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Rocco Schiavone (2016)
Had potential but unevenly executed
Setting a muder mystery series in a beautiful setting is a common trope, and Italy is a beautiful country to use as a backdrop. Much of the charm of 'Inspector Montalbano' lay in its cliched but delightful portrait of Sicilain life; 'Rocco Schiavone' tries the same thing at the other end of the land, high in the Italian Alps, although its protagonist is not a happy native, but rather an unwilling exile. But many of the elements are the same: an irritable protagonist (who is nonetheless attractive to the ladies), and a comical collection of sidekicks (even the device of someone so dumb he can't even open a door properly is repeated). But the series didn't work the same magic for me. Montalbano was easily irritated but he could also be charming; Schiavone is just (at least in the early episodes) little more than a bad-tempered bully. We also see him in episode one orchestrate a massive theft (from a drugs raid) for his own profit; but he is still presented as sympathetic throughout. And there's a long and complex back story about the reasons for his exile, the murder of his wife (who appears as a ghost to him), and his relationship with a bunch of petty criminals from his past, but it's not developed with any precision: we have to wait till the end of series five before we are even told why he has ended up in Aosta. There's also a strange bit where he likens the people he meets to various species of animals, although he appears to have no other interest in natural history. After a while you get used to it, but it's all a bit random, the tone switching between comic and serious for no good reason. I liked 'Montalbano', and I loved 'Gomorra' (a very different type of programme); but this one left me cold, and not just because of its icy setting.
Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022)
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Eric Ravilious's paintings have a particularly English quality; but while they celebrate the English landscape, they in no way romaticise it. He later became a naval war artist, and died in Iceland while painting the fight against Hitler. This documentary, filled with many examples of his art, casts him as a boyish innocent, a man filled with simple excitement at the joys in his life, very much including his craft, albeit one who asked a lot of his (also talented) wife. If you like what you see in this film, the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden is a great place to see his work (and that of the other Great Bardfield artists).
Hollywoodgate (2023)
March of the joyless clowns
As the Americans abandoned Afghanistan, Ibrahim Nash'at went in, negotiating with a senior Tabliban official to film him as he took control of the national air force. Making this film was certainly a brave undertaking; but having seen it one is left wondering whether it was worth the effort. The world we are allowed to see appears devoid of both joy and competence (and maybe not coincidentally) utterly devoid of women; far from being the boys who've grabbed the sweetie jar, the new rulers of Kabul appear just a sad bunch of losers. When, however, we see the brigade of suicide bombers as part of a military parade, it's hard to extract even black humour. I hope the Afghani people eventually find freedom; but it's hard to see that coming any time soon.
Malcolm X (1992)
A story worth telling and told well
Biopics are usually pretty formulaic and boring; but some people had interesting lives, few more so than Malcolm X, a street hustler who fell in with a creepy religious group but somehow came to inspire self-belief and resistance in a generation of black Americans. At the time of his death, he had left the cult behind and was broadening (without compromising) his beliefs; for which the cult had him murdered. Aside from its choice of subject, this film also benefits from some smart directing from Spike Lee, who experiments a little with the form but without losing the narrative, and of course for the impressive (and career-making) performance of Denzil Washington in the lead role. The script, meanwhile, lionises its hero, but is also impressively frank about what he, and the Nation of Islam, stood for, for good and ill. There's even a cameo in the final scene that should make anybody smile.
Play for Today: The Elephants' Graveyard (1976)
A play about growing up
'Play for Today' used to be a fixture of the BBC schedules, one-off television dramas where many great writers, actors, and directors cut their teeth. 'The Elephants' Graveyard' attracts attention today mainly for the fact that it features a young Billy Connolly in a straight role. It's a charming piece, a story of a young man (Jon Morrison) who meets Connolly's character and spends a day together with him in the hills above Greenock, and is encouraged by the latter to think about the state of his life and what he plans to do with it next. In many ways it's dated, the story of a youth already feeling trapped by marriage and a child. But it's themes, of the difficulties of growing up and taking responsibility for oneself, are timeless. It's a slight story (in spite of a twist in the ending), but the camaraderie between the two men is nicely drawn.
Trump: The Criminal Conspiracy Case (2024)
Straightforward account of a crime, and an attempted coup
At this stage, there's not much left to say about the 2020 election. Donald Trump lost; he told his followers the results were rigged, and attempted to abuse the system in every way possible to stay in power. In the mouth of John Eastman, one of his most odious followers, his case even sounds plausible: if the election was being stolen from you, then extraordinary measures might be justified; but of course, the only steal was that being attempted by those claiming to be the victims of theft. After the failure to bring Trump to criminal justice, in a few days we may see a re-run with potentially terrible results.
