Pursuit to Algiers (1945)

Posted on June 19, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #74
Roy William Neill | 62 mins | DVD | 4:3 | USA / English | U

After a fun opening where Holmes and Watson have to solve the world’s most obvious riddle (naturally, Watson is completely oblivious to there even being a riddle), the original dynamic duo are tasked with escorting the heir to the throne of somewhere-or-other back to his homeland, thwarting assassination attempts as they go.

In his production notes on the Optimum DVD release, Sherlockian Richard Valley describes the 12th film in the Rathbone/Bruce Holmes series as “the runt of the litter” — which it is — though he also declares that it “has its own peculiar charm… If it’s not in the same league as Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Scarlet Claw, neither is it a waste of time.” Of that I am less convinced.

Ostensibly, Sherlock Holmes stories are detective mysteries. In execution, they’re as often as not about the adventures of our heroes as much as they’re about the ins-and-outs of a case. The mystery is the glue that holds it all together, though. For about the first half, Pursuit to Algiers puts its pawns in place (getting Holmes, Watson and their charge on the boat to Algiers) and sets up its mystery: who is the assassin? About halfway through, Holmes and Watson stand around and very handily list all of the suspects… which just so happen to include pretty much every supporting character. So far, so good. However, it’s only a few minutes later that we actually find out the identity of the guilty party. If the mystery is the glue, then for me this is where the film comes unstuck.

So, Holmes has found out the identity of the assassins. Does he come up with an ingenious scheme to unmask them? Does he battle them and throw them overboard? Does he do anything at all about it? No. Instead, the rest of the film descends (further) into farce as Holmes lets the villains carry on with two or three assassination attempts, each of which he thwarts last-minute in sometimes amusing fashion. That’s not fundamentally a poor premise for an adventure comedy, I don’t think, but it doesn’t work for Sherlock Holmes. I mean, if you’re trying to prevent someone from being assassinated, why would you let the assassins carry on?! A last-minute twist reveals a sort of motivation, but it’s not a particularly convincing one in my book.

Even leaving the plot implausibility aside, I didn’t feel there was much else to recommend here. There’s altogether too much of Bruce buffooning around; there’s a half-arsed subplot about a jewel theft, seemingly tacked on so you could argue that there is a mystery in the film’s second half; and just generally, I didn’t think it hung together all that well.

Still, in a series where you’re churning out two or three a year, you’re allowed a couple of duds. Pursuit to Algiers is not completely without merit, but it’s certainly my least favourite Rathbone Holmes so far.

Pursuit to Algiers is on TCM UK today at 3pm and tomorrow at 1:45pm.

Blitz (2011)

Posted on June 17, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #58
Elliott Lester | 93 mins | TV | 16:9 | UK, France & USA / English | 18 / R

Jason Statham plays the kind of copper who wakes up on his sofa in the middle of the night, immediately pours himself a whiskey in a mug, then goes out and beats up three youths who were trying to nick a car, in this godawful crime novel adaptation.

The plot is something to do with someone killing police officers, seemingly at random, but don’t worry about that because there are multitudinous reasons not to bother watching it. It feels like it was made for TV in the ’70s — the quality of the dialogue, the attitudes, the performances, the visuals… Not just the ’70s, even, just any cheap “for blokes” production from before the millennium. Throwback entertainment can work — though we tend to call it “retro” and play it tongue-in-cheek — but Blitz just feels dated.

The writing is, unsurprisingly, awful. It’s adapted from the fourth novel in a series, which apparently explains why some of the supporting characters (Zawe Ashton’s in particular) engage in pointless subplots barely connected to the main narrative — in the novels, it’s an ongoing thread spanning multiple books. Why did it get left in? Presumably because writer Nathan Parker doesn’t know what he’s doing. He did also write the acclaimed Moon though, so who knows.

At least it has some so-bad-they’re-good one-liners — “Aren’t you going to take any notes?” “Do I look like I carry a pencil?” Unfortunately, their presence meant the thing Blitz most reminded me of was A Touch of Cloth, Charlie Brooker’s Naked Gun-esque police procedural spoof. After that notion embeds itself, the whole film feels like a straight-faced spoof, where nothing that occurs can possibly have been meant to be taken seriously.

Surprisingly, the cast is filled out with some really good (and/or recognisable) actors slumming it: David Morrissey, Paddy Considine, Aidan Gillen, Luke Evans, Mark Rylance. Yes, Mark Rylance. Mark “Wolf Hall” Rylance. Mark “greatest theatre actor of his generation” Rylance. Mark bleeding Rylance! Why, Mark? Why?!

The cast might make you think this is an above-average Jason Statham movie. It isn’t. In fact, even by the standards of Statham’s usual work, this is bad. Avoid it.

