Death Becomes Her (1992)

We’ve all heard his tall tales about the living dead in Beverly Hills. 1978. Narcissistic fading actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) performs in a Broadway musical. She invites long-time frenemy, mousy aspiring novelist Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), backstage along with Helen’s fiancé, famed plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis). Infatuated with Madeline, Ernest breaks off his engagement with Helen to marry Madeline. Seven years later, a lonely, obese, depressed and destitute Helen is committed to a psychiatric hospital where she obsesses over taking revenge against Madeline. Another seven years later, Madeline and Ernest live an opulent life in Beverly Hills but they are miserable: Madeline is depressed about her age and withering beauty and Ernest, now an alcoholic, has been reduced to working as a reconstructive mortician. After receiving an invitation to a party celebrating Helen’s new book, Forever Young, Madeline rushes for spa beauty treatments. When she mentions she will pay any price, the spa owner gives her the business card of Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini) a mysterious, wealthy socialite who specialises in rejuvenation, which Madeline dismisses. Madeline and Ernest attend Helen’s party and discover that Helen is now slim, glamorous and youthful despite being 50. Jealous of Helen’s appearance, Madeline observes as Helen tells Ernest that she blames Madeline for his career decline. Madeline later visits her young lover but discovers he is with a woman of his own age. Despondent, Madeline drives to Lisle’s mansion. The youthful Lisle claims to be 71 and offers Madeline a potion that promises eternal life and youth. Madeline hesitates but then buys and drinks the potion which reverses her age, restoring her beauty before her eyes. Lisle warns Madeline that she must disappear from the public eye after ten years, to avoid suspicion of her immortality and to treat her body well. Meanwhile, Helen seduces Ernest and convinces him to kill Madeline. When Madeline returns home, she belittles Ernest who snaps and pushes her down the stairs, breaking her neck. Believing her to be dead, Ernest phones Helen for advice but drops the phone in shock when he sees Madeline approach him with her head twisted backward. Ernest takes Madeline to the hospital where the doctor’s (Sydney Pollack, uncredited) analysis shows she is clinically dead. Ernest finds Madeline in a body bag and considers her reanimation to be a miracle. He uses his skills to repair her body at home. Helen arrives and, after overhearing her and Ernest discussing their murder plot, Madeline shoots Helen with a shotgun. The blast leaves a large hole in Helen’s torso but she remains alive – she also has taken Lisle’s potion. Helen and Madeline fight before apologising and reconciling. Depressed at the situation, Ernest prepares to leave, but Helen and Madeline convince him to first repair their bodies. Realising they will need regular maintenance, they scheme to have Ernest drink the potion to ensure his permanent availability. The pair knock out Ernest and bring him to Lisle, who offers him the potion in exchange for his surgical skills … You are in violation of every natural law that I know. You’re sitting there, you’re talking to me – but you’re dead! Eternal youth, cosmetology, the living dead, remarriage screwball, Gothic horror and mad science combine fruitfully in this satirical black comedy that takes swipes at everything within range – Hollywood, vanity, fame, narcissism, beauty, immortality and of course actresses, which leads to an interesting casting conundrum with two of the town’s most amazing fortysomethings as the leads. Hawn is a gorgeous and gifted comedienne but here she is the designated ugly duckling who blooms into a fabulous romantic novelist. Streep had actually played just such a character in She-Devil and essayed her BFF Carrie Fisher’s avatar in Postcards From the Edge a role which supposedly made this frosty technical performer more loveable, as the critics of the era might have it. Here she goes full Joan Crawford in a movie which asks the audience to see her as a legendary screen beauty but her singularity mitigates this proposal somewhat. (Un)naturally there has to be a quote from Bride of Frankenstein and Hawn is gifted It’s alive! It is of course Rossellini who astonishes in her semi-nude presentation, a luscious cross between Cleopatra and Louise Brooks. Now she really has a body to die for. This fact alone crystallises the point of the movie – the business’ attitude to its female cohort. That she’s escorted by Fabio places this in its time but luckily both Elvis and James Dean turn up at one of her gatherings which lands the premise about stars living forever. It’s nice to see Ian Ogilvy at hand as the master of ceremonies. With a combination of CGI (including skin texture) produced by Industrial Light and Magic, animatronics and blue screen, this is a triumph of special effects if not entirely of story despite Martin Donovan & David Koepp having a hand in the screenplay. The characters simply aren’t developed adequately and they feel like the object of a long joke that pitches actresses against each other and then forces them to finish out their days with their worst enemy – each other. The often hysterical lively fun occasionally feels like it has a hole in the middle, like Helen. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. You gave other people your youth and wasted your own

