Monday, 6 May 2019

Adam Bowen's Talkie Talk #58 - New movies, old movies on TV and Vale John Singleton

NEW IN CINEMAS THIS WEEK

Kilian Jornet: Path to Everest (2018) – doco about mountain athlete, Kilian Jornet Burgada.

All is True (2018) Biopic of William Shakespeare’s final days. The Bard is played by Kenneth Branagh; Judi Dench is Anne Hathaway.

Watch the trailer here

The Hustle – Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway (not Mrs Shakespeare) are con artists who join forces to take revenge on the men who’ve done ‘em wrong.

Poms – Inmates of a retirement village, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier and Diane Keaton, become late-onset cheer-leaders, and join the queue to Vote Tony Out.

The Night Eats the World/La Nuit a Dévoré Le Monde (2018) – French zombies invade Paris.

Watch the trailer here

Pokémon Detective Pikachu - an intelligent Pikachu wants to become a detective

Aga (2018) – in the Arctic, after a family feud, a father searches for his daughter.

Student of the Year 2 - Bollywood romantic-comedy-drama.

The Spanish Film Festival is screening until May 26th! www.spanishfilmfestival.com

ON THE TELLY

Thursday 8.30pm & Friday Noon Fox Classics: Young Frankenstein (1974) – Mel Brooks’ parody in which the photography (Gerald Hirschfeld) and art direction (Dale Hennesy) outshines the laughs, but there’s enough classic silliness to detain you.

Saturday 1.30pm 9Gem: The Captive Heart (1946) – Michael Redgrave (so diffident!), is a Czech soldier escaping from the Nazis. He assumes the identity of a dead British soldier and becomes a POW. He now must correspond - by letter - with the wife (Rachel Kempson) of the man he’s impersonating. She’s surprised by the warmth imparted by her previously cold husband. The relationship is not entirely credible, nor are the multi-strand/flashback love stories of the other POWs. However, the detailed depiction of the day-to-day lives of the men in the POW camp is very affecting.

Watch a trailer here

Saturday 3.30 9Gem: The Great Escape (1963): Entertaining Boys Own Adventure, based on actual WW2 events (and a book by Paul Brickhill). Agroup of Allied flyers escape from the apparently escape-proof Stalag Luft 3. Starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, James Coburn (with an appalling Aussie accent) and a cast of stalwart British character actors. Goes on a bit, but Daniel Fapp’s Panavision photography is luminous and Elmer Bernstein’s music perfect.

Watch the trailer here

Sunday 8.30pm Fox Classics: Reversal of Fortune (1990) Did Claus von Bulow (Jeremy Irons), a European aristocrat, murder his wife (Glenn Close)? He appeals against the guilty verdict. A classy court-room drama, (based on the actual Claus von Bulow affair), which switches between the building of the case, and glimpses into the lives of the rich and careless.

VALE

John Singleton, aged 22, wrote and directed the outstanding Boyz N the Hood (1991), about three friends growing up in South Central Los Angeles. His subsequent films were neither so incendiary nor so highly acclaimed. Baby Boy (2001), however, about the family life of a young, immature wannabe gangster, was a stronger, much more thoughtful movie. His re-boot of Shaft (2000) was one of Singleton’s most successful commercial movies, along with 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003). He died of a stroke at the young age of 51.

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Sunday, 5 May 2019

Spanish Film Festival (7) - Barrie Pattison recommends PETRA (Jaime Rosales)

Jaime Rosales’ Petra is a film which keeps on recalling the sixties, not just in having its (out of order) episodes preceded by numbered captions in the Godard manner. The camera again wanders through the action sometimes filling the screen with the vacant space between the performers. Its slow pace would have confined it to the Robert Bresson audience.

Well that was then and this is now. This one has a very different preoccupation and mood.

On an artist’s residency, rising star Bárbara Lennie from the Farhadi Todos lo saben / Everybody Knows and El Reino / The Realm turns up at the Catalan farmland studio of a famous sculptor. Everybody warns her against him (“nothing good can come from Jaume”) and she gets to know the man’s wife Marisa Paredes (Almodovar movies & The Devil’s Backbone) and their son, Rosales’ regular leading man Alex Brendemühl.

When Jaume the master (Joan Botey making his screen debut at seventy-seven) arrives, the people get to dominate the detailed rural setting.

Botey makes it with the house keeper who wants him to give her son a job (“a favor for a favor”) though that doesn’t work out. Lennie has an agenda of her own. It doesn’t fit with Brendemühl coming on to her. It's a film about la veridad which pivots on lies. Finally, Botey rails against “this false happiness you’ve created” and the shot guns are broken out.

The whole thing is of a piece. After we’ve seen him assembling large metal constructions in his studio, Botey tells his protegé that the good thing about art is the money and he criticizes Lennie’s self-portraits as being too “intimist” - ignoring the wider public for her own satisfaction (not bothering to tell her the paint dribbles were distracting).

Rosales’ film derives its suspense from pondering whether the outcome will be determined by the severe expectations of the art movie or if we’re in for more Latino melodrama. Fencing his bets, he has made another piece where the women have all the strength and the men crumble.

With flourish free, high contrast location filming and a strong cast, the mix is a better night at the movies than it sounds.