The films I watched in 2010

1. Robots. D: Chris Wedge. Flashy toon about anthropogenic robots. Impressive animation & Tom Waits on the sound track. [DVD] No star
   
2. Ice Age 2. D: Carlos Saldhana. Pointless sequel lacking the charm, wit and emotional resonance of the original. [DVD] No star
3. The Frog Princess. D: John Musker, Ron Clements. Cheery tale with jazzy soundtrack, but slowed down by too many songs. [Cinema] *
4. High Sierra. D: Raoul Walsh. Bogie's an ex-con with one last job to pull. Crime boiler spoiled by melodrama. Ida Lupino great as the moll. [DVD] No star
   
5. Zatoichi: the festival of fire. D: Kenji Misumi. Passable samurai film about blind swordsman masseur. Film 21 (!) in epic series. [DVD] No star
6. ...
   

Film review: Elephant

Elephant (2003). Directed by Gus Van Sant.

I did not like Elephant. I appreciate the thoughtful reviews above, and I'm glad they were able to discern something in the film that I missed, but the fact remains, elephantine and unignoreable, that the film left me cold, and slightly repelled.

I suppose you might say, of course you should feel repelled, it is a film about a high school shooting. It isn't meant to be nice. I get that. My revulsion wasmn't aimed at the events on screen, however, but at the presentation of events by the film makers.

The film is technically superb. Van Sant has declined over the years. The talent that made Mala Noche two decades ago now produces - the verbs have been chosen judiciously - work such as Good Will Hunting and Finding Forester. Mid-brow crap. Good, polished, mid-brow crap, but lets not pretend it's anything more than it is. That said he's always been technically brilliant, no matter how banal thepiece he's attached his name to - beautifully images, adroit camera work and framing, excellent editing and that elusive quality of texture where a simple shot seems to convey some quality of depth or meaning beyond the disparate elements. And, at his best, he's always managed to make his films seem effortless, no matter how technically adept they are. Mala Noche has the feel of the Greatest Home Movie Ever Made, when in fact it is a densely wrought piece played by a group of excellent actors.

Elephant, for what it is worth, has many of these qualities. The cast in particular are superb. It is noteable that some of the characters they have to play veer towards caricature - the clique obnoxious Bratzb ,itching between their bouts of bulimia, the awkward, shy girl with her own body insecurities and, inevitably, spectacles. The film is at its best when it is avoiding such trite characterisations, when we aren't given obvious pointers to what sort of character we're being presented with.

It is also beautifully presented. Van Sant knows how to create a mood with lighting, how to create an effect by moving his camera. But herein lies my issue with Elephant. The narrative has been coyly constructed so events unfold from several different perspectives and in a nonlinear fashion. Obviously, you have to do something along those lines when you're dealing with a limited time frame and you have several different characters all in different places - I get that. But this film goes beyond that necessary parralell construction, and makes its irregular timeframe a feature of the film itself. So the opening minutes are - in digetic terms - only moments away from the final scenes, but seperated by an hour or so of screen time. We see the killers, armed and intent, entering the school, then the timeframe shifts to earleir in the day, as we follow different characters as they move towards the bloody denoument.

Why is this a problem? Because it seems to me to be a deliberate, exploitative attempt to creat etension, to engage the audience emotionally, and focusing their conciosuness on their own nervous anticipation of events - will it be now? Now? NOW?! We might all know that the elephant is in the livingroom, but the preoccupation is not what to do about it, but when it is going to go rogue.

I must add, the much-commented-on non-linear construction isn't anything to get excited about. It is, essentially, a gimmick, the sort of thing you might expect from a premium episode of a TV show like ER. The startlement that greets a film that tweeks with its time frame says more about how low our expectations of cinema in general have become,trather than than the excellence of the film causing the stir.

It is also interesting that time-manipulation is a favoured tool when the film-makers are addressing some unpleasant topic - Gaspar Noe's Irreversible being the obvious exemple of this. Perhaps they feel that twisting the timeframe gives their work a particular gravitas, or intellectual weight. It isn't just a nasty little story about something unpleasant happening, it's a challenging and provocative piece of cinema. I'm not buying it. Elephant isn't as petulantly attention seeking as Irreversible - Noe is a director to whom the term enfant terrible may be applied more literally than is usual - but it is arid.

So, in the end, the film becomes exploitative. It becomes about who dies and who lives, about our mounting trepidation as we move into the final twenty minutes - for Van Sant rejects the only intellectual justification for his muddled time frame and has the climactic blood bath at the end, rather than dropping it on us - or, even more courageously - not including the shooting sequence at all.

Elephant is not the great film that needed to be made about this subject. It is a pity that it may, for all the doubts expressed above, be the best treatment the subject of high school violence receives for a long time.