Z (1969)

He is alive. Greece, the 1960s. Doctor Gregorios Lambrakis (Yves Montand) leader of the opposition is injured during an anti-military/nuclear demonstration in an incident that causes his death. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth – their involvement with a right-wing organisation in a covert assassination. But they don’t control the hospital where Lambrakis is brought and the autopsy reveals the cause of death. Then tenacious Examining Magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is determined to not to let them get away with it despite every witness getting beaten up en route to his office … Always blame the Americans. Even if you’re wrong. Adapted from Vassilis Vassilikos’ 1966 novel by Greek-born director Costa-Gavras and Jorge Semprun (with uncredited work by blacklisted Ben Barzman), this political thriller gained its frisson and urgency from its lightly fictionalised portrayal of recent events in Greece which this more or less accurately depicts. Nowadays its style is commonplace but its skill in evoking the dangers of the official version and the suppression of free speech is more important than ever. Inspired by real-life events, including the ‘disappearing’ of opposition Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965, with a surgical reference to JFK, the beauty of the construction is in having Montand’s experiences including with wife Helene (Irene Papas) dominating the first half, while the second is about the steady work of investigation carried out by Trintignant, who winds up unmasking a conspiracy at the highest level. Beautifully shot by Raoul Coutard and scored by Mikis Theodorakis. Tough, taut, suspenseful filmmaking that is exciting and dreadful simultaneously, speaking truth to power about corruption, passionate engagement and the casual use of street thugs to commit murder for the state. There is even room for humour as Trintignant insists on treating the officers like anyone else when they are indicted and each one of them believes him to be a Communist when in fact his right wing credentials are impeccable. In real life the military junta came to power and banned the venerable Papas, who was a member of the Communist Party:  she wasn’t the only one of course but she survived to celebrate her 94th birthday on 3rd September last. Essential cinema. Why do the ideas we stand for incite such violence?

Ordinary Love (2019)

How do you say to someone, Don’t die? Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) Thompson are a happy, long-married couple who enjoy a quiet life until she discovers a mass in her breast and makes an appointment to see a doctor who confirms she has a lump. When it is removed along with many lymph nodes she then proceeds to have chemotherapy. Her recovery is difficult and painful and she befriends the terminally ill teacher Peter (David Wilmot) of her late daughter. Her hair falls out, her temper frays and she and Tom have a major argument when she is at a low point and taunt each other.  They have a nice night together and make love before her double mastectomy. After Peter’s death they prepare for Christmas and decide to invite Peter’s boyfriend to join them … Putting sick people together:  how is that going to make anybody feel better? Even a marriage of kindness and vulnerability can hit a rocky patch. Facing up to a cancer diagnosis can bring out the worst in anyone, even briefly. Asking tough questions of a doctor when it’s not your illness makes you the rude guy; likening your bystander role to that of the person being mutilated and burned in operating theatres and treatment rooms makes you intolerable. For a while. This is also a story about bereavement and a Sixties Modernist house empty of personal touches because a child died, we’re not sure when. Even the goldfish dies. Death is contagious, it seems. And in the midst of that atmosphere somehow a marriage of true friends carries on, through hospital appointments, surgeries, horrific medical solutions and the deaths of other people in the ward. Manville and Neeson are tremendous in a subtle piece of writing by Owen McCafferty. Directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn and filmed in Northern Ireland, with a score co-written by producer David Holmes.  A triumph of intimacy, in the best sense. You’d rather be worse than better

