Vincente Minnelli | 104 mins | TV (HD) | U / G
“Oh dear,” is surely the initial reaction to Brigadoon. The Scottish accents are appalling, the costumes and setting gratingly twee, the Highlands recreated entirely on a soundstage. I wonder if many Americans visited Scotland in the wake of this film expecting to find such things? If they did, I imagine they were sorely disappointed.
But, importantly — and thankfully — it does grow on you as it goes on. The ill-conceived cast, costumes and studio-bound setting begin to pale under the charm of Gene Kelly and the machinations of the plot. Even the Scottish accents, though consistently dreadful, eventually become less irritating. The casting of Kelly and Cyd Charisse resulted in several musical numbers being dropped and a greater emphasis placed on dance. As I think has become apparent in some previous reviews, I’m not the biggest dance fan, but luckily Brigadoon contains no extended sequence to rival those I dislike in An American in Paris or Oklahoma!. Instead, the routines remain at the kind of length where I can still afford them some appreciation, and they are worthy of that.
The reveal that Brigadoon is a village stuck in time, only emerging from the fog for a single day every hundred years, is saved for the halfway point. It’s one of those occasions where, as a modern viewer, you know the twist and almost wonder why it takes so long to be revealed; equally, it doesn’t hamper proceedings in any meaningful way. In fact, the shock when (spoiler!) the film suddenly cuts to a busy, noisy New York for the final ten minutes is a bigger one. There’s a neat conclusion though, working its way around the film’s self-established rules without destroying them.
I think it’s fair to say this isn’t the greatest of musicals (though I know some might disagree). The poor realisation of Scotland takes some getting used to — and remains either irritating or amusing, depending on your mileage for such things — and generally there’s a dearth of particularly memorable songs or dances. But it’s not bad either, once things get underway.
My ultimate verdict is stuck somewhere between a 3 and a 4. I’ve erred on the generous side, again, because I liked it more than An American in Paris (which I also gave a 4) and I’m soft. I really need to stop giving every film I sort-of-quite-like a 4 though — a better scale/spread of ratings is needed on here, I feel.
I have no love for football. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’d certainly never heard of Brian Clough before this film came along. I didn’t even bother to put it on my list of 
an impressionist who can act a little, due to his penchant for playing real people with unerring accuracy — Kenneth Williams in 
Though this is Sheen’s show, the rest of the cast give able support. Most notable is Timothy Spall as Clough’s right-hand man, Peter Taylor, the quiet force behind Clough’s showy, mouthy public face. Their relationship is — in nasty modern parlance — a “bromance” (I apologise), a fact only underlined by the final scene. It may not be apparent until late on, but if the film is Clough then his relationship with Taylor is its heart. It’s a subtler role that Spall still manages to pull everything out of. Colm Meaney and Jim Broadbent are also noteworthy, as Clough’s unknowing rival and his increasingly exasperated chairman respectively.
and I seem to remember it in 
He’s put down the 
Relocated in the war years, the Musgrave manor is currently a home for convalescent soldiers, providing no end of potential suspects. Some may guess the culprit from the off, others will land upon them at other places throughout proceedings, but it seems to me there’s still enough going on to keep us guessing.
Back in this blog’s early days, I established the rule that where a different cut of a film was not significantly different to the original version it wouldn’t be counted towards my total (assuming I’d seen the original, that is — if it’s the first time I’ve seen any version of the film, it still counts). There’s no hard criteria for what counts as “significantly different” though. A couple of additional minutes? No. A lot of additional minutes? Yes. Where’s the line between “a couple” and “a lot”? No idea. Thus far, I’ve left it up to “a feeling”, perhaps not always correctly (the 
but other than that if you’d told me this was the cut I watched in cinemas I’d believe you. This longer cut doesn’t make the film better or worse, just less suitable for younger viewers.
It’s still riddled with flaws, mind. Some of the dialogue is fairly atrocious (but at least it’s only some); exposition is often blatant and repetitive (we’re told what the preferiti are three or four times in as many minutes); some of the deductive leaps are a bit much; and the whole antimatter bomb still seems scientifically suspect. It all depends how much you’re willing to forgive, really. In a similar vein, one of the most contentious issues of Dan Brown’s novels is his use of “truth”. He mixes well-researched fact with his own creation at will, often leaving you to wonder if what you’re hearing is pure truth, truth bent to the plot, or a total fabrication. But then this isn’t a history or art lesson, it’s a mystery thriller, and if one wants to know more I’m sure there are books to read and documentaries to watch.
Night at the Museum is fine. And by “fine” I mean less “of high quality… worthy of or eliciting admiration” and more “good; satisfactory”.
Perhaps it makes it a little disjointed — “here is our character-centric opening; here is the bit we actually wanted to make; here is an exciting climax” — but the tale still rattles by.
I like cake. It’s all soft and sweet and tasty. But I don’t like cake as much as Stephen Neale, the protagonist of Ministry of Fear.
Ministry of Fear isn’t really about cake, but the opening 20 minutes or so plays out more or less as above and it is rather amusing. Less amusing — and, in fact, part of the film’s biggest problem — is a ‘humorous’ epilogue that returns to the cake theme. I found it hilariously funny, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. The other part of the problem is the abrupt ending that immediately precedes this brief coda. On the bright side, everything is resolved and you can imagine the post-climax resolution scene for yourself, but it still leaves the tale’s telling cut short.
