. People misjudge her because her mother was the town bike. Cora’s different

Magnolia (1999)

What am I doing? I’m quietly judging you.  In the San Fernando Valley, a dying father, Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), his guilty young wife Linda (Julianne Moore), his male nurse Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), his famous estranged son the sex guru Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), Jim, a police officer (John C. Reilly) in love, Stanley Spector (Neil Flynn) a boy genius on TV’s What Do Kids Know? who’s bullied by his thug father (Michael Bowen), an ex-boy genius Quiz Kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) whose parents robbed his winnings in 1968, the dying game show host Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall) and his estranged cokehead daughter Claudia (Melora Walters), each becomes part of a dazzling multiplicity of plots, but one story, over the course of one day when it’s raining cats and dogs… Respect the cock! Paul Thomas Anderson was inspired to create this mosaic of intersecting lives by the songs of Aimee Mann and they dominate the audio to the point (occasionally) of overwhelming the dialogue. It commences with a documentary prologue of chance and coincidence, a kind of Ripley’s about life and gosh-darns that hints at an epic concluding event (and boy does it deliver). At its core this is an analysis of the father-son relationship and the trade-offs that are made throughout life until finally … you just gotta let it go. There is a raft of immense performances in a story which has an epic quality but thrives on the specificity of character in a plot revolving around child abuse in various iterations. We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us.  The double helix structure finds natural convergence at the point where the protagonists each sings a line from one of Mann’s songs, It’s Not Going to Stop (Until You Wise Up):  this astonishing directing flourish starts with Claudia which is logical because here is a narrative about being generous to damaged people and as we find out, she’s the most damaged of all. Hence her gargantuan cocaine consumption. It’s about what fathers do to their children and sometimes their spouses too. And how mothers can raise children back up, even from their own terrible depths. In the aftermath of Burt Reynolds’ death it’s appropriate to consider that the role for Robards was conceived for Reynolds:  his troubled relationship with Anderson and his dislike of the content of Boogie Nights (for which he received the Golden Globe) led him to decline the part. Which is ironic because he had joked that he would wind up playing Tom Cruise’s father one day (and Cruise is absolutely tremendous here as the fraudulent motivational leader, a lying Tony Robbins for sexist brutes). Anderson saw in Reynolds a kind of darkness and humanity to add to his array of multiply-talented actors – most of the people here were the repertory from Boogie Nights and it’s such a conscious re-assembling of types it still surprises. It’s a shame because when one looks at the totality of Reynolds’ career it’s clear that his loyalty to friends led him to make oddly destructive choices:  while Redford had Pollack and De Niro had Scorsese, Reynolds had … Hal Needham, the stuntman living in his pool house for 11 years. If he had spent those few necessary days on this set and well away from Thomas Jane, who knows what way his career might have swerved in the Noughties?! Goodness knows what made him turn down Taxi Driver, a film that has sway here. Perhaps Anderson is paying tribute to Reynolds by giving Claudia the debilitating condition that he got on City Heat when a stunt went wrong – the excruciating jaw injury TMJ that crippled him for over a decade. This may have started as a series of overlapping urban legends, an operatic disquisition on the damage that men do; it concludes with some tweaked endings and a Biblical purging of shame. How apt that it should be Claudia to break the fourth wall. With a smile. But it did happen

The Duellists (1977)

Keep away from him. Keep ahead of him. Put your trust in Napoleon.  Armand d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) and Gabriel Féraud (Harvey Keitel) are French soldiers under Napoleon in 1800. A trivial quarrel between the two men becomes a lifelong grudge, and as war rages on across the continent, the officers repeatedly challenge one another to violent sword and pistol duels:  in Augsburg and later in Russia, when they are isolated in the frozen wastes united against their mutual enemy. After 15 years, they have both distinguished themselves through military service and become generals and d’Hubert is happily married to Adèle (Cristina Raines); however, the rivals’ mutual hatred never ceases, even when the initial cause is long forgotten and now a final opportunity to kill each other arises …  Gerald Vaughan-Hughes adapted the Joseph Conrad story The Duel and it became Ridley Scott’s directing debut, more acclaimed for how it looks than how it moves and clearly in debt to Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon even if it lacks that masterpiece’s disguised intensity. Frank Tidy’s luscious cinematography, shrouded now in fog, now in sunrise, is of the sumptuous variety and frankly once I saw the geese in the first frames, this had me at Hello. A terrific ensemble of British supporting actors rounds out the cast and for some critics this highlights the deficits in the characterising and performing of the leads – but in a sense, it merely underlines how separate they are from the crowd in their mutual obsession. They are angry, driven, and, in Féraud’s case, essentially and unfathomably vicious in his quest for superiority. As their colleagues freeze to death into statuesque stalactites in that disastrous excursion to Russia, there’s a brilliant moment when d’Hubert turns to Féraud and declares, Pistols next! Diana Quick makes a wonderful impression as Laura, a camp follower, Tom Conti is wry as Dr. Jacquin and Robert Stephens is lively as General Teillard. Alun Armstrong, Maurice Colbourne, Meg Wynn Owen (Hazel Bellamy in TV’s Upstairs, Downstairs) and Jenny Runacre all make the most of their roles. This is an old-fashioned tale of a gentleman’s honour, a concept now so outmoded and mystifying as to be from another dimension entirely. The ending is perfect. Narrated by Stacy Keach.  The duellist demands satisfaction. Honour, for him, is an appetite. This story is about an eccentric kind of hunger