As bestas (2022)
The horror
Rodrigo Sorogoyen's film 'The Beasts' is a horror story devoid of supernatural elements. A stubborn French couple gives their lives over to an idealistic eco-project in an impoverished Spanish village; but the locals hate them, and with an intensity that has no bounds; and what do you do if you have an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy you? But instead of cheap thrills, the movie proceeds with lengthy dialogues (or rather, monologues between two sides who prefer to talk than listen). The sense that something terrible is going to happen is inescapable; but this is an intelligent movie, for all the mounting dread. The only black mark on an outstanding film is the understated ending: I can understand why the story was stopped where it was, but it's somehwat abrupt and inconclusive.
The Man Who Definitely Didn't Steal Hollywood (2024)
Once Upon a Time in Italy, America, and France
The fun film begins by introducing us to a very ordinary-seeming elderly Italian man, albeit one whose townhouse, anonymous on the outside, proves suspiciously luxurious within. It turns out he once owned MGM. What then follows is an astonishing story about how he basically blagged his way to a billion dollar loan before everything came crashing down. But even today, both Perretti and his co-conspriator, now an equally anonymous elderly gentleman, deny doing anything wrong, and ask us to believe a story riddled with holes. An American prosecutor makes the point that no-one can do this kind of thing without a lot of cooperation, which in this case came from the French bank Credit Lyonnais, which for reasons that remain unclear was bizarrely keen to do big deals without any kind of due dilligence. Perretti's complete absence of interest in cinema (at one poin an interviewer has to explain 'Citizen Kane' to him) adds to the surreal feel.
Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher (2024)
A somewhat interesting look at an event anaesthetised by history
The Brighton bombing, which nearly killed Margaret Thatcher, then the British Prime Minister, was arguably the most audacious of all the I. R. A.'s terrorist endeavours. Forty years afterwards, this documentary lets some of those involved speak. It's somewhat interesting, but somewhat hagiogrpahic regarding Thatcher, while Patrick McGee, the bomber, is essentially unrepentant (although he has since developed a slightly odd mutual understanding with the daughter of one of the victims) and refuses to disclose any operational details. Ultimately, Thatcher and other senior members of her government all survived, relagating the incident retrospectively to just one of the numerous atrocities that occured during the Troubles. One can only hope that they never return.
Nostalgia (2022)
Thoughtful, low key, but the ending jars
In Mario Martone's low key film, a Neapolitan man (played by Pierfrancesco Favino), who has lived abroad for many years, returns to the impoverished neighbourhood where he grew up, and where his mother, and his demons, still live. The movie captures much of the feel of Naples and its poorer districts, and of the close-knit (but not necessarily happy) communities that live there. The ambiguity of feeling on both sides is convinving: this is the story of a man both a stranger and at home. But for me it loses a star because I found the ending jarring, and not completely justified by what had gone before.
Competencia oficial (2021)
Dryly hysterical
Penelope Cruz plays a pretentious film-maker in 'Offical Competition', a dryly amusing movie made by real-life directors Mariano Cohhn and Gaston Duprat. In the film-within-a-film, she casts two egotistical, male actors (played Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martinez) who, it's fair to say, do not get along. The interactions of this threesome are absurd but played deadpan; the movies of Peter Greenaway, whose work frequently and deliberately skated the edge of preposterousness, came to my mind, while the aesthetic owes much to Amoldovar. The film may not be to everyone's taste, but I liked it, and found it engaging in spite of its provocative theatricality.
The Project (2002)
Ends and means
All politicians have to compromise: put simply, it's part of the job. It becomes a problem when the end of power comes to justify any means. And while no organisation is going to be perfect, there were plenty of stories which didn't reflect well on Tony Blair's government, some of which were thinly fictionalised in 'The Project'. While one should understand that this story isn't the whole truth, the ruthless cynicism on display is quite depressing, in a film made before the Iraq war showed the dangers of the approach. The clever thing dramatically is that its the more ideallistic of the drama's two main protagonists who is ultimately shown as being able to live with the situation, and the more individualistic who is driven to quit. Two decades later, another new Labour government is similarly having to learn how to combine discipline and principles. One can only hope they will be more sucessful.