Bad Education (2019)

You were always the guy in the suits. Long Island, New York, 2002. Dr. Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) is the superintendent of Roslyn School District which oversees Roslyn High School. Frank, along with his assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) have overseen major improvements in the district, with Roslyn becoming the 4th ranked public school in the country under their watch. This in turn stimulates the local economy, reaping rewards for school board head and real estate broker Bob Spicer (Ray Romano). Frank is beloved by students and parents alike, and sought after by women; Frank claims to have lost his wife several years ago, but is in fact gay, living with Tom Tuggiero (Stephen Spinella) in NYC. While attending a conference in Las Vegas, Frank begins an affair with former student Kyle Contreras (Rafeal Casal) who has given up his dream of writing sci fi for waiting tables and dancing. While writing an article for the Roslyn school paper about an $8m sky bridge the school is planning to construct, student reporter Rachel Bhargava (Geraldine Viswanathan) begins to discover discrepancies in the district’s finances. Unbeknownst to anyone at the school, Frank and Pam are co-conspirators in a massive embezzlement scheme that has cost millions of taxpayer dollars and her steady research leads all the way to the top and when Frank gives up Pam there will be hell to pay ... We come in here at the crack of dawn because we’re good people.  We want you to have a good life. Adapted from Bad Superintendent, a story by Robert Kolker in New York magazine by Mike Makowsky, who was a middle school student in that school district when Tassone was arrested for grand larceny.  Viswanathan isn’t a particularly interesting performer but she does what all journalists have done since watching All the President’s Men – she follows the money. It’s dogged old-school reporting stuff, looking at purchase orders, not finding receipts and then questioning everyone concerned.  It’s fun to see those moments with her doubtful student paper editor Nick Fleischman (Alex Wolff) doing a junior Ben Bradlee. The moment one hour in where she finds the so-called offices of the school’s pamphlet producer and realises it’s Tassone’s plush apartment where he’s co-habiting with a man is brilliantly done – capped when Tassone arrives and sees her desperate to leave the building. Jackman is superb as a charismatic man with many secrets, utilising his ability to psychoanalyse everyone around him to get the better of them since he seems to care so much about them. For the longest time we don’t even know the extent of his involvement as information is drip fed slowly through the narrative. His vanity is reflected in the scenes with him attending to his cosmetic routine, culminating in surgery. Jackman finds ways to plumb the breadth of the character and elicit empathy, stealing our hearts as easily as expensing first class flights to London with his boyfriend and deflecting come-ons from women in the parents’ association book club. Janney is superb in a chewy role – able to talk her way out of trouble, trying to buy her children’s affections even when her son is a total loser and ultimately choosing the path of revenge. Erring more on the dramatic rather than the comedic side of genre, this gives a rare insight into white collar crime – the quotidian corruption that afflicts cosy cartels running public bodies leading to those occasional stupefying headlines when you see something has gone bust yet all the admin people are living high on the hog while their workplaces are falling apart with damp. The sidebars about food intake, digestive issues, cosmetics, clothes, jewellery, pushy parenting and spoiling wrong ‘uns are well judged subplots amplifying the drudgery of the teaching environment and the desire to rise above the mere plebs. It’s wordy, it’s smart, it’s filled with people covering their asses and it’s called the ring of truth. Directed by Cory Finley. I am not the sociopath here

The Upturned Glass (1946)