*

Film Review: Knafayim shvurot / Broken Wings

Knafayim shvurot (2002) D: Nir Bergman. Starring Orly Silbersatz Bana, Maya Maron.

This is a generic, but likeable family drama set in Israel. It describes how a woman and her children struggle to cope with the death of their husband and father. Each caught up in their own grief, they fail to recognise each other's pain until a second, jarring crisis jolts them out of their self-absorption.

The film's main strengths are its setting and its cast. It is set in Haifa in Israel, and this makes it slightly more interesting than it might have been if it were set in Anytown, USA. The use of authentic urban Israeli locations gives the film a realistic feel, and makes it simultaneously drab and exotic, which is helpful as the action and conflicts brought out in the script are fairly predictable. The script eschews any mention of the region's wider tensions, which is probably a good thing - if the lost father had been killed in a terrorist atrocity,or kidnapped by Hamas, it would have given the film a ridiculously melodramatic edge. As it is, his death is touchingly futile, underscoring the (mercifully) lightly stated message that people's true value should be appreciated when they are around.

The small cast are very good, particularly Orly Silbersatz Bana as the mother, Dafna, still reeling from the loss of her husband and so locked up in her own grief that she can't help or support her children, preferring to escape to the numbing urgency of her job as a nurse. Maya Maron is also very good, though her role, as the elder daughter who's dreams and hopes are being crushed by the weight of responsibilities suddenly dumped upon her, is a bit too pat and cliched. Maron makes you believe in her character's grief and resentment, even if her budding career as a singer is not as convincing. Some likeable, non-cutsie child actors help as well.

The film's significant weakness has already been indicated - it is very generic. Tropes established early on are revisited at the end in time honoured fashion. The tensions, while given some bite by the cast, are predictably laid out, and the combination of Maya's nascent pop career with the crisis overwhelming the family is straight out of Scrpitwriting 101. But that's all bearable. What's more annoying is the too-quirky brother, Yair, who responds to his father's death by withdrawing into childish behaviour, cod-philosophy and wearing a gigantic mouse. I suspect there is meant to be some significance intended here, but if so, I'm refusing to see it as it would spoil what was otherwise a likeable enough little film.

*

DVD review -King Lear (1999)

King Lear (1999). D: Brian Blessed. Starring Brian Blessed, Phillipa Peake.

This was very disappointing.

King Lear is a play that I am not overly familiar with, unlike MacBeth and Hamlet. Once you become intimate with a Shakespeare play you have preconceptions about how it should be done - settings, what the characters look like, staging delivery of key lines. Once that happens, any stage of film version - or even audio adaptation - becomes a gauging of how well your ideal is met, or how effectively it is challenged. For what it is worth, I'm inclined to be kind towards anyone brave enough to take on Shakespeare, particulary the 'big' plays. I liked Mike Mundell's Hamlet inspite of its flaws, for example.

I have read the King Lear, studied it in a half-hearted manner and watched the poor BBC adaptation starring Laurence Olivier, but that's it. I was able to watch this film version with out too many pre-conceptions about how it should be done.

I did have some hopes for this adaptation. Blessed is credited as the director of the sparky witchy scences in the otherwise lamentable MacBeth from the same production company. And, of course, he's an actor, whereas Jason Connery - bluntly - isn't. And Lear is one of the roles you can imagine suiting Blessed's 'gift' for ... um ... hyperbole.

But it all goes wrong, and quickly too.

First of all, technically, the film is inept. I don't know how much of the visual problems can be blamed on the transfer to DVD but I suspect they originate more in the original recording. The production looks like it was captured on someone's mobile phone. It is murky and digitised. Blessed also proves inept at calling the shots, with clumsy cutting and distracting camera movements or editing. A cinema verite or nouvelle vague Shakespeare might be an interesting project, but here it looks suspiciously like incompetence.

The setting and staging of the film is also disappointing. While we do get treated to shots of a castle exterior, most of the action takes place indoors and on a small scale, which emphsises the cheapness of the production. It's hard to understand why Lear gets so worked up about his daughters's cutting of his retinue, since he only seems to have about 10 knights with him at the best of times. There are irritating, unconnected druidic ceremonies cut into the action, which don't add anything and seem incongruous, as they don't match the rest of the play, which looks more dark age than pre-Roman. In fairness to Blessed, it should be noted that he does pull off one very good piece of staging, when Poor Tom makes his entrance during the storm.

All that would be irrelevant if the performances were good. You don't watch Shakespeare for the pretty pictures, you listen for the words. But Blessed plays Lear with uncharacteristic - and inappropriate - restraint. The failing king lacks majesty and authority, coming across as a grumpy hobbit. Hildegrade Niel's performance as the Fool is more annoying than amusing. The daughters are also weak - Phillipa Peake is unmemorable as Cordelia, which is fatal given she is off stage for the majority of the film.