Blitz featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2015, which can be read in full here.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Posted on June 15, 2015 by badblokebob

Action comedy starring John Cusack as a hitman who has to face the life he left behind when he’s assigned a job in his hometown on the same weekend as his high school reunion.

In particular, he has to face the girl he abandoned on prom night. She’s played by Minnie Driver, when she was still kinda cute and indie rather than annoying and kinda diva-ish (see also: Good Will Hunting). Other delights: a hilarious supporting cast, including Dan Akroyd, Hank Azaria and Alan Arkin, and a fantastic ’80s-derived soundtrack.

Immensely entertaining, I was this close to giving full marks.

Grosse Pointe Blank placed 18th on my list of The 20 Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2015, which can be read in full here.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Posted on June 12, 2015 by badblokebob

The latest from cult auteur Wes Anderson, which managed that rare feat of enduring from a March release to being an awards season contender, sees the peerless concierge of a magnificent mid-European hotel (Ralph Fiennes) accused of murdering a rich elderly guest (Tilda Swinton, caked in Oscar-winning prosthetics) and attempting to flee across the country to clear his name. More or less, anyway, because this is a Wes Anderson film and so it takes in all kinds of amusing asides, tangents, and recognisable cameos.

The film has the feel of an artisan confection: candy-coloured, precisely designed and constructed, sweetly enjoyable, but with a hidden bite. Something like that, anyway. There are many praises to sing along these lines. The visuals are the most obvious. As is apparent even from the trailer, the shot composition is tightly controlled, squared-off but using that formalism to its advantage in various ways. I don’t know if this is always Anderson’s style (this is only the second of his films that I’ve seen, but it was similarly employed in the other), but here it works in ways almost indefinable.

The performances are just as mannered, and equally as fantastic for similar reasons: they exist within very specific constraints, but then push at their boundaries. Fiennes displays a perhaps-surprising flair for comedy in the lead role. Apparently Johnny Depp was Anderson’s initial choice — thank goodness that didn’t happen! You can completely see Depp in the part, bringing his rote whimsy to it, but how much more entertaining it is to have Serious Actor Ralph Fiennes going somewhat against type, and playing the role beautifully too. A host of familiar faces turn up in supporting roles that display various degrees of individualistic eccentricity, and there’s no weak link, but Fiennes is the stand-out.

I suppose the kooky idiosyncrasies of Anderson’s brand of storytelling and filmmaking will rub some viewers up the wrong way, looking on it all as vacuous affectations signifying nothing. To each their own, but, whatever the merits (or not) of Anderson’s style as a kind of one-man genre played out across his oeuvre, The Grand Budapest Hotel displays a synthesis of contributing elements that creates a movie that’s ceaselessly inventive, surprising, amusing, and entirely entertaining.

The Grand Budapest Hotel placed 10th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2015, which can be read in full here.

Violet & Daisy (2011)

Posted on June 2, 2015 by badblokebob

After winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Precious, Geoffrey Fletcher wrote and directed this zany hit-women movie. Or possibly he wrote it “in 1996, when everybody and their brother and their sister and their cousin twice-removed was trying to be Quentin Tarantino,” as Matt Zoller Seitz put it in his review for RogerEbert.com.

Indeed, the end result — which concerns two girl-ish assassins, played by Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan, in a chaptered narrative that’s mainly about their confrontation with a mark, played by James Gandolfini, who actually wants them to kill him — plays like Tarantino with a metric tonne of Quirk slathered over it. On the bright side, it’s sort of entertaining, albeit fundamentally derivative with a sheen of left-field try-hard wacky-uniqueness.

There are good performances from Gandolfini (in particular) and Ronan, who manage to pull some genuine empathy out of the oddness. Unfortunately, this aspect of character drama comes too late — the early part of the film trains us to expect a stylised genre movie, then suddenly shifts into a meditation on loneliness and death. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t gel. I’m all for tonal dissonance, but it needs to be handled correctly. Here, Fletcher either needs to settle on one or the other, or clearly signal his intentions earlier.

Violet & Daisy is a bit of a mess, but one that at least offers a worthwhile performance or two and some entertaining, inventive, if derivative, moments. The sheer scale of its self-conscious kookiness will just grate for some viewers, though.

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Posted on May 28, 2015 by badblokebob

The writer-director and star of In Bruges re-team for the former’s sophomore feature; and if that doesn’t sound oddball enough for you, the lead cast is rounded out by Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken. Zaniness is sure to ensue.

Colin Farrell is Marty, a screenwriter struggling with his new work (all he has is a title). Rockwell is his best friend, Billy, who kidnaps dogs and then returns them for the reward money. Walken is Hans, his associate in this enterprise, whose wife is dying of cancer. Harrelson is Charlie, a violence-inclined mob boss who loves his Shih Tzu, Bonny… which brings trouble to everyone’s door when Billy dognaps her (of course).