The man who is prepared to pursue his own ethical convictions even to the point of murder. Prosperous British neurosurgeon Michael Joyce (James Mason) falls in love with the married mother Emma Wright (Rosamund John) of a girl Ann (Ann Stephens) he saves in an operation. They carry on an affair which she abruptly terminates. When Emma falls to her death from the bedroom window of her holiday home Michael notices at the inquest that her shrewish sister-in-law Kate Wright (Pamela Kellino) is guiding Ann’s answers and comes to realise she is implicated in the death of the woman he loved. He swears revenge and initiates a relationship with Kate who he discovers is deeply greedy but he feels compelled to talk about the case at one of his regular medical school lectures … A doctor dispenses death and healing with blind impartiality. Mason gets to unleash both sadistic and masochistic elements of performance in this wonderfully complex and brilliantly told melodrama of love and vanity, obsession, passion and revenge, a project he and his wife Kellino dreamed up for themselves (having started out as a chronicle of the Brontë family under the same title!). Kellino’s co-writer Jno P. Monaghan, an American serviceman, has a small role as an American soldier who encounters Mason stuck on the road in a car with Kellino’s body inside. It’s a glossily made noir with a truly inspired storytelling style – the framing story becomes something else:  a subtle and unwitting confession by a reliable narrator! Talk about fatalistic! – and it’s glossily shot. A disarming film with a really amazing philosophy unspooling behind the narrative, with Dr Farrell  (Brefni O’Rorke) there to provide the killer psychological blow after a redeeming surgery takes place. Kellino is a revelation – a nasty piece of work who elicits sympathy; while Stephens is the image of Irish actress Jessie Buckley which is a little disturbing in a 75-year old film because she too was a singer and made a classic recording of Teddy Bear’s Picnic. She would make another film with this director, Lawrence Huntington, The Franchise Affair. She died shockingly young, aged 35 in 1966. Produced by Mason with Betty Box and Sydney Box. Man doesn’t have any generous feelings – he only thinks he has. Selfishness, habit and hard cash – those are his real motives

The Girl With a Pistol (1968)

Aka La Ragazza con la Pistola. Her you should kill – not you! In a small village in Sicily, Assunta (Monica Vitti) is seduced by Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffré) after he kidnaps her thinking she’s her fat cousin and takes her to his remote country home. He plans to dishonour her and thereby win her hand in marriage. However she likes sex so much it frightens him and he runs away the day after they become lovers. According to the local traditions Assunta and her sisters are unable to marry unless someone in the family kills the offender and restores the family’s honour. She leaves for England where Vincenzo has fled. Assunta finds herself intimidated by the different culture, but transforms herself into a Swinging Sixties mod and resolutely travels to Edinburgh, Sheffield, Bath, and London in search of Vincenzo in order to kill him. She befriends rugby player John (Tony Booth) in Sheffield and tries to locate Vincenzo in Bath where hospital staff cover for him. After an accident, Assunta is hospitalised; she meets a cute and lovelorn failed suicide Frank Hogan (Corin Redgrave) who takes her blood donation and who advises her to forget about Vincenzo, and to devote herself to him. Dr Osborne (Stanley Baker) takes her to a gay pub and shows him Frank’s cheating ex – a man. She falls for divorced and soon she creates for herself a new and wonderful life in England but there’s still the matter of Vincenzo … The ones who cut their wrists always remember to bring their blood group. Directed by Mario Monicelli, a name not really remembered now but he was a masterful comedy auteur and this was nominated for an Academy Award. Vitti previously performed in his 1964 film High Infidelity and 1966’s Sex Quartet (aka The Queens). Luigi Magni and Rodolfo Sonego’s script capitalises on Vitti’s top comic talent and her glorious beauty:  we really don’t believe she’s a dowdy country girl, do we? Her transformation into a London fashionista is very amusing and her deadpan delivery really works. It’s nice to see some familiar British faces like Redgrave and Booth (with Johnny Briggs making a small splash) and it all looks like a terrific jaunt with good jokes about translation and kilts. And, she gets hers, just not in the way she planned. It’s an interesting companion piece to view alongside her other British film, Modesty Blaise and there’s plenty of nutty, good looking fun even if Vincenzo’s parting comments leave a sort of nasty aftertaste. My aim was not good!

