Victor/Victoria (1982)

 

Only a moron gives advice to a horse’s arse.  Paris, 1934. Coloratura soprano Victoria Grant (Dame Julie Andrews) fails in her audition at a nightclub where she’s seen by gay cabaret singer Carole “Toddy” Todd (Robert Preston) who has been fired from his gig at a second-rate Chez Lui. When Victoria punches out Toddy’s bisexual hustler lover Richard (Malcolm Jamieson), Toddy comes up with what he considers to be an inspired idea: to pass Victoria off as a female impersonator. Victoria. Her male alter ego could be the toast of Paris and make a lot of money as gay Polish Count Victor Grazinski. It all goes well until Chicago gangster King Marchan (James Garner) turns up with his girlfriend Norma Cassady (Lesley Ann Warren) and falls for Victor, convinced he is a she … A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. A breathtaking blend of musical comedy, gender confusion, romance, slapstick, cross-dressing and cabaret, this loose remake of 1933 German screwball film Viktor Und Viktoria  written by Hans Hoemburg and director Reinhold Schuenzel is a showcase for all writer/director Blake Edwards’ talents as well as providing wife Julie Andrews’ greatest role. Preston is a joy as her outrageous gay mentor in a warm, funny, generous performance and Garner has great fun subtly unravelling when his suspicions are proved happily correct in a scenario that takes pleasure in mocking his macho stance. Warren is also excellent as his Thirties moll with bodyguard Alex Karras surprising everyone by coming out.  And for Edwards fans there’s the prospect of Graham Stark providing his customary support in a cast alight with provocation and tolerance proving sexual orientation really is not the issue as long as you’re getting some. What great characters! With songs by Leslie Bricusse and composer Henry Mancini there’s a lot to love in an astonishingly constructed entertainment. Never mind twist endings, the entire narrative is twisted in every possible direction. A modern classic. People believe what they see

The Mummy (1999)

Death is only the beginning. Egypt, between the wars. When an English archaeologist’s son Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah) finds the Bracelet of Anubis, it locks onto his wrist. His linguist and librarian sister Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) understands its significance and decides they must dig at the ancient city of Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, but needs the help of an American treasure hunter Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) who’s serving in the French Foreign Legion and whom she rescues from hanging. They have competition from another team of explorers led by Dr Allen Chamberlain (Jonathan Hyde). They accidentally unleash a curse and awaken the mummy of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) an evil Egyptian high priest who was buried alive and needs the bracelet to defeat the Scorpion King and he begins to wreck havoc as he searches for the reincarnation of his long-lost love, the Pharaoh’s mistress Anck (Patricia Velasquez) … What have we done? Non-stop high jinks drive this comic horror remake from writer/director Stephen Sommers who has the advantage of a location shoot and extraordinary special effects to inject new life into this resurrection of the Universal  classic. Gorgeous klutz Weisz, her dim brother Hannah and handsome heroic hunk Fraser are an ideal trio, the locals are suitably treacherous and the villain is appropriately horrifying:  he’s juicy, to begin with and then gets his body back. Quite the bloodcurdling transformation. The tone of swashbuckling hokum is sustained throughout, with Fraser giving his best Errol Flynn impression. It looks stupendous courtesy of Adrian Biddle’s cinematography and Allan Cameron’s production design, all the more impressive when you consider the shoot was dogged by sand storms, dehydration and snakes, making it a triumph of endurance for all concerned. Lloyd Fonvielle & Kevin Jarre’s story is based on the original screenplay by John L. Balderston, Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer. Daffy, dazzling fun enlivened by Jerry Goldsmith’s classical score. No harm can ever come from reading a book

FernGully: The Last RainForest (1992)

Our world was much larger then. The forest went on forever. Curious little Crysta (Samantha Mathis) is a fairy who lives in FernGully, a rainforest in eastern Australia and has never seen a human before:  fairies believe the race was made extinct by a malevolent entity called Hexxus (Tim Curry) whom mother-figure fairy Magi (Grace Zabriskie) imprisoned in a tree. But when a logging company comes near the rain forest, Crysta sees that humans do exist and accidentally shrinks one of them to fairy-size: a boy named Zak (Jonathan Ward). Zak sees the damage that the company does and helps Crysta to stop not only them, but Hexxus, back to feed off pollution after Tony (Robert Pastorelli) and Ralph (Geoffrey Blake) cut down the tree where he has spent so long. Zak falls for Crysta, whose friend Pips (Christian Slater) loves her but when the rivers and trees show signs of being poisoned Zak admits why he’s there and Hexxus starts to destroy the forest so it’s time for action and even sacrifice ... There are worlds within worlds. Adapted from Diana Young’s book by Jim Cox, this family-friendly musical has a great ecological message couched in action that while not completely jeopardy-free has a swagger and moves along quickly while also being sweet and funny. There’s a lot of humour provided in his first animation voicing role by Robin Williams, improvising his lines as Batty Koda. Perhaps the supernatural aspects de-claw the radical message at its heart, but that is certainly in the right place and there are some good songs by composer Alan Silvestri with Jimmy Webb, Thomas Dolby and Elton John. That’s Cheech and Chong as beetle brothers Stump and Root! Directed by Bill Kroyer.  All the magic of creation lies within a single tiny seed

