Jack Couffer | 88 mins | TV | U / G
Living Free is, in many ways, a tale of obsession. I’m certain that wasn’t Joy Adamson’s intention in writing the book, and I don’t think it’s the filmmakers’ intention either, but the facts can still play that way. The Adamsons devote months of their time, give up a promising career, spend all their savings, drive themselves into debt, and are nearly killed several times, all in a frequently-extreme effort to save three delinquent lion cubs who would be put down were it not for their sentimental attachment.
Picking up immediately where Born Free left off — with literally the same shot, in fact — Living Free proceeds to recap the first film, inserting new actors Susan Hampshire and Nigel Davenport into footage from the predecessor. Watched 24 hours after the original, this feels like so much padding, but viewed in isolation — or six years later, as this was first released — it’s probably a useful primer. It also allows a chance to recap some of Born Free’s finer wildlife moments, including the cubs wrecking the house and the marvellous head-butting warthog. I love the head-butting warthog.
The rest of the story moves into What Happened Next territory: Elsa dies, the Adamsons’ obsession with finding and saving her cubs begins. The film skips the book Living Free, adapting threequel Forever Free instead, presumably for dramatic reasons — I imagine Elsa and cubs just living isn’t as much of a Story as her death and subsequent events.
Much of the film again plays like a documentary, particularly the sequences where Joy imagines what the cubs may have been up to during the weeks they were missing. Even after decades of excellent work by the BBC Natural History Unit, producing hundreds of hours of exceptional documentaries, the wildlife photography here is still often stunning. Stand-outs include one of the cubs playing with, and then being attacked by, a snake, or a slow-motion chase sequence which shows the beauty of both the lion and… whatever it’s chasing… (look, I’m no expert.) It may not have the same charm as the first film’s playful antics, but it’s by no means devoid of spectacle.
Living Free isn’t as endearing as Born Free. By the very nature of trying to keep the cubs wild, they’re less relatable than Elsa and consequently we become less attached to them. As you may’ve guessed, I found it more interesting to look on the film as a story of obsession, one that threatens to ruin the Adamsons’ lives, though ultimately it has an upbeat ending.
That said, nothing the film could have told (while sticking to the facts, that is) would rival the real-life tragedies that were to come: the Adamsons eventually grew apart, Joy was murdered by a former employee in 1980, and George was shot by bandits in 1989. It’s a sad end for a pair who, for all their faults, devoted their lives to doing good.
Born Free tells the true story of Joy and George Adamson, a Senior Game Warden in 1950s Kenya, who adopted three lion cubs after mistakenly killing their mother. Though they give two away to a zoo, Joy can’t bear to part with one, Elsa, and so they raise her — until circumstances force them to part with her. Despite Elsa’s age, Joy insists they try to release her into the wild rather than send her to a zoo.
Then there are the other animals, including elephants (always wonderful) and the Adamsons’ adorable pet… rodent… (look, I’m no expert.) Best of all is a head-butting warthog, who has instantly become my favourite film animal. The entire film was worth that sequence.
Notorious for having numerous cuts forced upon it by censors, over 40 years after its initial release Witchfinder General — now uncut — seems almost tame. But gore and sadistic violence certainly aren’t the main attractions — there’s a lot more to the film than that.
shot against Reeves’ wishes, featuring needlessly topless wenches. This is the cut shown by the BBC.)
Witchfinder General is more action-adventure than horror.
Best of all is the witchfinder himself, excellently portrayed by horror stalwart Vincent Price. Indeed, all the credit may lay with him, because it’s his line deliveries and uncertain looks that make the character conflicted early on, a man who may believe he is genuinely doing good for Christian values, but is seduced down darker paths by money, power, lust, and the prospect of revenge. When he allows himself to be lured to Sara’s bedroom as payment for leniency on her uncle, we’re uncertain if he’ll take what’s intended or use her loose ways as proof of witchery. That it’s the former quickly indicates how seriously he takes his espoused Christianity.
to near-silhouette levels of blackness. It’s even less convincing than that fake blood. I enjoyed the score too. A completely new one was written for the US release, but I presume this was the original because it was slightly calmer and more haunting than one might expect from an action-adventure-horror movie (which I presume was the reasoning for the replacement).
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 
Public Enemies came out nearly a year ago now, and I remember two things about its release: firstly, that the first review I saw was Empire’s, which 
What it brings here is an unusual quality. It’s clearly fiction, of course, albeit fiction based on fact, and there are still plenty of extravagant angles and editing so that you’re never in danger of thinking Mann is trying to pass this off as a documentary. But couple the raw cinematography with a meticulous attention to period detail, with a sound mix that is consciously rough and real, and you get a sense that this is how it was — it’s not a glossified movie version, it’s a How It Was one. Public Enemies is to the old gangster film as 
The characters do and don’t lack depth. The relationship between Dillinger and Billie is a significant part of the film, receiving roughly equal attention to Dillinger’s criminal deeds — it’s his final words to her that close the film, not his death. Christian Bales’ G-man, Melvin Purvis, on the other hand, is less developed, but to say he lacks any character is to do Bale’s performance a disservice. Behind Purvis’ blunt dialogue and stolid manner, and in slight gaps and lapses around it, one gets a sense of the true man and his real thoughts. The postscript — that he resigned from the FBI a year later and ultimately took his own life — reinforces and confirms the subtleties Bale injects into the performance.
Mann does his best, cutting around Dillinger in the movie theatre, the bizarrely-apt film he’s watching (this isn’t dramatic licence — Dillinger really saw 
is largely well converted to a dramatic piece, if occasionally a little episodic (as is the way with all biopics) and overlong towards the end.
Before 
The scene the day after Jack saves Rose — where they have a natter on deck and she looks at his art for the first time; aka the primary scene for their falling for each other — is particularly weakly written. “Oh Jack, the plot requires me to look at your drawings now, so please hand them over.” The dialogue’s not actually that bad, but it’s bloody close.
And Leo is pretty-boy Leo. I’m not saying he’s not a talented actor — that was something he’d shown before Titanic and has certainly proven since, though everyone seemed to forget it in the late ’90s — but Jack Dawson is hardly a tricky task for him. Clearly he looks beautiful, has the loveable rogue thing down, and that’s job done.
Indeed, Titanic’s literally phenomenal success, and the subsequent abundance of spoofs and homages across all media in the decade-and-a-bit since, is an obstacle for any new viewer. One can’t watch Jack declare “I’m the king of the world!” without thinking of Cameron’s much-derided Oscar speech; can’t watch Jack and Rose ‘flying’ without thinking of any number of piss-takes; and French and Saunders spring to mind quite all over the place.
In an age where Henry VIII is young, slim and sometimes irritatingly called “Henry 8”, not to mention more interested in shagging every young girl he can find than in, well, anything else, it’s somewhat refreshing to return to a time when he was always older, fatter and more interested in polishing off a huge slab of meat than seeing his wife. OK, so they call him “Heinrich VIII”, but at least that’s because this production team spoke a different language.
Culloden tells the story of the 1746 battle — famously, the last fought on British soil — and the events that followed it, as if it were covered by a modern TV news report (albeit a feature-length one).
For All Mankind tells the story of NASA’s Apollo missions to the Moon using only NASA’s own footage of the real missions.
In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of NASA’s Apollo missions using only contemporary footage and the words of the men who actually walked on the Moon.
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