State Secret (1950)

Aka The Great Manhunt. It’s very gratifying to think that a doctor can still perform a non-political operation. American doctor John Marlowe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr) is visiting England when he is deployed to Vosnia, a small middle European country where people speak Esperanto. He finds that he is there to operate on the country’s dictator who dies during brain surgery but is replaced by a look-alike. As one of the few who know, Marlowe is hunted by the country’s secret police who are intent on shooting to kill because the dictator’s death must be kept secret. Marlowe flees and seeks the help of music hall performer Lisa Robinson (Glynis Johns). They blackmail Balkan smuggler Karl Theodor (Herbert Lom) into helping them. Pursued across the country, they are on the point of escaping when Karl is shot and killed and Lisa is wounded. Marlowe could escape without her but remains. Government minister Colonel Galcon (Jack Hawkins) arranges a ‘shooting accident’ for Marlowe but as Marlowe walks to his fate, the false dictator’s speech is being broadcast on the radio. Shots are heard and Galcon confirms that the stand-in has been assassinated and realises that it may all be over for him … Have you changed your mind?/No, I’ve just lost it. Loosely adapted from a Roy Huggins novel by director Sidney Gilliat, this is a cracking thriller as you’d expect from one of the writing team (with producer Frank Launder) behind Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich It’s nicely shot by Robert (The Third Man) Krasker who has fun at the start with some point of view shots underscoring Fairbanks’ narration and Trento and the Dolomites make great locations although the locals weren’t too happy during production with post-war communist feelings at fever pitch. The suspense quotient is upped by a superior score from William Alwyn. The version of Esperanto here is made up of Latin and Slavic languages but the universal language is thrills and it has more of those when Johns joins the chase 45 minutes in and Lom cracks wise as the shyster because Fairbanks is a fairly flavourless lead. Every time I have a haircut I’ll be thinking of you

Bad For Each Other (1953)

I’ve got a chance at something better and I’m going to take it. After serving in the Korean War, Army colonel and doctor Tom Owen (Charlton Heston) returns home to Coalville, Pennsylvania, on leave where his mother (Mildred Dunnock) is mourning her other son Floyd’s death. Tom learns from wealthy mine owner Dan Reasonover (Ray Collins) that Floyd, a mine safety engineer killed in an explosion, had betrayed Dan’s trust by buying substandard equipment and taking kickbacks. Floyd was also in debt. Tom wants to pay Dan back, but Dan tells him to forget about the money. Dan’s daughter, the twice-divorced socialite Helen Curtis (Lizabeth Scott) meets Tom at a party and asks him for a date. She arranges for him to meet Dr. Homer Gleeson (Lester Matthews), who runs a fancy Pittsburgh clinic catering to wealthy women with imaginary health problems and he offers Tom a job. Tom hires nurse Joan Lasher (Dianne Foster, born Olga Helen Laruska!) an attractive and idealistic young woman who plans to become a doctor herself and is concerned at the way the practice is run. Dan warns him against marrying his daughter while her aunt (Marjorie Rambeau) cautions him once she finds out that Gleeson is a fraud having taken the credit for the lifesaving operation Tom performed. Tom discovers there’s an ethical price to pay for his compromises and finds himself envying Dr. Lester Scobee (Rhys Williams) who cares for the miners of Coalville and their families and then a disaster strikes underground … I sometimes remembered the hippocratic oath. A canny fusion of medical soap opera with film noir, with Scott terrific as the bad girl. Heston is fine as the conflicted doctor who initially chooses moving up in society until finally even he has to admit he’s being unethical. Smart writing about class from novelists Irving Wallace and Horace McCoy and smoothly managed by director Irving (Now, Voyager) Rapper. Gratitude is no substitute for what I want

Catch-22 (1970)

