That Touch of Mink (1962)

Posted on December 6, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #87
Delbert Mann | 99 mins | TV | 16:9 | USA / English | U

Starring Doris Day as a regular girl who wants to marry Cary Grant’s rich businessman for love, while he just wants to get her into bed, That Touch of Mink is a sex comedy… but being a film produced in ’60s America, no one comes close to using such language. But it’s unquestionably all about that.

However, despite being all about a lewder side of life, tonally and visually it’s very light, fluffy and funny. It’s also briskly paced and constantly amusing, including some real laugh-out-loud moments. In particular, a punchline delivered by two ladies from a centre for unwed mothers was one of my favourite comedy lines for a good while. (Built as it is on a series of events, it doesn’t bear repeating in print.) While Day and Grant carry the story, there’s great support from Gig Young as the hand-wringing financial executive of Grant’s company. The subplot about his therapist pays such dividends it’s even used for the film’s final gag.

The ending perhaps pulls a few too familiar mistaken identity tricks, but that’s just a small part of the whole. As a candy-coloured confection of a film with edgier undertones, That Touch of Mink is pretty entertaining.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Posted on December 3, 2011 by badblokebob

I saw a trailer for How to Train Your Dragon at the cinema a few months before its release. Having never heard anything of it, I thought it looked to have basic animation and a too daft tone. I wrote it off, expecting the kind of animated movie that would be slagged off as a Pixar-wannabe… and probably still land an Oscar nomination because there never seem to be many contenders for the animated feature award. Imagine my surprise, then, when it garnered endless positive reviews and a huge box office. What?

My impression from the trailer was massively wrong. How to Train Your Dragon is, as everyone else has likely already impressed upon you, brilliant.

For one thing, it quickly becomes apparent that it’s magnificently animated and designed. What might appear smooth and simplistic at first glance actually has a lot of detail in full motion. A wonderful world is evoked with the design and the detail, of the humans’ lives and of all the different dragons. Even better is the cinematography (do you call it that in an animated film?) It’s genuinely beautifully shot. Roger Deakins — the Coen brothers’ regular cinematographer, not to mention all his other work and nine Oscar nominations — is credited as “visual consultant” and I guess that paid off.

Numerous action sequences are properly exciting, and well spaced throughout the film — it dives in at the very start and doesn’t let up. Intelligently, they’re used to build and reveal character rather than just provide an adrenaline boost. That applies to the supporting cast and the dragons as much as our hero. The flying sequences are particularly brilliant. This is one of the few made-for-3D films I’ve seen in 2D where I actually wished I’d seen it in 3D.

As noted, it skilfully finds room for characterisation and humour amongst all the battling and flying. While most of the story focuses on the relationships between Hiccup and his dragon Toothless, and Hiccup and his father, it deftly and quickly sketches in all the major supporting roles. That’s a sure hand in writing and direction, able to build whole characters and pay off their role with only a couple of lines or actions here and there. Plus, making you genuinely fond of and care for a cartoon computer-rendered fictional creature is no mean feat, and Toothless has all the personality to achieve it. Avatar wasn’t close to managing that.

Some plot beats and relationships are familiar and therefore predictable, but despite that they’re carried off with such emotion and humour that it really doesn’t matter. If you pause to think then you know how pretty much everything will pan out (though it may manage one or two surprises), but when you care about and like the characters, as I think you will here, that all becomes the stuff you hoped would happen rather than the stuff you roll your eyes at.

One thing, though: Scottish Vikings? And how did all the kids end up with American accents? There’s certainly some American Kids’ Movie Logic at work in the voice casting.

In the end, then, How to Train Your Dragon is the antithesis of my initial impression: gloriously animated and filmed (rendered?), with a perfectly pitched tone that manages humour, exciting action, soaring flight sequences and an emotional connection to its characters, both human and dragon. This would thoroughly deserve to beat most Pixar films to that Oscar, so what a shame it was up against the equally glorious Toy Story 3.

How to Train Your Dragon merited an honourable mention on my list of The Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2011, which can be read in full here.