Highly Dangerous (1950)

It may not interest you technically but for a large section of humanity it could be a matter of life and death. The British government asks entomologist Frances Gray (Margaret Lockwood) to go behind the Iron Curtain and examine insects that might be used as carriers to spread disease in germ warfare. Grudgingly accepting the job, Frances goes undercover as Frances Conway, a tour director looking for potential holiday destinations and meets tough American reporter Bill Casey (Dane Clark) in the process. Unfortunately, the chief of police Razinski (Marius Goring) quickly sees through Frances’ flimsy cover. Then her contact is murdered and his body left in her hotel room and Frances is taken into custody, prompting Casey to come to her aid… A few months ago some people were shot accidentally in the woods. It was terrible. A vehicle for Lockwood after a period doing theatre, Eric Ambler loosely adapted one of his novels (The Dark Frontier), changed the gender of the protagonist and it’s a spirited adventure. The Ruritanian setting hints at the comedy style, returning Lockwood to a kind of thriller along the lines of The Lady Vanishes – enhanced by the casting of Naunton Wayne as Frances’ recruiter, Hedgerley, Wilfrid Hyde White (after The Third Man) and Goring’s performance as a comedy police chief, enlivening the playfulness. Like The Third Man, Ambler’s script makes a meta issue of storytelling, there’s a torture scene in a TV studio-like location and there are references to soap opera and a character called Frank Conway, the star of a radio serial that Frances listens to for her little nephew and for whom she is re-named. Nicely done with a good mix of intrigue, suspense and fun led by Clark as the inadvertent hero of the situation. Directed by Roy (Ward) Baker. You just can’t do things like that in real life.

Mysterious Island (1961)

Why don’t we turn this island into a democracy and elect a leader? During the Civil War, a group of soldiers led by Captain Cyrus Harding (Michael Craig) escape a Confederate prison siege using an observation balloon, and due to a storm that lasts four days and pitches them off course, are forced to land on a strange island that is full of tropical jungles and volcanoes. They are confronted by giant mutated animals, find two Englishwomen, Lady Mary Fairchild (Joan Greenwood) and her niece Elena (Beth Rogan) washed up from a shipwreck, fight marauding pirates and are then confronted by the infamous Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom) whose submarine the Nautilus was feared lost off Mexico eight years previously. They need to escape and that volcano is rumbling but will Nemo assist them using his engineering genius? … We lived like primitive men using primitive implements. The followup to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea doesn’t start particularly promisingly – the escape from the Confederate prison isn’t very well handled by director Cy Endfield, not the first name you’d come up with for an effects-laden juvenile fantasy flick taken from Jules Verne’s two-part novel. However when the action kicks in on the island and the Ray Harryhausen effects interplay with the threat of a volcano about to blow and those sheer painted backdrops hint at disaster, well, it finally gets interesting. Everything is punctuated by regular run-ins with those giant creatures who are the result of Nemo’s horticultural physics experiments. The laughs come courtesy of war journo Gideon Spilitt (Gary Merrill) who has an ongoing run of food jokes: I wonder how long this will take to cook in a slow oven, he deadpans about the giant chicken they believe they’ve killed; turns out Nemo shot it. The cast is excellent although Craig doesn’t set the screen alight and it’s great to see Lom doing his Nemo:  he’s a misunderstood guy who just wants to stop the causes of war. Rogan and Michael Callan get to do a bit of romancing before being sealed into a giant honeycomb; while Percy Herbert and Dan Jackson bring up the rear. The whole shebang is carried by Bernard Herrmann’s sonorous score, booming from the screen as surely as those explosives. From a screenplay by Crane Wilbur, Daniel B. Ullman and John Prebble. Shot at Shepperton Studios and on location in Catalonia. A man could write an inspired novel in a place like this

Kinsey (2004)