The train cake theft and chase, for instance, could be thoroughly laughable thanks to the cake element and what’s clearly a studio-built wood/wasteland, but it’s atmospherically shot and, in its main burst of genius, scored only by the drone of a Nazi air raid taking place overhead. It makes for a more tense and effective soundtrack than most musical scores manage.
I don’t imagine Bride & Prejudice is going to convert many people who aren’t already predisposed to liking it in some way. That’s not to say it’s not good or doesn’t have potential crossover appeal, but it still has a whole list of things that will put certain viewers off.
not to mention the numerous adaptations predating either of those, but Bride brings plenty that’s vastly different to the table. It converts the novel very accurately (as best I can tell, having only seen screen versions), retaining both the characterisation and the majority of the plot in a similar sequence of events.
Little of the plot requires such modification, perhaps thanks to the culture it’s been grafted onto — the predominance of arranged marriages wouldn’t really work in a ’00s British setting — and those bits which are changed are relatively minor. Lydia (here, Lakhi) runs off with Wickham for an afternoon at the London Eye, rather than eloping; Georgiana (here, the slightly more modern Georgina) was impregnated at 16, less legally complicated than the novel’s 15.
with conflicting or logic-less motivations and a quest structure that requires no skill (the titular Seeker has to find six ‘signs’ — i.e. little magic MacGuffins — a task which seems to involve waiting around until one falls into his hands, sometimes literally); Cunningham’s direction is over enthusiastic, throwing in jaunty angles and varied film speeds like it’s been outlawed to use a straight shot at 24 frames per second.
it’s easy to assume the good bits must have occurred by accident, or be left-overs from the novel. Equally, as most occur in the film’s second half, the damage has already been done. They also don’t negate the fact that exciting or inventive action scenes don’t make up for a plot that leaves them bereft of character development, emotion, or truly genuine thrills.
Matchstick Men ends with a twist. One of those great big changes-everything-you’ve-just-seen numbers that have a habit of making a film notorious. Yet I’m almost loath to mention it, because I’ve never read a review, preview, summary or what-have-you of the film that mentions there’s a twist. Maybe I’ve just been reading the wrong pieces; maybe no one cares; maybe they’re all just playing along trying to keep it secret. But not me, because I bloody hated it.
Twists are fine. Twists can be great. As I said, you can guess a twist is coming and it can still work. A really good twist works even when you know for certain it’s coming; its existence raises what you’ve seen, makes it all work even on repeated viewings when the element of surprise is obviously gone. Matchstick Men doesn’t have that kind of twist. It has the kind of twist that undermines everything you’ve just seen. Not because it’s illogical — it isn’t in the slightest — but because it tramples over the film’s emotional resonance, in my opinion.
Alison Lohman is also exceptionally good as a 14-year-old girl. It took a scene or two to convince me, but after that I was plenty on board with it. It occasionally takes some effort to remind yourself she was 24. As the third lead, Sam Rockwell plays a typical Sam Rockwell part. He does it very well, naturally, and there’s nothing to fault him on, but he’s been better elsewhere. The rest of the cast are absolutely fine but not exactly called on much — this is Cage’s film, and to a lesser extent Lohman’s. They have the emotional journey, the film’s heart-and-soul around its long(-ish) con ‘plot’ (which could just be lifted from any episode of Hustle… except it’s not even that complex). 
Matchstick Men was a lot better than I’d expected, because most of the coverage I remember shoved it aside as a middle-of-the-road side project for Scott. It’s definitely better than that, if still not the “sweep the Oscars” success 
If you happen to remember my (first) 
Elements and moments in this vein permeate the film: Nic Cage employing an Adam West Batman voice for Big Daddy; the black eyeliner required to complete his mask; the 
This, I suppose, could be seen as where it takes on 
and the humour keeps rolling too — so the (arguably) topsy-turvy themes of the tale ultimately serve as a “downbeat good-for-nothing makes good” story arc.
trying to lump himself in with those unfortunate souls who’ve suffered the emotional consequences of genuine internet bullying). I fall between the two camps on this one — that is to say, Tookey’s probably not a paedophile, but nor does the film set out to entice them. Vaughn said he cast Hit-Girl young to avoid sexualising her; if he’d cast a more physically developed 15-year-old, she would’ve been more suspect.
But, unlike their characters, they don’t tear it down with a baseball bat around the audiences’ head; by which I mean, they don’t spell it out in big idiot-friendly letters — “do you see why this is wrong? Do you see? Let me tell you again…” Instead, they let what occurs speak for itself. OK, the good guys do win in the end, and in a rather cool way — but would it be a more complete moral message if the grown man killed the little girl; if the hero got blown up by the bazooka? Perhaps it would; I don’t know; personally, I like it the way it is.
are deliberately extreme and provocative (but for a reason) — and the potential for audiences to misread the whole thing as “just cool”, and so have misread it themselves, as “just perverse”. I think that does the film a disservice.
or be wary that every viewer might be a paedophile or violent psycho?
100Films.co.uk 