Holiday (1938)

Posted on November 22, 2011 by badblokebob

aka Free to Live / Unconventional Linda

2011 #79
George Cukor | 91 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | U

Holiday stars Cary Grant as an everyday chap who falls in love with a girl who, it turns out, is a wealthy heiress type… but who it also turns out may not share his views on the future. Her kooky sister, played by Katharine Hepburn, on the other hand…

You already know how Holiday ends, don’t you? You may not even have heard of the film, but having read those two sentences, you know. I knew. We all know. Unless there’s a twist, of course. Sometimes there is, especially in older films where they weren’t as slavishly concerned with hitting demographics and all that. So I won’t say if there’s a twist or not.

What I will say is, I loved Holiday. I’d never even heard of it before it turned up on BBC Two in a week of similar stuff, like His Girl Friday (which I’d seen, and reviewed), Bringing Up Baby (which I saw, and reviewed) and It Happened One Night (which is still sat on my V+ box). I’d heard of all of those, but not this, but I’m glad I watched it by association.

It doesn’t have quite the hilarity of His Girl Friday, but I thought it had more substance than Bringing Up Baby (as much as I enjoyed that too). I suppose you would say it “spoke to me”, what with Grant’s character’s desire to go off and do something he wanted to do instead of get locked in to the dull corporate world, and the family’s insistence that a sensible city job where he’d earn a fortune is more appropriate. I can’t say I’m in the same situation — I wouldn’t mind the chance of a highly-paid job, if you’ve got one going spare — but I could relate well enough.

Holiday is not the funniest of comedies — though I did think it was funny — instead hitting a level of dramatic/character interest that I didn’t predict. I think it’s more a personal favourite than an objective Great Film (but then, one might argue, what is?), so the best I can do is encourage you to seek it out if this kind of film from this kind of era is your kind of thing.

Magicians (2007)

Posted on November 16, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #83
Andrew O’Connor | 84 mins | TV | 16:9 | UK / English | 15

David Mitchell and Robert Webb move from the small screen to the big one in this comedy from the writers of their sitcom Peep Show. Perhaps I should say now, I’ve seen one episode of Peep Show and I didn’t much care for it.

Magicians, however, is fine. If you like people saying rude words, particularly in relation to sexual activities, then you’ll find lots to laugh at here. If you don’t like that kind of thing, there’ll be lots to cringe at. If you don’t mind it… well, you won’t mind it. There are other funny bits, mind. None of it’s particularly big or clever, but it elicited laughs regularly enough to keep it entertaining.

It’s biggest mistake is in casting Mitchell and Webb as two people who’ve fallen out, meaning they spend most of the film apart. They’re funny individually, and they’re each paired off with a more than capable comedy sidekick — Jessica Hynes and Darren Boyd respectively — but as this is kind of pitched as The Mitchell & Webb Movie, it’s a little disappointing and doesn’t make the most of their talents.

That said, while I like Mitchell and Webb, I don’t think their main strength lies in acting. I love their sketch show, which, yes, is acting, but it’s a very different kind of acting; and, of course, Mitchell seems to do very well for himself on the panel show circuit, while Webb is adept at dancing sillily and, increasingly, hosting / voice-overing quickly-made cheap rubbish for various channels. These are all skills in their own way, but they don’t necessarily demonstrate brilliant acting. But, hey, they’re fine here.

The supporting cast is made up of a host of recognisable TV faces. I’d list them, but we’ll be here all day. However, if you watch a lot of British TV, especially comedy, you’ll be almost constantly going, “ooh, it’s him/her!” This has only been made more apparent by time: as the film’s now four years old, even more supporting faces have risen (however slightly) up the comedy hierarchy. For just one example, there are brief appearances by Miranda Hart and Sarah Hadland of hit BBC sitcom Miranda, which hadn’t begun when Magicians was released. I suppose retrospectively these small roles could be described as cameos, but they don’t play that way.

If you enjoy lewd humour, or can survive it in frequent brief bursts, then I’d say Magicians is fine. Probably best enjoyed late on a Friday or a Saturday when you really don’t want your brain to be taxed. Or even bothered.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Posted on November 7, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #78
Howard Hawks | 102 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | U

A box office flop on release (which directly led to Hawks being fired from his next film and co-star Katharine Hepburn being bought out of her contract & named “box office poison”), screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby has grown massively in stature since. And deservedly so, because — aside from a first act where Hepburn is no less than irritating, and an occasionally slow middle — it has some real comic high points and can be riotously funny.