Are my answers typical? Professor Alfred ‘Prok’ Kinsey (Liam Neeson) is interviewed about his sexual history by one of his graduate students Clyde Martin (Sarsgaard) and reflects on how he became the author of famous studies of modern Americans’ sexual behaviour. He grew up in a repressed household headed by Alfred Seguine Kinsey (John Lithgow) and disobeyed him to study biology and became a lecturer, marrying his student Mac (Laura Linney). After completing his study of gall wasp behaviour and addressing the sexual issues within his own marriage his advice is sought by students and he begins teaching a sex ed course that raises questions he cannot answer.  He devises a questionnaire to find out what passes for normal activity among his students but soon realises that 100 completed documents are not remotely sufficient.  He commences a countrywide research project in which he taxonomises sexual behaviour inside and outside average marriages and subgroups like homosexuals at a time when all these things are illegal in several states … The forces of chastity are massing again. Writer/director Bill Condon’s biography of the famed sex researcher whose reports rocked midcentury America is careful, detailed and filled with good performances (appropriately). Both Linney and Neeson contribute complete characters and their respective realisation that Clyde wants to seduce Prok are extremely touching and when you consider it’s established in a phonecall it’s all the more affecting. Their marriage is a profile of the parameters of this study – until things become more extreme and the grad students carrying out the research offer their own services to be recorded. The issue of agreed infidelity and extra-marital sex is just one of the common behavioural tics dealt with here and deftly personalised. There are of course some limits to even these sexologists’ tolerance – and Pomeroy (Chris O’Donnell) storms out when a particularly noxious individual (William Sadler) decides to regale him and Kinsey about his incest, bestiality and more, including incidents with pre-adolescent children. There are some abusive perversions that are just too tough to take. Word about the nature of the team’s methodologies gets out and their funding is cut by the Rockefeller Foundation, an issue that is particularly effective as a narrative device because it reminds us of the real-world difficulties in securing funding and the consequences that not funding this particular study might have had – its far-reaching insights into human behaviour in a highly censorious era was groundbreaking.  Oliver Platt is particularly good as the genial Herman Wells, President of the University at Bloomington whose support of the controversial work is so important. The confrontational nature of the film doesn’t descend to pornography chiefly because the humanity of the protagonists – and that of the study’s participants – is carefully graphed against the social norms. The topper to Alfred Senior’s difficult relationship with his son is very sad and crystallises the reasons behind his bullying, a habit Prock has inherited and replays with his own son Bruce (Luke MacFarlane) over mealtimes. At this point we don’t need any lectures on nature versus nurture or gene theory. The coda is a wonderful exchange between Kinsey and his latest interview subject played by Lynn Redgrave. It’s a marvellous conclusion to a remarkable film that deals with biology, family and the life force. A very satisfying experience. Where love is concerned we’re all in the dark

Under the Volcano (1984)

He on whose heart the dust of Mexico has lain, will find no peace in any other land. A day in the life of a man in 1938. Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney) is an alcoholic former British consul living in Quauhnahuac, a small Mexican town. As the local Day of the Dead celebration gets underway, Geoffrey drowns himself in the bottle, having cut himself off from his family, friends and job. When he goes missing, his ex-wife, actress Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset), who has returned from the US in the hopes of resurrecting their relationship, convinces his half-brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews) to conduct a last-ditch search for him, hoping that Hugh might be able to rescue her self-destructing husband… How, unless you drink as I do, can you hope to understand the beauty of an old Indian woman playing dominoes with a chicken? Finney and Bisset are reunited a decade after Murder on the Orient Express. This is a very different experience. Adapted by Guy Gallo (his only screenplay to date) from Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 masterpiece, this late John Huston film (and he rejected over 20 versions of the screenplay over the decades) is a powerhouse film: brilliantly interpreted by everyone concerned. Reunited with his director following Annie, Finney offers one of his great performances, committed and charismatic, as the dissolute man who nonetheless has a core of humanity. Huston said of it, I think it’s the finest performance I have ever witnessed, let alone directed.  Huston had lived in Puerto Vallarta for a period and shot The Night of the Iguana there as well of course as having made one of his other films in Mexico – maybe his best ever, full stop – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Clearly the country brought something special to his aesthetic – and vice versa. There is nothing more real than magic. Here the various elements churn and dissect a life, symbolised in the wonderful titles sequence. It’s marvellous to see Katy Jurado as Senora Gregoria, a key supporting character in this drama that constantly threatens us with being on the brink of something – death? Truth? War? It was originally written by Lowry in 1936 but underwent many rewrites. It’s so special it’s the subject of two documentaries including the Oscar-nominated Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry, in which Lowry’s words are read by Richard Burton, who Huston had hoped to cast as the lead right after they shot Iguana. Quite, quite the film then, with a legacy all its own. Hell is my natural habitat