So, the inciting incident is Billy taking the Shih Tzu. The film’s US tagline was, “They Won’t Take Any Shih Tzu”. I get the pun, but c’mon, there must be a version of it that makes sense!

The film itself is similarly laden with decent ideas that somehow just miss the mark. It feels sloppily told — not badly made, but awkwardly put together. There are some hilarious bits scattered about, which do at least make it feel worthwhile, but in between there’s so much darn filler. It needs a good trim. Heck, it needs a good structure. Writer-director Martin McDonagh seems to think he can get away with this, and plentiful other storytelling oddities, mainly via references to Farrell’s endeavours to pen a movie called, you guessed it, Seven Psychopaths. One wonders if there’s a hefty dose of autobiography in the writer’s struggle…

Perhaps this explains why McDonagh has produced a screenplay that feels kinda dated — with its talkative characters, violent crime story, and irreverent humour, it’s all very post-Tarantino. 20 years on from Reservoir Dogs, isn’t it time for something else? As Hans puts it when they’re all striving to improve Marty’s screenplay, “You’re the one who thought psychopaths were so interesting. They get kinda tiresome after a while, don’t you think?”

Seven Psychopaths has its merits — some bits are very funny indeed, even if they’re fleeting — but your tolerance for shaggy dog stories will determine how much enjoyment you get out of it. As a follow-up to the genius of In Bruges, it’s nought but a disappointment.

The UK TV premiere of Seven Psychopaths is on Channel 4 tonight at 10pm.

Bullet to the Head (2012)

Posted on May 27, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #70
Walter Hill | 88 mins | TV | 1.85:1 | USA / English | 15 / R

I had absolutely zero intention of ever watching this Sylvester Stallone vehicle (which is not to be confused with John Woo’s Bullet in the Head, of course), but then I saw a trailer on a Blu-ray and it looked like it might be funny and passable dumb-action fun. My respect to whoever edited that trailer, because neither of those elements are significant features of the full film.

Adapted from a French graphic novel (no, really — it’s called Du plomb dans la tête), the story casts Stallone as a hitman whose partner is killed by order of their employer, which is what brings him into contact with cop Kwon (the Fast & Furiouses’s Sung Kang), whose former partner was also killed by the same chap. (Actually, he was killed by Stallone; and they weren’t partners any more because the guy went corrupt, or something. My point is, the partners parallel is an angle that gets pithily highlighted in marketing and reviews, but is barely touched in the film itself.) Reluctantly teaming up, they set out to find out who’s behind it all.

At times, you get the impression that director Walter Hill (who also performed uncredited re-writes) wants this to be a noir tale: there’s a hardboiled voiceover, a story mired in corrupt officials, twists about who to trust, and so on. But these elements are only fleeting (including that voiceover), never building a consistency where you could plausibly claim it as any kind of neo-noir. Instead, it’s more of a buddy movie in the ’80s mould. There are multiple scenes of Stallone and his new chum just driving around chatting, often in a gently racist way, all of which is clearly striving for that amusing, loveable, buddy movie vibe. It doesn’t reach it — it’s not funny, or likeable, and it just feels like a shoehorned aside from the plot.

Said plot all comes down to a final fight, Stallone vs Jason Momoa (of Game of Thrones and the Conan reboot), who’s technically the henchman but serves as the primary antagonist. In the film’s closest move to originality, they duel with fire axes. It’s a fairly worthwhile dose of combat, if you enjoy that kind of thing, but even then isn’t worth watching the whole film for.

It comes to something when your production logos gimmick is the most interesting thing about your movie, but Hill has even bluntly stated in an interview that “we’re not breaking new ground. We’re trying to be entertaining within a format that’s familiar.” Talk about setting your sights low! And, indeed, low is all they achieved.

Bullet to the Head is on Film4 tomorrow at 9pm.

Robot & Frank (2012)

Posted on May 20, 2015 by badblokebob

In “the near future”, Frank (Frank Langella) is an ageing jewel thief in denial about his dementia, contenting himself with visits to the local library, which is being taken over by a bunch of yuppies to turn into “the library experience”, and shoplifting from the beauty store that used to be his favourite restaurant. Concerned for his wellbeing, his son (James Marsden) gets him some home help in the form of a humanoid robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard). Initially reluctant to accept its presence, when the robot attempts to help by also shoplifting from the beauty store, Frank senses an opportunity…

Ostensibly a science-fiction movie, complete with futuristic-looking cars, a casual robotic presence, and glass-like tablets and smartphones, Robot & Frank is really a drama about, amongst other things, old age. The SF elements provide an interesting angle, of course, and this is a well-imagined very-near-future world (it was inspired in part by current attempts in Japan to develop robots specifically to care for the elderly), but the film’s joys and illuminations lie outside the sci-fi elements. Asimovian concepts of robot self-awareness/consciousness are touched upon, but they’re in service of one of the film’s central themes/stories rather than as an end to itself.