Cary Grant plays a museum curator / palaeontologist / something like that who is due to get married to his controlling co-worker, but ends up embroiled with Hepburn’s carefree rich girl and her new pet leopard (the titular Baby). If it sounds a little mad, it’s not as mad as the film itself. As noted, it’s a little awkward to start with while one warms to Hepburn’s anarchic character, and it drags its heels a little through the middle, but by the time we reach the final act — when an array of characters and situations collide in a manic run-about too intricate to describe here — it all pays off marvellously.

Also worth noting is that it is, perhaps, the first work of fiction to use the word “gay” to mean “homosexual”. Apparently the term originated in the homosexual community in the ’20s (possibly earlier) but would not become widely known until the late ’60s. Its use here was ad-libbed by Grant, though whether that makes it more or less likely to have meant “homosexual” I don’t know. I suppose no one was ever in a position to ask.

Tangled (2010)

Posted on October 21, 2011 by badblokebob

Disney’s 50th animated feature is Rapunzel in all but name, for no particularly good reason. It seemed to be met with universal praise on its release last year, critics hailing it as a return to Disney’s previous quality after a run of lacklustre releases, in particular the underwhelming return to 2D in the year before’s The Princess and the Frog.

Well, to get that comparison immediately out of the way, Tangled isn’t as good as The Princess and the Frog in my estimation. I’m not sure why it seems to have been more widely praised — it’s solid and good fun, but I thought Frog had more going for it.

Which isn’t to say Tangled is bad. It’s funny, which is its biggest asset, and exciting at times — as usual, the highly moveable camera of CG animation adds fluidity, speed and excitement to the action sequences, making them one of the high points.

It’s not all good and shiny though. The setting — a comedic-ish fantasy-kingdom world — can come across a bit like lightweight Shrek, lacking the anachronistic postmodern real-world references that made that film zing. Worse, the songs are distinctly unmemorable — I’d forgotten some of them by the time it came to their own reprise. A gang of thugs singing about their dreams is the best thanks to its comedy, but I couldn’t hum or sing any of it for you now. I especially lament the lack of a decent villain’s song, a number I usually particularly enjoy. It has one, I suppose, but it’s one of the weakest examples I’ve ever heard.

Tangled isn’t bad by any measure, but I don’t feel it should be the praise-magnet it became. There are certainly better Disney musicals — it can’t hold a candle to those; and there are better funny fairytales too — but at least it holds up as a solid addition to that sub-genre.

The UK TV premiere of Tangled is on Disney Cinemagic this Sunday, 23rd October, at 5pm and 9pm.

A Bunch of Amateurs (2008)

Posted on September 13, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #46
Andy Cadiff | 92 mins | TV | 15

A faded action movie star (Burt Reynolds) thinks he’s been signed up to play King Lear with the RSC… but when he arrives in England, he finds it’s just a small village amateur dramatics group. Hilarity, and the odd heart-warming message, ensue.

To put it simply, A Bunch of Amateurs is entertaining enough and has its moments. It’s thoroughly predictable — most viewers could probably map out the plot before the film even begins, so it’s certainly easy to guess what’s coming next as it trots along — but there’s also something reassuring about that predictability — it’s exactly the sort of Quaint British Movie you expect it to be. Some will find that insufferable; I’m sure there are some who find it absolutely lovely and it’s the only kind of film they ever want to watch. I think it’s fine for what it is, a nice hour-and-a-half on a Sunday afternoon with something unchallenging but likely to raise a smile.

It’s certainly well cast. Well, mostly. Reynolds isn’t a great actor, is he? Appropriate casting when his bad-actor character is acting, then, but not so hot the rest of the time. (Reportedly he struggled to learn his lines and consequently many differ significantly from the play. So I’m not wrong, am I.) Luckily he’s made up for by a cast that includes Samantha Bond, Imelda Staunton and Derek Jacobi, all ceaselessly watchable, plus a supporting cast of faces you’ll likely recognise from British telly.

Late on, there are a couple of jumps in the plot that suggest cut scenes. Or bad writing. So we’ll go with the former. I appreciate the (presumed) desire to keep the running time tight, but there were a couple of glitches I observed and it would be nice if they’d been smoothed over. Ian Hislop is a credited writer — I guess we know the source of some light newspaper satire that’s sprinkled across the film (most notably in the final act), then.

