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

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

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

It is real. It’s just deceiving to the eye, that’s all. On 30 September 1975 to commemorate James Dean’s death, the former members of The Disciples of James Dean gather in the small Texas town at the Woolworth’s store where twenty years earlier they formed a fan club after Giant was filming in the nearby town of Marfa. Juanita (Sudie Bond) prepares for another day on the job and calls for Jimmy Dean by name. One of the Disciples, Sissy (Cher) comes in late after helping out at the truck stop.  Another two Disciples, Stella Mae (Kathy Bates) and Edna Louise (Marta Heflin) make their way to the five-and-dime, bringing a red jacket that the club used to wear. Mona (Sandy Dennis) joins them and explains that the bus she was riding on broke down and had to be repaired. She’s worried about her son Jimmy Dean whom she has always said was fathered by the star. A window shopper, Joanne (Karen Black) driving in a Porsche sports car has arrived in McCarthy thanks to an old highway sign promoting Dean’s son at the store and there’s something about her that makes Mona think she knows her but can’t quite figure it out …Unlike apparently all of you, I have undergone a change. Ed Graczyk adapted his own play for director Robert Altman who spent the Eighties directing stage plays for the screen following the grandiose flop Popeye and he applies his usually imaginative technique to this single-set production. He uses a mottled old mirror as a means to transport the action to twenty years earlier, a device which not only brings the underlying tenets of the story to life but also functions as an uncanny reflection and a means of transmitting the distorting tricks of memory. Dean’s death (which features in a broadcast announcement in a flashback) creates a bereavement trigger, making the frenemies confront their inadequacies, deceptions and delusions. The performances are startling and true:  Dennis (recreating her stage role) is her usual nervy self and plays the mother of James Dean’s son to the hilt, the (expected) revelation about the fathering stunningly revealed;  Black is a joy as the person nobody can quite recognise, with more than one shocking story to tell; Cher has to confront her own demons. Bates is a ball of energy and Bond makes for a very sceptical proprietor. Worth seeing for the lively, powerhouse performances by a wonderful collection of actresses at the top of their game, treated wonderfully well by a sympathetic director. The first of five Altman films to have Canadian cinematographer Pierre Mignot as DoP. Catch the documentary Children of Giant if you can as it makes for a great companion piece. We can make them change. Jimmy Dean has shown us how

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991)

I’ve had a very rough thirty-seven years and I need a break. Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate) has just graduated high school and her plans to join friends on vacation in Europe are ruined when her divorced mom (Concetta Tomei) decides to take off for two months to Australia leaving an elderly woman Mrs Sturak (Eda Reiss Merin) in charge of Sue Ellen and her twin Kenny (Keith Coogan) a stoner and slacker, 14-year old romantic Zach (Christopher Pettiet), 13-year old tomboy Melissa (Danielle Harris) and 11-year old TV addict Walter (Robert Hy Gorman). However Mrs Sturak dies of shock at the state of Kenny’s bedroom and after disposing of her at the local mortuary they realise she has taken the money for the summer. Sue Ellen draws the short straw and has to find a job. After failing miserably at a fast food place where she hits it off with co-worker Bryan (Josh Charles) she fakes her age and her way into an admin position at General Apparel West where designer boss Rose Lindsey (Joanna Cassidy) thinks she’s found an heir apparent.  While waiting for a paycheque she has to use petty cash to make the grocery bills and conceal her identity from office rival Carolyn (Jayne Brook) because she’s Bryan’s sister. Then the company runs into trouble and Sue Ellen’s unique (and recent) insights into teen fashion might just save the day … Did he just finish reading Dianetics or something? In which a grisly black comedy premise mutates into a tale of an accidental teenage career woman and her stoner brother who turns house husband chef, this is a feast in more ways than one:  the Nineties fashion, the role reversal whereby the kids assume adult roles more convincingly than the grown ups, and there’s a hilarious scene when Kenny chastises Sue Ellen for acting like an ungrateful spouse, home late after he’s spent the day cooking using Julia Child’s TV show to tutor him. Cassidy is outstanding as Sue Ellen’s boss who regresses to a candy-guzzling kid when her job is on the line, and an attractive cast of kids give spirited performances but it’s Applegate all the way. The imaginative use by David Newman of the Psycho score to see off Mrs Sturak is highly amusing. Written by Neil Landau and Tara Ison and directed by Stephen Herek. A relic of its era, in the best possible sense. Babysitters suck

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

Time Bandits (1981)

Why didn’t you leave me where I was happy? Bored young suburban boy and history buff Kevin (Craig Warnock) can scarcely believe it when six dwarfs led by Randall (David Rappoport) jump out of his wardrobe one night. Former employees of the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), they’ve stolen a map charting all of the holes in the fabric of time and are using it to steal treasures from different historical eras. They kidnap Kevin and variously drop in on Napoleon (Ian Holm) who employs them as his new generals, the Middle Ages where they encounter a rather dim Robin Hood (John Cleese) and back to ancient times where King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) kills a Centaur before the Supreme Being catches up with them after a rather difficult trip on the Titanic and a voyage with an ogre just as they have to deal with the Evil Genius (David Warner) in the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness … The time of legends? There’s no such thing! A little boy called Kevin, a gang of renegade dwarves, a very chill – even chipper! -Supreme Being, an egotistical Evil Genius and a Napoleon totally consumed with height: Alexander the Great? One inch shorter than me! Charlemagne? Squat little chap! Hilarious sendup of historical epics with a sneaky undertow of Oedipus – King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) wants to adopt Kevin and then makes a rather brilliant reappearance in the ‘burbs in the nick of time. Why do we have to have Evil?/I think it’s something to do with free will. An utterly beguiling piece of fantasy that educates as well as entertains, from the brains of two Monty Pythons, Michael Palin (who co-stars as romantic Vincent wooing Shelley Duvall) and director Terry Gilliam. This is for every child who wanted to escape their dreary parents:  dreams can come true. Practically fizzing with invention. I thought you were international criminals!