Help the bombardier. Captain John Yossarian (Alan Arkin) an American pilot stationed in the Mediterranean who flies bombing missions during World War II attempts to cope with the madness of armed conflict. Convinced that everyone is trying to murder him, he decides to try to become certified insane but that is merely proof that he’s fully competent. Surrounded by eccentric military officers, such as the opportunistic 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight), Yossarian has to resort to extreme measures to escape his dire and increasingly absurd situation... All great countries are destroyed, why not yours? Not being a fan of the rather repetitive and circular source novel aids one’s enjoyment of this adaptation by director Mike Nichols who was coasting on the stunning success of his first two movies (also adaptations), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, which was also adapted by Buck Henry.  The critical reception for this resisted adulation instead focusing on a flawed construction which really goes back to Joseph Heller’s book and does not conform to the rules of a combat picture as well as contracting the action and removing and substituting characters. But aside from the overall absurdity which is literally cut in an act of stunning violence which shears through one character in shocking fashion, there is dialogue of the machine gun variety which you’d expect from a services satire and there are good jokes about communication, following orders, profiteering and stealing parachutes to sell silk on the black market.  There are interesting visual and auditory ways of conveying Yossarian’s inner life – in the first scene we can’t hear him over the noise of the bombings, because his superiors are literally deaf to what he’s saying, a useful metaphor. The impressionistic approach of Henry’s adaptation is one used consistently, preparing the audience for the culmination of the action in a surreal episode worthy of Fellini. I like it a lot, certainly more than the recent TV adaptation and the cast are just incredible:  Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, Austin Pendleton, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen and Orson Welles among a large ensemble. Even novelist Philip Roth plays a doctor. It’s shot by David Watkin, edited by Sam O’Steen and the production is designed by Richard Sylbert. Where the hell’s my parachute?

All That Jazz (1979)

To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting.  When he is not planning for his upcoming Broadway stage musical or working on his Hollywood film, choreographer/director Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is popping pills and sleeping with a seemingly endless line of women including Kate Jagger (Ann Reinking). He has to deal with his ex-wife and collaborator Audrey (Leland Palmer) and daughter Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi) and survives with a daily routine which always commences to the accompaniment of Vivaldi but must include drugs and sex to keep going.  The physical and mental stress begins to take a toll on the ragged hedonistic perfectionist. He has angina leading to hospitalisating and open heart surgery during which all the shows and episodes of his life appear to him in dreams led by Angelique (Jessica Lange) and his stuttering existence is a neverending chorus line on repeat, meanwhile the financiers are wondering if they should bet on his death …  You could be the first show on Broadway to make a profit… without ever really opening! With Fosse/Verdon upcoming on the small screen, it’s time to sit back and relish the great Fosse’s achievements as choreographer and filmmaker once again.  This was based on a period in his life when he was editing the Dustin Hoffman starrer Lenny and staging Chicago. At the same time. Considering that this is about life as performance, it’s crucial that Fosse’s avatar be as intense and rivetting as he was – and Scheider utterly inhabits the role in an enervating interpretation. It’s incredible that Reinking had to audition to effectively play herself, given that she was one of Fosse’s women at the time. Lange is wonderful as the death angel and the literal intercutting of Joe’s open heart surgery with episodes of his life clearly alludes to Fellini’s similarly autobiographical 8 1/2.  And why not. And it’s a musical! With simply stunning production numbers whose editing makes your nerves jangle with joy. This is how dance is meant to be cut!  Co-written by Fosse with producer Robert Alan Arthur, it’s ironic that it was the 56-year old Arthur who died following production and he was posthumously nominated for a slew of awards. I have no idea how, but somehow, somewhere, probably at a festival many years after its initial release, I had the opportunity to see this on the big screen and boy was I lucky. Film as fantasy? It was never more like life:  vicious, funny, dark, nightmarish and doomed.  A fabulously hallucinatory cinematic experience. Jazz hands, flicks and moonwalks? Absolutely! Assume the position.  It’s showtime, folks!