There are, however, some good performances in amongst it all - Mark Burgess does well as Edgar, after a shakey start, and Jason Riddington is good as his vicious half-brother, Edmund. Robbert Whelan is a decent Gloucester. Best of all though, is Graham McTavish as Albany. His performance as Banquo was one of the few interesting things in MacBeth, and here he makes the most of a bigger role.

But it always comes back to Blessed, as Lear and as director. The nadir of the play is probably the storm sequence, when Blessed should let rip, both in acting and in staging, but instesad delivers his speeches on the heath in red tinged close up, drily. We don't get to see much storm at all, and the over all effect is, again, more of dypesia rather than catastrophe. It's very strange that we've spent decades wishing Blessed would tone it down, only to have him do it at the worst possible time.

It does get better as it progresses - though it must be noted, cruelly, that it is at its best when Blessed is not on screen - and there's a power to the action that it is very hard for even a bad production to utterly destroy. But I don't think, however, that's enough to recommend this version.

NO STAR

The films I watched in 2009

In reverse order:

• Ice Age. D: Carlos Saldhana. Good fun animated creature caper. Production above average in all areas. **
• Sea of Love. D: Harold Becker. Pacino is great in an otherwise conventional murder mystery. Nice atmosphere. [DVD] *
• Cheri. D: Stephen Frears. Banal costume drama that eschews the groteque humour that might have saved it. [Cinema] No stars
• Tyson. D: James Toback. Superficial account of the boxer's rise and fall, about as incisive as a sofa. [Cinema] No stars
• Infernal Affairs. D: Wai Keung Lau, Alan Mak. Moderately impressive drama about moles in the police and triad. [Cinema] **
• Wild Side. D: Don Cammel. Camp caper about crime and lesbianism. Director's cut - Cammel killed himself after studio re-cut. [DVD] *
• The Big Easy. D: Jim McBride. New Orleans set police sex and slaying romp. What seemed sexy and cool when I was younger now just seems like camp fun. But still fun. [DVD] *
• We, The Living. D: Roy Anderssen. Bleak tablaeu of isolation and despair in Sweden. A feature from the genius behind Songs From The Second Story can not be uninteresting, but this effort contains about an equal number of hits and misses. [Cinema] *
  
• La Chinoise. D: Jean luc Godard. Godard renounces radical leftism in charactertistically off beat tale of student terrorists. Characteristically baffling and defiantly unhelpful, but contains many moments of Godardian genius. [DVD] ***
• Navigators. D: Ken Loach. Kitchen sinker about the effects of rail privaisation improves as it becomes less topical and the agitprop less grating. Still not exactly subtle and trapped in its reductive workers-bosses dialectic. [Cinema] *
  
• Inglourious Basterds. D: Quentin Tarantino. Grisly, messy botch of a war fantasy. Frequently spectacular, but incoherent and the two halves of the film never gel. Concscientiously nasty. [Cinema] *
  
• Paris. D: Agnes Varda. A selection Varda's short films from different decades. Ranges from irritating to embarrassing. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Russian Ark. D:Alexander Sokurov. Technically audacious single take film. In part, its main achievement is to remind us why we have editing. Visually spectacular, and the final sequence is very impressive, though the point of the whole exercise is elusive. [DVD] **
  
• Suburban Mayhem. D: Paul Goldman. Teen mega bitch terrorises her neighbourhood. A cigarette paper seperates this from reality. Very well done, brilliant performance from Emily Barclay as the monstrous Katrina. Like an Elizabethan comedy, it is essentially tragedy played for laughs. [DVD] **
  
• The In Crowd. D: Mary Lambert. Exploitative tosh about beautiful, heartless, underclad rich kids. A decent cast, competent direction and reasonable production can't redeem a witless, predictable script, where the twists are so obvious they look like red herrings. They aren't. [DVD] No stars
  
• Eternity. D: Wilhelm Leibenberg, Frederico Sanchez. Erotic horror about Elizabeth Bathory. Neither sexy or scary. Two credited directors fail to do the job of one mediocre one. [DVD] No stars
  
• To Kill A Mockingbird. D: Rober Mulligan. Mild adaptation. Good, but dated No excuse for not reading the book. Peck's Oscar winning performance seems mannered today, but Mary Badham as Scout and Philip Alford as Jem are good. [DVD] **
• Thirst. D:Park Chan-wook. The insane Korean auteur geleefully combines Therese Raquin, Zola's sleazy tale of adultrery and nemesis, with Kathryn Bigelow's modern vampire film, Near Dark. Inevitably weird, but more conventional than the majestically mad Oldboy. [Cinema] **
  