Genesis P-Orridge 22nd February 1950 – 14th March 2020

Farewell to provocateur, artist, composer and all-round avant garde industrial pioneer Genesis P-Orridge, late of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV.

3 Generations (2017)

I’m a boy with tits. I can appropriate whatever I want. Hoping to get support from his single artist mother Maggie (Naomi Watts) and Lesbian jazz club proprietor grandmother Dolly (Susan Sarandon) (and her live-in girlfriend Frances, played by Linda Emond), 16-year old Ray born Ramona (Elle Fanning) prepares to transition from female to male. When Maggie dithers over signing her permission due to Ray’s age, she then finds out that Ray’s father Craig’s (Tate Donovan) signature is also required but he hasn’t been in the picture for a very long time. An encounter between the teen’s parents turns into a confrontation with Ray finally taking matters into her own hands …  Just because you’re the parent doesn’t mean you get to decide when we talk about this.  In an era characterised by intense identity politics perhaps there is none so troubling a topic as the idea that children can choose their own gender despite their given genitalia. This lays out the argument inside this unusual family setup – cool Lesbian grandmother plus her girlfriend, an unmarried mother, an androgynous daughter living as a boy. Then it takes a melodramatic skew that leads one to the unexpected conclusion that this situation is the result of precisely this boho unconventionality – who’s the daddy? A narrative turn that seems to upend the entire raison d’être avoiding the very premise it proposes to address. However it’s well played – very well, particularly by Sarandon who gets the lion’s share of biting dialogue; and Fanning in a very difficult and paradoxically limited role – by a seasoned cast grappling with a very millennial issue. Ultimately a film that suggests that in a world of parents who cannot make up their minds, tell the truth or act responsibly, it falls upon the unfortunate confused kids to make adult decisions, promising a reckoning in the years to come following this contemporary experiment in biology. Written by Nikole Beckwith with director Gaby Dellal. I get to stop feeling like someone else

Zelig (1983)

All the themes of our culture were there. In this fictional documentary set during the 1920s and 1930s a non-descript American called Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) achieves notoriety for his ability to look, act and sound like anyone he meets. He ingratiates himself with everyone from the lower echelons of society to F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Pope becoming famous as The Changing Man. Even Hollywood comes calling and makes a film about him. His chameleon-like skill catches the eye of Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow), a psychiatrist who thinks Zelig is in need of serious cognitive analysis as someone who goes to extremes to make himself fit into society. Their relationship moves in a direction that’s not often covered in medical textbooks as she hypnotises him … I’m certain it’s something he picked up from eating Mexican food. A formally and technically brilliant and absolutely hilarious spoof documentary that integrates real and manipulated newsreel footage with faked home movies, a film within a film, period photographs of the leads and interviews with contemporary personalities, real and imagined, from Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow to ‘Eudora Fletcher’ (Ellen Garrison) in the present day. Even Bruno Bettelheim shows up to declare the subject the ultimate conformist. The sequence on the anti-semitism Zelig experiences as a child (his parents sided with the anti-semites, narrator Patrick Horgan informs us mournfully) is laugh out loud funny. Of course it has a payoff – in Nazi Germany. The editing alone is breathtaking, there is not a false moment and the music is superlative, forming a backdrop and a commentary as well as instilling in the audience a realistic feel for the time in which this is set. There are moments where you will not believe your eyes as Allen transforms into everyone he meets – regardless of race, shape or colour. An original and funny mockumentary that’s actually about the world we live in, an extreme response to childhood bullying and what we do to make ourselves fit in and where that could lead. You just told the truth and it sold papers – it never happened before!

 

A Christmas Carol (1938)

Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine. On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge (Reginald Owen) is visited by the spirit of his former partner, Jacob Marley (Leo G. Carroll). The deceased partner was as mean and miserly as Scrooge is now and he warns him to change his ways or face the consequences in the afterlife… Humbug, I tell you. Humbug! Charles Dickens’ sentimental novella gets a fine adaptation by Hugo Butler and a delicate, sprightly production by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and director Edwin Marin. Everything is beautifully staged and nicely played by a very apposite cast. There is a deal of magic with the ghosts (Lionel Brabham, Ann Rutherford and D’Arcy Corrigan) and some excellent scene-setting and romance between Fred (Barry MacKay) and Bess (Lynne Carver). The atmosphere is well sustained and it’s a very enjoyable rendition that tugs at the heartstrings even if the 1951 British adaptation is a personal favourite. The countdown begins… It’s the only time when human beings open their hearts freely