The worst gap in the writing is that it goes unexplained why the am-dram group thought he was a good idea at any time. It’s ‘explained’ as the school-age daughter of the group’s director suggesting him, but no idea is given as to why — he’s not a great actor; he’s a wash-up who used to be in crap action films. If he’d been suggested by a version of Nick Frost’s character from Hot Fuzz, or by the B&B lady who fancies the pants off him, that might make sense, but why the schoolgirl? And why did anyone agree to it? It’s sort of ignored in the hope we won’t notice this massive whole in the logic, but… well, I noticed.

Probably the best bit is the series of films Reynolds’ character is known for: Ultimate Finality 4 plays as a nice, subtly-used background gag.

The 15 certificate is overdoing it. There’s a couple of instances of swearing that make it clear how that rating was achieved (according to the BBFC, ten in total, including seven in one sentence), but those aside it’s really not a 15 kind of film; it’s far too gentle for the vast majority of its running time to merit so high a classification. Not that anyone under the age of 15 is going to be dying to see it, but the implication of what a 15 contains is more likely to put off the real prospective audience. Maybe. Oh I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem right.

IMDb reports that “Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip requested a copy of this film after attending it’s Premiere 2008 Royal Film Performance so they could show it at Sandringham Castle for the rest of the family over the Christmas holidays.” Take from that what you will.

Easy Virtue (2008)

Posted on July 11, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #19
Stephan Elliott | 93 mins | TV (HD) | PG / PG-13

There doesn’t seem to be much love in the world for Easy Virtue, a witty adaptation of Noel Coward’s play (previously filmed in the ’20s by Alfred Hitchcock). A quick peek at some of my regular go-tos for such opinion-canvassing reveals a lamentable 6.6 on IMDb and an even worse 52% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t understand.

The plot concerns a young aristocratic Brit bringing his new American girlfriend — shockingly, a divorcee racing driver — back to his family’s stately home. The family are old money — the proper kind, where all the money’s gone. Cultural clashes and all sorts of other hijinks follow. Hilarity, with pleasant inevitability, ensues.

Obviously Easy Virtue is, primarily, a comedy. Fortunately, it’s frequently hilariously funny. You’d expect nothing less from a work taken from Coward, I suppose, and it doesn’t disappoint… well, didn’t disappoint me — as we’ve seen, others are a different matter. But hush, we’ll try to ignore them for the moment. There’s a decidedly wicked streak to the humour at times (a subplot about the fate of the family Chihuahua; lots of double entendres), which is welcome. The overall tone is light, largely, but not light in the head.

Director Stephan Elliott adds something extra to the wit with his choice of a wonderfully inventive soundtrack. (No disservice to those directly in charge of the music, but I’m certain I read somewhere — possibly in the soundtrack CD’s liner notes — that the following was Elliott’s idea.) Standards from the era are present and correct, but Cole Porter-styled reinterpretations of modern songs like Car Wash and Sex Bomb raise a smile whenever they turn up unexpectedly. It’s fabulously cheeky.

My notes also add that it is “beautifully shot [and] magnificently directed”, but unfortunately I come up short for examples after so long.

It’s not all giggles, though: there’s some surprisingly deep drama and emotions tucked in here, like the truth about Jessica Biel’s character’s past, central to the climax of the film. Naturally it falls largely on the cast to make this work, and they certainly do. The performances are frequently exceptional, especially Colin Firth, who negotiates the humour and drama with ease — his recollections of World War One being one of the darker points, for instance. I’m not entirely sure why but I have a distinct dislike of Kristin Scott Thomas, but here she’s very good as the nasty, coldly cruel mother.

I also particularly want to highlight Phillip, the awkward brother of the neighbours, and as such a minor character, played by Christian Brassington. This is the kind of character who turns up in plenty of comedies; a role that usually stops at “bumbling fool who likes the lead female but has no chance in a sweet, humours kind of way” (succinct, I know). Here, however, the character is redeemed at the end, when he tells a nasty character how cruel she’s been and aids in the ‘rescue’ of said lead female when she’s embarrassingly stranded. It’s still not a big part, nor a showy one, but those little closing tweaks left him standing out for me.

Describing Easy Virtue in a single word is easy: “underrated”. A shame that’s the word to reach for, but equally I’m not sure what other could appropriately encapsulate it. Witty, cheeky and irreverent, with surprisingly dramatic undertones — perhaps “jolly good fun” would suffice. Apart from that being three words.