• Red Cliff. D: John Woo. Massive Chinese battle epic, but for seasoned Woo watchers, basically a remake of Hardboiled with swords. [Cinema] **
  
• Architekten. D: Peter Kahane. East German architects run up against institutional inertia. More interesting than it sounds. [Cinema] ***
  
• Wall-E. D: Andrew Stanton. Excellent film, brilliantly executed, lovely characters and a thankful lack of rubbish jokes aimed at adults. [DVD] ***
  
• Noi the Albino. D: Dagur Kari. Dull, wilfully offbeat tale of misfit youth. Iceland is presented as a sort of Scaninavian Lake Woebegon, without the humour. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Pierrepoint. D: Adrian Shergold. The life of Britain's premier hangman. A great idea, a great lead, but let down by the Coronation Street production values and a lack of visual, philisophical or narrative insight. [DVD] *
  
• Nackt Unter Wolfen. D: Frank Beyer. Concentration camp cat and mouse as prisoners conceal a Jewsih child. A distant ancestor of the slushier Life is Beautiful, this film is stark, brilliant drama. [Cinema] ****
  
• 2046. D: Wong Kar-Wai. Beautifully filmed meditation on love confounded, lacking only purpose and urgency. Which is, unfortunately, two things it really needs. A s with much of this director's work, it is like watching beautiful paint dry. [DVD] *
  
• Charade. D: Stanley Donnen. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in a comedy thriller with too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Directed with a bit of style, but nowhere near as charming as it thinks it is. [DVD] *
  
• Made in USA. D: Jean Luc Godard. A big, pretenious mess of a film by the master, stumbling badly between the brilliance been (Les Mepris) and to come (Weekend). Still, nothing by Godard is entirely worthless. Striking use of colour, visual audacity, and a the sheer gall of the project provokes something mid way between admiration and condemnation. [DVD] *
• Ich War Neunzehn. D: Konrad Wolf. The final days of WW2, from the point of view of Red Armyy soldiers always just behind or to one side of the main action. The Spandau sequence and the final scenes pack considerable wallop. [Cinema] **
  
• The Fast and the Furious (1955). D: John Ireland, Edward Sampson. Corman quickie with nothing to recommend it. The remake looks like Potemkin in comparison. [DVD] No stars
  
• Oldboy. D: Park Chan-wook. Sick, brutal, nasty film about long delayed revenge. Redeemed only by the fact that it is brilliant in almost every way. [DVD] ****
  
• Last Tango in Paris. D: Bernardo Berolucci. What is the worst aspect of this film? The script? Brando's performance? The turgid sex? The embarassing 'lets make a movie' sub-plot? The insufferable self importance of Bertolucci's direction? [DVD] No stars
  
• Elephant. D: Gus van Sant. A shooting at a school very like Columbine. The too clever, sleek cinematic technique ends up being exploitative, which, I assume, was not van Sant's intention. [DVD] *
  
• Days of being Wild. D: Wong Kar-Wai. An arrogant playboy takes his women for granted. His life falls apart as he seeks his birth mother. Beautifully done, but uneven. [DVD] **
• Moolade. D: Ousmane Sembene. In a traditional African vilalge, a woman gives four girls, facing female circumsion, sanctuary. This provokes a confrontation between her and the vilalge, progress and tradition, locals and outsiders, men and women. Simple, predictable but well done. [DVD] *
• Gaslight. D: George Cukor. Charles Boyer tries to drive Ingrid Bergman insane in this creaky, overwrought but still fun melodrama. Very quaint, it is strange to think that in the USA, Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon were already history. Joe Cotten made the not-dissimilar Shadow of a Doubt with Hithcock the year before, and must have found the change jarring. [Cinema] *
  
• They Drive by Night. D: Raoul Welsh. First half is great, blue collar drama, blessed with terrific dialogue as Bogey and Raft truck on. Second half is absurd melodrama, though Ida Lupino is obviously haveing fun. [DVD] *
• Mala Noche. D: Gus van Sant. Highly likeable tale of gay hustlers at the social fringes. Beautifully acted, wonderful freewheeling syle and densely composed sound track. Very good, though small scale means it feels slightly inessential. ***
  
• Infamous. D: Douglas McGrath. Covers same ground as the better known Capote. A more conventional, but perhaps better film with its own strengths and weaknesses. Toby Jones is superb. [DVD] ***
  
• Der Dritte. D: Egon Gunther. A woman seeks love amid the socialist realism. Stylish, very nouvelle vague winner from the GDR. [Cinema] ***
  
• Berlin-Schonhauser Corner. D: Gerhard Klein. It doesn't sound promising: 1950s East German teenage rebellion. The actual film is every bit as unconvincing as that summary sounds. [Cinema] *
• Lone Wolf & Cub 4: Baby Cart in Peril. D: Kenji Misumi. Frantic, preposterously bloody samurai fun. With a topless ninjette. [DVD] *
  