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

If you two are finished comparing sizes… we need to figure a way to track down the lab.  Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is grappling with the consequences of his choices as both a superhero and a father to Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) following his X-Men activities in X-Men:  Civil War, monitored constantly by the police. Approached by Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), he dons the Ant-Man suit again to fight alongside the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) with assistance from Luis (Michael Peña) a former cellmate and member of the X-Con Security crew. The urgent mission leads to secret revelations from the past in the search for Pym’s wife and Hope’s mother Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is lost in the quantum realm since 1987, shrinking to sub-atomic levels.  The dynamic duo finds itself in an epic battle against a powerful new enemy Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) while low-level crim Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) wants Pym’s technology for the black market….I still think about the night your mother and I had to leave you. A whip smart, lean and fun outing that is anchored by the charming performance of Rudd, a consistently underrated actor, who contributes to the screenplay by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari. He is matched by Lilly as the other half of his double act and also by Douglas, whose flashback scene with Pfeiffer shows what special effects can achieve (an improvement on the real old thing!). Laurence Fishburne turns up as Pym’s estranged former colleague Bill Foster despite having played Perry White elsewhere in the (now 20-strong) Marvel series. The dual father-daughter stories root the narrative in something close to human emotion, while the Fantastic Voyage element works nicely and the overall tone is light and optimistic – proving that size always matters.  And how nice is it to see a female villain?! Stan Lee shows up when his car is shrunk. Directed by Peyton Reed. I’m gonna call you ANT-onio Banderas!

The Mummy (2017)

People don’t realize that London is a giant graveland. A modern city built on centuries of death. Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) is a soldier of fortune who plunders ancient sites for timeless artifacts and sells them to the highest bidder. When Nick and his partner Chris (Jake Johnson) come under attack in the Middle East, the ensuing battle accidentally unearths Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) a betrayed Egyptian princess who was entombed under the desert for thousands of years. As her powers constantly evolve Morton has tostop the resurrected monster as she embarks on a furious rampage through the streets of London …  Hell hath no fury like an ancient princess scorned! This remake of the old Universe horror movie owes little to its origins (more’s the pity) and much to the contemporary taste for drained grayscale mindless action visuals (whose taste is the question – I want colour! Colour! Colour!) Beyond that there’s a bit of fun. Russell Crowe is the antagonist/expert Dr Henry Jekyll (get the name… this Dark Universe is crossing the protagonists and characters from film to film, literally making a monster mash) joining another heroic franchise (if it comes to pass); and Cruise is paired with another in a long line of terrifically feisty females, Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) this being a welcome staple character in his M: I series – not to mention a screeching harpie villainess who wants to get with him and rule the world. There ain’t a lot of chemistry here but it moves fairly quickly through some shonky sequences so you don’t care too much. This is not entirely the mess some reviews would have you believe but then I’m a sucker for all things archaeological and groovy destructive women!  The universe I’m concerned with is the previous remake  – the wonderful 1999 iteration starring Brendan Fraser which was tonally perfect (the other two, not so much) but like the subject matter here that’s a thing of the past. Screenplay by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman from a story by Jon Spaihts, director Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet.

Elephant Walk (1954)

She is not one of us and her ways are cold and strange. When John Wiley (Peter Finch), an affluent plantation owner, brings his new wife, Ruth (Elizabeth Taylor), to his estate in the jungles of British Ceylon,  she finds she is the only white woman.  She’s overjoyed by the exotic location and luxurious accommodations until it becomes clear her new husband is more interested in palling around with his friends than spending time with her. She is intimidated by houseman Apphuamy (Abraham Sofaer) who is still being bossed by the late Old Man Wiley a rotten individual who has deliberately blocked the elephants from their ancient water source (hence the name). Left alone on the plantation, Ruth strikes up a friendship with American overseer Dick Carver (Dana Andrews), and it isn’t long before a love triangle develops… An old-school colonial romance, the novel by Robert Standish (aka Digby George Gerahty) was adapted by Hollywood vet John Lee Mahin who knew this kind of material from Red Dust two decades earlier. While revelling in the lush jungle landscape and the forbidden desires of Taylor the real story is the haunting of Wiley by his late father whose ghost dominates his life and the plantation. Taylor of course replaced Vivien Leigh who had a nervous breakdown yet whose figure remains in long shots that weren’t repeated and her lover Finch remained in the picture in a role originally intended for Leigh’s husband Laurence Olivier. Andrews might not be our idea of a hot extra-marital affair but in a situation like that … It looks rather beautiful courtesy of the marvellous work by cinematographer Loyal Griggs but you might find yourself wanting to see more of the elephants than Taylor such is their pulchritudinous affect. You choose. Directed by William Dieterle.