Easy Virtue placed 8th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2011, which can be read in full here.

Funny Face (1957)

Posted on June 3, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #48
Stanley Donen | 99 mins | TV (HD) | U

Like Sabrina, Funny Face has Audrey Hepburn falling in love with someone old enough to be her dad. Fortunately, there’s enough other entertaining stuff going on to keep us distracted from that fact.

But let’s start with the negatives anyway. The plot, about a bookworm intellectual girl reluctantly being drawn into the world of high-fashion, falling in love with a photographer in the process, is as predictable as they come. It doesn’t matter, aside from the aforementioned fact that Fred Astaire is 30 years Hepburn’s senior and, though it’s obvious the characters are destined to get together, it doesn’t feel like the actors should. In fact, I’m not even really sure the characters belong together — of course they’re going to go that way, but the film doesn’t put a great deal of effort into making us believe it.

But the rest of the film does make up for that, with a surfeit of excellent humour, choreography, cinematography, light satire of both the fashion world and the intellectual world… Indeed, dishing out said satire in both directions means the film never comes across as either snobbish or anti-intellectual. It could well have dismissed the shallow world of fashion in favour of the depths of intellectual thought, or dismissed the dullness of philosophy for the glamour of couture, but it takes fair jibes at both equally — it’s not mean-spirited or cynical or dismissive, just… quite true.

All films look better in HD (when well done, naturally), but some seem to benefit more than others. Funny Face is one of those. It looks stunning — vibrant colours (especially in the opening Think Pink sequence), gorgeous location shots of Paris, the smokey confines of the intellectuals’ cafe… It’s a beautiful film. What it lacks in widely-remembered songs it makes up in the stunning visual sequences that accompany them. The opener may again be the standout, even though it features neither of the leads, but Hepburn’s barmy interpretative dance in the Paris cafe is also memorable, as is the three-way Bonjour, Paris!, or Astaire’s solo in the courtyard of Hepburn’s hotel, or their little darkroom number…

The cast are all great; specifically the three leads. Hepburn shows a perhaps-surprising affinity for dance (I wouldn’t say she’s known for it) and singing (she was dubbed in the later My Fair Lady); a rare film role for Kay Thompson as the fashion magazine editor, like Meryl Streep’s take but 50 years early (even the office looks familiar; which means they both look just like Anna Wintour’s — the more things change, etc); and Astaire is, naturally, brilliant.

Funny Face seems to have plenty of critics — mainly on the notion that Hepburn could be said to have a funny face. Pretty shallow reason to dismiss a whole film, if you ask me. While there are couple of bits that don’t wash with my appreciation — the age gap; I could take or leave the two scenes at the church — there’s far more to love about the film.

Sabrina (1954)

Posted on June 3, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #22
Billy Wilder | 109 mins | TV | U

Audrey Hepburn’s next leading role after her star-making turn in Roman Holiday sees her playing a role that seems almost the opposite: going from European princess to servant girl for a rich American family. She’s still the romantic lead wanted by all the men, though.

My top note for Sabrina is “morally suspect”. Unfortunately I forget why exactly, but I seem to remember it was a variety of character traits and actions that left me supporting no character and disliking what a number of them got up to.

Take Hepburn, for instance. It’s hard to like Sabrina when she remains so stubbornly fixated on her uncaring childhood crush. You just want her to grow up, to see some sense. She goes off to Paris for two years and comes back still in love with him, but this time she manages to snag him. You keep hoping she’s returned wiser; that she’s actually playing with him in some kind of revenge… but no, she’s just finally realising her misplaced dream. A bit of complexity here would’ve been welcomed — it would’ve been more interesting; it would’ve been more likeable.

Then there’s Humphrey Bogart. He plays the brother of said childhood crush, who sets about luring Hepburn away from him. Hm. Hepburn is playing 22; he was 55. At least his character is playing her, pretending to fall for her in order to get her away from his wastrel brother. But it actually feels very mean-spirited — Sabrina is likeable enough that we dislike his machinations. Which means that, for me anyway, there’s no truly supportable lead character. And then at the end he genuinely falls for her, which I found an equally implausible development — as well as seeming totally out of character, it did nothing to redeem what had come before. And he’s old enough to be her dad.

Sabrina has its moments — it’s got a top class cast and director, after all — but I had plenty of problems with it that niggled.

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