• Sleeping Dogs. D: Roger Donaldson. Feisty little film, chronicling the rise of fascism in 1970s New Zealand. No, really. Features a gaunt, youthful Sam Neill. [DVD] **
  
• Knafayim shvurot. D: Nir Bergman. Generic, but likeable, Israeli family drama. Offbeat setting and believeable cast are assets. [Cinema] *
  
• Capote. D: Bennett Miller. Well made account of the writing of In Cold Blood, though too self-consiously crafted and enigmatic. [DVD] **
  
• Manufactured Landscapes. D: Jennifer Baichwal. Profile of the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky. His photographs are astonishing, clinically objective illustrations of the impact of industrialisation on landscape, but the additional material is less interesting. [Cinema] **
  
• San Pietro. D: John Huston. Another supressed WW2 doco from Huston, detailing the cost of a single battle in the Italian campaign. [DVD] *
• Let There Be Light. D: John Huston. Long supressed WW2 doco, showing rehabilitation of shellshocked GIs. Somewhat dated. [DVD] No Stars
  
• Darwin's Nightmare. D: Hubert Sauper. Jarring documentary about poverty, exploitation and pending ecological collapse around Lake Tanzania, where locals fish for invasive Nile Perch which are freighted to European restaurants while the fishermen subsist on rotting fish remains. [Cinema] ****
  
• Zulu Dawn. D: Douglas Hickox. Prequel to the events described in the better known Zulu, this film is less jingoistic and more sympathetic to the Zulus. Merciless in exposing the blunders that lead up to the disaster at Isandlwana. [DVD] ***
  
• No Country for Old Men. D: Joel & Ethan Coen. Film noir in cowboy hats. Accomplished, polished and well turned out, but spoiled by a cartoon villan. Still, gave Tommy Lee Jones a chance to act, rather than chew the scenery. [DVD] ***
  
• Perfect Strangers. D: Gaylene Preston. He kidnaps her, she kills him, keeps him in the freezer, falls in love with him. So mad it almost works. Good performances and lovely locations. [Cinema] *
  
• March of the Penguins. D: Luc Jaquet. Let down by anthropomorphism, sentimental music and a lack of facts and data. Nice pictures. [DVD] No stars
  
• The Producers. D: Mel Smith. First half is superb, with Mostel and Wilder playing off each other. Opening number of 'Springtime' is brilliant, but the other musical scenes are flat, lacking the comedy or bad taste that made the first half great. [DVD] **
  
• Flandres. D: Bruno Dumont. Wilfully bleak, purposeless film about farms, mud, sex, war, only much less interesting than that sounds. Dumont tells us that life sucks, in every film he makes. He doesn't seem to be capable of saying why it sucks, or what we could do about it. [Cinema] *
  
• The Longest Day. D: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Elmo Williams. Still stirring war film. The pre-invasion scenes are often twee, but the staging of D-Day itself is impressive and gritty. Three 'official' directors, plus Elmo Williams is credited for co-ordinating 'battle scenes' and deserves directorial recognition. [DVD] ***
  
• Mauvais Sang. D: Leos Carax. Four things that ruin French films are here in condensed form: no plot, no urgency, stylistic excess, Juliette Binoche. [Cinema] No stars
• All the Kings Men. D: Robert Rossen. Triple Oscar winner from 1950 still works brilliantly, partly because politicians are still corrupt scum bags who lie, but mainly because the cscript, direction and cast - particularly Mercedes MacCambridge - are superb. Ends predictably, just missing out on that coveted fourth star. [DVD] ***
• King Lear. D: Brian Blessed. Blessed, as Lear, looks like a tetchy hobbit. Some good performances among minor players. A poor adaptation which looks like it was filmed on a mobile phone. [DVD] No stars
  
• Gospel According to Harry. D: Lech Majewski. A summary would make this banality seem more interesting than it is. A big disappointment from the director of the fascinating Angelus. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Diva. D: Jean-Jaques Beineix. Homage to Hollywood, Hitchcock (note the shameless MacGuffin driven plot, the lighthouse, and matters "disposed of from a great height"), Blow Up, Godard, Paris. Tres chic, but empty. [Cinema] **
• Toy Story 2. D: John Lasseter. An advantage of parenthood is that you get to watch films like this. Enjoyable, and possessed of an old fashioned, pre-Shrek innocence. [VHS - no, really, it does still exist] **
  
• La Science des Reves. D: Michael Gondry. Watery romantic comedy which tries too hard to be batty but is annoying and superficial. There are some very cute animations. [Cinema] No stars
  
• Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. D: Lian Lunson. By-the-numbers tribute concert, but does that matter with numbers like these? Some interesting commentary from Cohen. A pity Bono exists. [DVD] *
• Basquait. D: Julian Schnabel. An indulgent biography of the graffitti artist. There are some good performances, but the whole thing feels suspiciously like a highbrow Finding Forrester. [Cinema] *
• Mr Arkadin. D: Orson Welles. Mad, late period attempt to combine Kane, The Trial and The Third Man into one. Less than those mighty works, but like anything Welles did in his late phase, this film has baroque touches of near accidental genius. [DVD] **
• Hamlet. D: Mike Mundell. After a creaky opening segement, this is well done, though its low budget shows in almost every scene. A spirited presentation with a good cast that capturesd the 'feel' of the play more effectively than some mega-star and big budget vehicles. [DVD] **
• Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough. D: Jay Lowi. Sleazy, exploitative, and delightfully trashy, though pretty much worthless for anything other than lewd amusement. No stars
  
• Melissa P. D: Luca Guadagnino. Glossy, softcore Europorn. Hallmark erotica which pretends to be investigating the fraght topic of teenage sexual misadventure but is really just exploiting it. Avoid, no matter how base your motives. No stars
  
• Angelus. D: Lech Majewski. Weird fable about individuality and spirituality in communist Poland. Beautiful and successful on its own captivatingly strange terms. **
  
• MacBeth. D: Jeremy Freeston. A very poor attempt at the play, with Connery and Baxendale weak in the lead roles. The text has been hacked to pieces and the whole thing is poorly staged. Good Banquo and decent witches. [DVD] No stars
  
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. D: Mark Herman. Unsurprisingly bleak film which serves as a good introduction to the Holocaust. Yes, it is contrived and not very realistic, how much does that matter? [Cinema] *
• To Have and Have Not. D: Howard Hawks. Shameless clone of Casablanca. Bogey & Bacall exchange sardonic one liners. Hoagy Carmichael sings. William Faulkner writes. Nil resembleance to the Hemingway novel of the same name, apart from the involvement of boats. Daffy fun. [DVD] **
• The Sweet Smell of Success. D: Alexander MacKendrick. Uber-louse Tony Curtis oils and weasels his way about the screen in a stupendous film about how vile people can be to each other. [DVD] ****

DVD review: Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man

Most reviews of this documentary start off in the same general way, with the reviewer stating that he or she is a big fan of Cohen's work. This makes sense, after all, it would be pretty miserable to sit through ninety minutes of songs and interviews by / about /with someone whose work you despise. If they ever make a documentary about Celine Dion, I can assure you, I will not be rushing to watch it.

(I always thought Screaming Celine had one good song - the Jim Steinman penned 'It's all coming back to me now.' This delusion continued until I heard the Meatloaf / Marion Raven version on Bat Out of Hell III. There after, Celine was restored to her former position as nerve-jangling, screeching banshee with no redeeming qualities.)

So, let me say now, I am a big fan of Leonard Cohen.

As such, it is natural to regard any attempt to pay tribute to an artist's work with some dubiety. There are generally two forms that this takes - "We're not worthy" grovelling or shameless gold-digging. Often it is hard to tell the seperate the two. Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man features a lot of the former, but this tendency towards veneration is balanced by the fact that many of the renditions of Cohen's songs are really good, if predictable.

The film consists of three strands - footage of performances of Cohen's songs by all-sorted performances at a tribute concert staged in Sydney in 2005. Strand two is these same performers discussion Cohen's work and influence. Strand three is Cohen himself talking about his life and work.

This tripartite approach is the films weakness. By pursuing these different routes, the film makers reach no clear end. There is SOME concert footage, but not enough. There is SOME discussion of Cohen's work by his admirers, but probably too much. There is some interesting information about Cohen, from the man himself, but it is too restricted and disjointed to be more than a handful of anecdotes and snapshots of his life and thought. It is fustrating that an interesting observation by Cohen isn't explored further, or that a rivetting performance of one of his songs is followed by Bono, at his most moist-eyed and fawning, offering his arid thoughtlets.

The performances are from a mixed bag of artistes. Stand outs to me included Martha Wainwright's bleak performance of 'The Traitor,' brother Rufus's take on 'Chelsea Hotel,' Anthony's stirring rendition of 'If it be your Will,' and the duet of Julie Christensen and Perla Battala on 'Anthem.' Nick Cave provides a couple of workmanlike performances, though there is a feeling that he should have been able to find something more than he delivers. Jarvis Cocker - perhaps the most interesting inclusion - gives an odd rendition of 'I Can't Forget' - which irritated me at first, but which I've subsequently come to admire.

Which takes us to an important question about the purpose of the concert. As we watch the concert footage, are we seeking a Cohen adulation-fest with his songs rendered straight, as the man himself recorded and performed them, or looking for something strange and unusual which encourages us to see the material in new ways?