Peterloo (2018)
Death to the humans
Mike Leigh is known for movies mainly set on a small canvas, personal stories of families and friends. But in 'Peterloo', he attempts something rather grander, telling the tale of one of the most ignominious days in English history, when the army attacked a crowd of peaceful protesters, campaigning for the right to vote. Leigh conveys, with some success, the environment in which societal unrest grew, and the chaos of the eventual slaughter. He also has a lot of fun with the self-important orator Henry Hunt, ably portrayed by Rory Kinnear, who could have been made out as hero but who is instead treated with some disrespect. By not telling a single narrative, Leigh makes his political point well, although perhaps in consequence, the film is not quite as emotionally powerful as his finest works. It's still a welcome antidote to patriotic jingoism, and a reminder of what can happen if we fail to see our fellow citizens as human as ourselves.
The Zelensky Story (2024)
Compelling, though in awe of its subject
The election of an anti-politician rarely turns out well. Often they prove as corrupt as their predecessors; even if honest, they lack the skillset to sort out the problems that led their countries to turn to them. But when Ukraine chose a comedian famous for playing an everyman who became president in a popular television series to be their president for real, almost accidentally the country did the right thing - because when it was attacked by Russia, the people had a leader who was, authentically, one of them. The Zelensky story is amazing, and if Ukraine ever wins its war, it will be considered a fairytale. This documentary series, however, is very fawning: not one interview with a critic, not one hostile question directed at its subject. One feels that there's enough good stuff to genuinely say about the man not to need to pretend that he's perfect. In spite of this, the basic narrative is clear and compelling. As Europe faces facism reborn, Ukraine has a figurehead who can at least represent what we would like our leaders to be.
The Cops (1998)
Discomfitting and great
The world is full of TV cop shows; 'The Cops' is my favourite, and in some senses, it's barely a cop show at all. Instead, it's a raw, funny, character-led drama, about lonely people trying to hold it together on both sides of the law. It is a bit grim: we rarely see anyone happy, but the portraits that are painted are very rounded: it forces us to sympathise in one episode with someone who has acted unforgivably in the previous one. The cast are all great; the hand-held camera work feels a bit dizzying at times but adds to the air of realism. But above all else, there's a willingness to leave the audience discomfitted on display which few programes since had the courage to emulate. In my opinion, it's one of the best drama series ever made.
Blood Simple (1984)
Mature at birth
The Coen brothers have made a very varied collection of movies over the years, but stories of failed criminals are one of their more common staples, and their first movie 'Blood Simple' was in this vein, a grotesque, blackly comic tale of adultery, blackmail, deception, and murder. Although two of the four main protagonists are (relatively) blameless (at leasr compared to the other two), the mood is less one of heroes and villains and more one of sit back and watch the show (spoiler alert: only one of the four gets out alive). In spite of its lack of any overt sympathy for its characters, the film is sufficiently well put together to keep you watching. While I'm not the Coens' greatest fan, their mastery of their craft is apparent even at its birth.
The Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing 'The French Connection' (2000)
The interesting truth behind a great picture
'The French Connection' is a great movie, and in 1971 it was game-changing: had anyone made a thriller this gritty, this exciting before? This documentary, made in 1999 when most of those involved were still around to give interviews, tells the story of its making, and it's a good one: a real criminal investigation, the film's uncertain genesis, the difficult filming, the famous chase scene incredibly filmed live on the streets of New York. Not every film is interesting or significant enough to deserve a "making of" documentary, but this one merits it. And if you haven't seen the finished product, make sure you do.
Bastarden (2023)
More compelling than you might think
Superficially, it's not apparent that 'The Promised Land' should be any good. Based loosely on a true story, it's the story of the heroic efforts of one Ludwig Kahlen to cultivate the decidedly unpromising lands of the Danish heath; and of his good-verus-evil, life and death struggle with a psychopathic local noble who objects to anything happening on "his" land, even though technically it belongs to the Danish crown. But it's very well done. The tale of the fight for survival is grim and compelling; as is the character of the protagonist, a hard man who eventually softens. And while the villain is one-dimensional, the film works as a portrait of how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and makes the terrifying worst out of those who are blessed (or cursed) with it. Although he is a completely different sort of person, he scares the viewer in a not disimmilar manner to Nurse Rached. Mads Mikkleson is good as the settler, letting his face do the acting while playing a quietly but fiercely driven man.