Where the film is most effective is in the friendship between Frank and his robot. Some have described it as a buddy movie, and while it doesn’t offer the rollicking action and humour that tag normally implies, it’s not a wholly inaccurate label. When Frank’s daughter (Liv Tyler) suddenly appears home halfway through and turns the robot off (part of a half-realised almost-subplot about robot rights, or something), we not only feel Frank’s (temporary) loss of his friend, but also urge the film to turn the robot back on and get back to what’s really making the movie work. The event serves a purpose (it’s the point Frank realises he’s stopped just putting up with the damn robot and actually come to appreciate its presence), but still.

The heist elements, played up in some of the film’s marketing, probably to make it sound exciting, are actually rather low-key. Burglary would be a more accurate term. What I’m trying to say is, don’t expect Ocean’s Eleven with an old man and his robot sidekick. There are altogether different delights, including a wry sense of humour that surfaces rarely enough to lend the ‘gags’ extra emphasis but frequently enough to keep the amusement ticking over (avoid the trailer, it contains one of the best laughs). The emotional bond that develops is affecting, in the subtly-built way that you may not see coming. When the end rolls around, you may even feel a tear in your eye.

Robot & Frank is the kind of film that should appeal outside of apparent genre constraints — heck, the way technology’s going, it might not be that long before it’s just a straight-up drama. Equally, this is of a branch of science-fiction we see all too rarely on the big screen, but which is fertile ground for those wishing to explore it: using fantastical concepts to explore and enlighten our own world. Even if you learn nothing revelatory about old age and the rigours of dementia, the friendship between the robot and Frank is reason enough to enjoy.

The UK TV premiere of Robot & Frank is on BBC One tonight at 11:15pm. It’s available on BBC iPlayer until 1:40am on Thursday 28th May.

Killing Them Softly (2012)

Posted on May 10, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #57
Andrew Dominik | 93 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 18 / R

As presidential nominee Barack Obama talks about the American Dream, in a run-down corner of the nation a trio of small-timers plot a robbery, landing them in hot water with some nasty people.

Writer-director Dominik uses news audio about the financial crisis to comment on the plot, an inclusion somewhere between neat dramatic irony and heavy-handed affectation. He gets better mileage from the mundane mechanics and economics of organised crime, but it’s small consolation among flabby storytelling: pointless subplots; flashy camerawork that contains little weight or meaning (ironically); even well written and performed scenes eventually drag, outstaying their welcome.

Disappointing.

Killing Them Softly is on Film4 tonight at 10:55pm.

The Sugarland Express (1974)

Posted on April 27, 2015 by badblokebob

Steven Spielberg’s second feature (or “first” if you’re American) is based, loosely, on a true story. The fictionalised version sees Lou Jean (Goldie Hawn) breaking her husband (William Atherton) out of prison so they can travel cross state to liberate their baby from foster care. Everything goes smoothly until they accidentally kidnap a police officer (Michael Sacks), hundreds of police cars begin to follow them, and a multi-day slow-paced chase ensues.

It’s probably not obvious from the whole prison break/kidnap/true story thing, but The Sugarland Express is more of a comedy than a thriller. The ludicrousness of the situation is ramped up, though Spielberg keeps it grounded enough that you can believe it was real, and with an undercurrent of potential violence from the police that suggests a tragic ending may be unavoidable. Credit also to the cast for maintaining this balance, in particular Hawn, for who this was a breakout role. She’s naïve and optimistic without being too annoying, her comedic airheadedness weighed against an earnest belief that she’s doing the right thing for her child and that it’s all going to work out in the end.

Spielberg makes full use of the 2.35:1 frame’s width, which means that, viewed on broadcast TV at 16:9, it’s often noticeably cropped (this having been made before the time when filmmakers became contractually obliged to keep their compositions “TV safe”). The camerawork is frequently extraordinary, including at least one unbroken shot where the camera moves around inside and outside the car, like something out of Children of Men — only done for real in a moving vehicle, unlike Alfonso Cuarón’s soundstage-based hidden-cuts version.

Largely overlooked these days, I guess because it doesn’t obviously fit with Spielberg’s renowned sci-fi, adventure, and worthy-historical pictures, The Sugarland Express merits more attention. Tonally, and in terms of the level of directorial skill it exhibits, it fits right amongst the pack of his better-remembered works. Not his best picture, but able to stand confidently alongside his numerous very-good ones.

The Sugarland Express is released on standalone Blu-ray (as are the three other films previously available exclusively in the Steven Spielberg Director’s Collection box set) next Monday, May 4th.

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