Given the conservative choices of performers, and the tribute concert setting, and the songs selected, it's pretty obvious that the producers had the former in mind as they planned the concert, which is a shame. There are precisely three types of people in the world - those who are not familiar with Cohen's work, those who know it and want to be reminded about how nice it is, and those who know it and want to be reminded how great it is. The second category will enjoy this unreservedly. They'll hear great songs well presented, but the exercise is suspiciously middle of the road - here is a good song, sung pretty much the way you know it, so everyone can join in with the chorus. Okay, it isn't likely that many people were brandishing cigarette lighters during 'Hallelujah,' but you can't be too sure ...

Basically, a lot of the concert seemed to be pandering to people's preconceived idea of what Leonard Cohen's music was. If he was truly as influential as is claimed, let's hear the reggae and afro-beat versions of his songs, lets hear them translated into Afghan and sung by choirs of amputees (that might be in rather poor taste, but you get the idea). If Cohen's music is as vital as it is meant to be (and I believe it is), it doesn't need to be preserved in aspic. If Leonard Cohen's fans are as discerning as they think they are (I think, unfortunately, they are not) then they would find the experience at least interesting, perhaps exhilerating.

Most likely, of course, a tribute concert along those lines would be a commercial disaster. It would work, perhaps, as a straight album, or performances recorded in a studio setting, rather than in an opera house infront of thousands of fans wanting to hear the songs the way they like them.

As for the Cohen interviews, they are interesting, but presented in a disjointed manner that allows little more than a general picture of the man to emerge. He was from Canada, he went to New York, wrote a dirty song about Janis Joplin, but wasn't as much of a ladies' man as people think and became a Bhuddist monk. There should be more of this, or less.

Then there are the interviews with the performers and various Cohen devotees. These are, pretty much what you would expect. It is, after all, unlikely someone asked to give an opinion for a project like this would be uncouth enough to say something nasty, and it is even less likely that such a comment would have made it to the final cut. You learn little beyond the fact that those involved really like Leonard Cohen, which is nice, but it is repeated a few times too many. Bono appears, as he seems to do in every thing these days, and provides some unintentional comedy with his too-earnest paeans of praise to the genius of Cohen. He is given too much screen time and he doesn't have much to say, but I suppose the film makers provide some sort of service by capturing him mispronouncing 'chasm' on film. Hah-ha. Plonker.

So, there you go. It is worth watching, though there are a thousand different versions of the concert and film that Might Have Been, all of them holding out more promise than this one realised.

*

DVD review - Hamlet (2003)

Hamlet (2003). D: Mike Mundell. Starring Will Houston, Gareth Thomas.

Disc Two of my set of three. Fortunately, something of an improvement on the dismal MacBeth. This version of Hamlet bears all the marks of a very low budget production but has enough going for it to make it worth while.

It looks like a theatre production opened up and filmed. The cast range from competent to very good - a hint they are presenting a well rehearsed stage production - but some are incongruous. A very contemporary looking Osric, for example, or the youthful Polonius. On stage oddities such as there are less noticeable than on film. The production looks cheap, with the final duel between Hamlet and Laertes taking place in a small, drab room that doesn't reflect well on the majesty of the Danish royal house. A badly presented ghost doesn't help either.

The text has been edited heavily. The film bravely dumps the brilliant opening Shakespeare envisaged on the dark battlements of Elsinore. "To be or not to be" is shunted forwards to just before the entrance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This gives Hamlet's melancholy a more genuine feel - no question of him hamming it up for Claudius and Laertes - but it also means the audience has empathy with him, and less sympathy for his plight. We've only just met the guy, and he's telling us about how he wants to off himself. Don't you hate people like that? Fortinbras is gone entirely - the final catastrophe that befalls the Danish royal family leaves a power vacuum with no cynical warlordling ready to stride into it.

The film stutters at the start. The opening scenes are stages in Elizabethan buildings and look awkward and staged. Subsquent scenes are more effective, and the Elizabethan settings are discarded in favour of pleasingly medieval look. It's possible the director was trying for something similar to Olivier's Henry V in mind, which started with a facsimile of an Elizabethan staging of the play. It doesn't really work, and the opening scenes are ragged but it does pick up after that.

The main strength of the film is the cast. It looks like they have been playing the parts on stage and they are generally very good. Will Houston as Hamlet is very good, after a shaky start. Gareth Thomas is a sympathetic Claudius, and Lucy Cockram - after another dicey first scene - is good as Ophelia. David Powell Davies is too young for Polonius, but provides the character with a more dignity than he is usually allowed. He doesn't come across as pompous or foolish. This combination of a fairly likable Claudius and a wily Polonius makes our identification with Hamlet more provisional than is often the case, and this is good, for me at any rate.