Men (2022)
Ratchets up the tension, then throws it away
I like Alex Garland's films, but his ideas can be bigger than his plots can contain; and in 'Men', he gets it badly wrong. A woman, traumatised by the suicide of her manipulative ex-husband, takes a country vacation, only to be threatened by an increasingly menacing succession of men. It's classic slow-build horror territory (is this real, is it all in her mind?), but Garland has no sensible resolution. The men turn into literal monsters (albeit with strangely female methods of respawning) and our protagonist has to literally fight for her life (with the aid of first a knife and then an axe - one thing the film is not short on is blood). But this ending is actually less frightening than what has come before, and devoid of meaning. If you like the idea of a zombie movie in an English village setting, it might appeal, but for me, it palled as it went on.
Slutet på sommaren (2023)
Improves after a shaky start
A family with a dark past lies at the centre of Swedish drama 'End of Summer'. As with many thrillers, the story is somewhat contrived, but actually well put together: given what had happened, it makes broad sense that the characters think and acts as they do at the start of the tale, allowing the revealing of the mystery in a plausible and gripping way. Where it's less strong is how it gets the investigation going: the protagonist is a beautiful, brilliant grief therapist, who has taken up this career, bizarrely, because she has never overcome her own grief at the truamatic events of her youth. This is both hackneyed and ridiculous, and the early episodes feel very contrived. Only as the story moves on, and we can forget how it started, does it start to become compelling.
Watergate (1994)
Thorough and neutral
50 years on, Watergate remains the definitive political scandal, the one that brought down the President of the United States. In the age of Trump, it seems quite mild in perspective; although this documentary series doesn't mention the fact that an underlying motive for the burgulary ordered by Nixon may have been that he feared his opponents had evidence of his treason, derailing peace negotiations that the government was trying to arrange with the North Vietnamese. Norma Percy's programme was made 30 years ago, i.e, 20 years after the event: most of the participants were still alive then, and most willing to talk. Nixon did not participate but had already given his story in a previous interview with David Frost. The series is very business-like in its presentation: everyone says what they did, and apparently with little spin: we thus get a definitive account of what happened, but without much commentary on why it was done or bad, to what degree it was unprecedented, and so on. It's hard to feel sorry for Nixon, a malicious schemer, but it's hard not to feel nostalgic for a time when the rule of law was ultimately made to count.
This Much I Know to Be True (2022)
Background music
Nick Cave has had a long and remarkable career in music; but this programme is essentially just extended footage of him performing his songs with the camera as his audience. There are a few words of interview, and a little scence setting, but this is not the story of his life, or even any portion of it; and the songs themselves are all new ones. Personally, I love 'The Boatman's Call', and I have a friend who's a great admirer of his early, punkier sound, but his recent work feels pretentious and overly solemn to me. If you're not a hard core fan, this may be something to have on in the background.
Pompeii: The New Dig (2024)
Uncovering history
The story of Pomepeii, the Roman city preserved through its own destruction, will never cease to be fascinating. Much of the site remains unexcavated: modern standards mean work proceeds slowly, and one thing that stands out in this account of the biggest dig for years is quite how modest the objectives are: the uncovering of just one small city block. Even so, the dig still uncovers frescos (famously, one appearing to depict a pizza!), marble tables, reliefs, a mosaic floor, a fireplace and skeletons. The documentary breaks no new ground stylistically, but the literal breaking of ground it depicts keeps the attention nonetheless.
The Jetty (2024)
Twaddle
Many television crime dramas have fundamentally ridiculous plots; but few combine absurd plotting with such an air of pretend seriousness than 'The Jetty'. Our protagonist is a policewoman, a beautiful young widow, righteous in her hatred of the misogynist world she lives in, and more capable than any of her colleagues who she ignores in solving the crime all by herself. She's aided by a smug podcaster who says things like "Darkness does not exist. It's only the absence of light" and believes in her own profundity; and in general, the dialogue feels painfully inauthentic throughout. In the course of the investigation, a prime suspect emerges: the heroine's own deceased husband, but there's a twist in the tale: the actual killer was - wait for it - the heroine herself, who accidentally perpetrated a hit-and-run while high. Sadly, nothing is believable, and the clear intent to make a serious point about society only makes the actual plot seem even more absurd.
Play for Today: Country (1981)
A preminition of 'Successsion'
Great Britain, 1945. A rich, repressed, and generally dysfunctional family consider their futures as a Labour government takes power. Made in 1981, this play has just been rescreened, following another Labour election victory, and the recent death of Trevor Griffiths, its author. It's a well observed piece, and in spite of the seeming obviousness of the setup, actually quite a subtle one: in some ways, it feels like a prelude to a fuller story, setting a scene more than delivering a plot. It did make me think of 'Succession', which at much greater length deals with similar themes in a modern setting.