The staging of the Mousetrap and the confrontation between Hamlet and Gertrude are very well done - the latter is superb. Houston imbues his lines with manic energy to make them more menacing than they are often read. This Hamlet's witty retorts seem to be teetering on the edge of madness. He carries this over onto the following scene, where he is quizzed about the fate of Polonius. Our sympathy here is actually with the hapless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as they try to keep pace with the Prince, and it works very well. Hamlet's verbal sparring alienates us, as it should - he has, after all, just killed someone. That Houston manages to pull us back to him in the final scenes is a credit to a young actor who should shine in years to come.

All in, a brave attempt to film one of the difficult texts in the cannon. It is flawed, but the flaws relate more to the realities of film making. Its virtues, on the other hand, are most noticeable where they are most needed - the acting, the poetry, and the staging. There has been a glut of Hamlets recently. None have been perfect, including this one, but this is the one I like best.

**

DVD review - MacBeth (1997)

MacBeth (1997). Directed by Jeremy Freeston and Brian Blessed. Starring Jason COnnery and Helen Baxendale.

This was part of a box set I bought recently, a triple bill of Shakespearean tragedies -MacBeth, Hamlet and King Lear (reviews of the other two to follow). I watched MacBeth first because it is one of my favourite plays by Shakespeare, and I've been curious about this version for some time.

MacBeth, I've always thought, is the most accessible of Shakespeare's 'Great Period' plays. Compact, focused, with heaps of violence, it should have been the play most open to screen adaptations. I'm not aware of a really good rendering of the story, however - the best effort being Orson Welles's vigorous shoestring version. To the list of MacBotches we must add the Connery/Baxendale effort.

(It seems it was not a 'film adaptation' at all, but a TV version that was given a theatrical release, post Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet and Branagh's Hamlet. That might explain some of its flaws, but doesn't excuse them.)

It starts well, with a feisty battle sequence with pleasingly grisly witches looking on. Poor old Gray Malkin and Paddock are cut from the opening scene, but they aren't alone for long. In quick order they are joined by the bloodied Sargent and his account of the battle, the treachery of the Thane of Cawdor, the luckless master o' the Tiger, even MacBeth's meeting with Duncan when he is invested as thane of Cawdor. All of these had virtues that plead like angels trumpet tongued against the dark damnation of their sending off, but sent off they are. These aren't the only cuts, either. This is MacBeth in a hurry.

From the opening battle we are pitched directly into MacBeth's encounter with the witches, which is well done. Brian Blessed, curiously, directed the witchy sequences, and he has great fun with the special effects as MacBeth and Banquo are told of their fates. Jason Connery as MacBeth is awkward, obviously unsure what to make of the verse. Graham MacTavish as Banquo, on the other hand, is capable, making his lines natural and easy. Within a few minutes of Connery's mumbling, the viewer is struck the urge to see the roles reversed and MacTavish in the title role. No wonder MacBeth felt he needed to kill him.

These first few minutes marks the high point of the film. From there we move to Helen Baxendale receiving word of her husband. She's as lost as Connery, and denied the beard that he gets to hide behind. Her "Unsex me here" invocation of evil is embarrassing, not unsettling. There are some reasonably clever touches - MacBeth's "We will speak further" is not a sign of his hesitancy in the face of his wife's wicked ambition, but his attempt to silence her prattling as he throws her onto the bed.

The acting of the leads is the biggest let down. Connery's method consists of staring glazedly about the screen while he mumbles his monologues via voice-over. Baxendale looks pinched and neurotic. An attempt to do something interesting with "Is this a dagger?" - the fantastical dagger is a shadow cast by a cross on an altar - falls flat due to Connery's poor delivery and sloppy direction, which mars the production throughout. We accompany Lady MacBeth back into the murder chamber, where she gets to stab the reviving Duncan, but the effect is comic, not dramatic.

Big scenes are botched - the appearance of Banquo at the feast is made incomprehensible through attempts to mix subjective rendering of MacBeth's delusion with what those around him see, or don't see. The second meeting with the witches is even less coherent, and the prophetic visions are confusing. Timing seems to be an issue here - Banquo's banquet is the centrepoint of the play, but the film moves rapidly towards conclusion after it, giving it an unbalanced feel and no scope for the intricacies of the riddles MacBeth is caught in to be appreciated, or for his descent into madness to be convincing. Another crucial cut is the scene where Malcolm tests MacDuff, and MacDuff learns of the murder of his family. This robs his revenge of most of its emotional force - and the character of a lot of the screen time. He's a virtual stranger when he turns up to kill MacBeth.

A point for trying. MacTavish's Banquo earns another. The first few minutes garners another. But that's all. From then on it's sound and fury blah blah blah.

NO STAR