Bean

 Year of Release:  1997

Director:  Mel Smith

Screenplay:  Richard Curtis and Robin Driscoll, based on the television series Mr. Bean created by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson

Starring:  Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, Pamela Reed, Harris Yulin, Sandra Oh, Burt Reynolds

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Comedy

Mr. Bean (Atkinson) is a well-meaning but clumsy and accident prone security guard at the National Gallery in London.  Unable to fire him, the gallery's board of directors select Bean as their representative to oversee the transfer and unveiling of the painting of Whistler's Mother by James McNeill Whistler to the Grierson Gallery in Los Angeles.  The Grierson's curator, David Langley (MacNicol) his impressed by Bean's false profile and offers to accommodate him at his family home, much to the displeasure of his wife, Alison (Reed), and his two children.  However, Bean's inadvertent ability to create absolute chaos threatens to ruin everything for David.

Mr. Bean started out as a British television sitcom which ran for 15 episodes between 1990 and 1995.  The series was hugely popular bit in Britain and around the world, due in no small part to the fact that the series was almost entirely free of dialogue.  The comedy was entirely physical, and the almost non-existent dialogue really had nothing to do with the episode's plot.  In the film there is dialogue and also a plot.  Mr. Bean would speak in strange, strangulated voice and, true to the series, he does have very little dialogue, and the humour is also mostly slapstick, physical comedy.  It's not a bad film, but it's not a good one either.  It's a fine enough film to pass the time, and it is funny, but it's not really something that will stick in the memory.  Rowan Atkinson is a very talented physical comedian, the problem is that the character of Mr. Bean is great for a half hour TV show, but spread out over an hour and a half it's just too much.  Peter MacNicol provides a good counterpoint to Mr. Bean's clowning as the harried, put upon curator.  

  Rowan Atkinson in Bean

Wake in Fright

 Year of Release:  1971

Director:  Ted Kotcheff

Screenplay:  Evan Jones, based on the novel Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook

Starring:  Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay

Running Time:  109 minutes

Genre:  Drama, thriller, psychological horror

John Grant (Bond) is a young schoolteacher who has been forced to accept a post at a tiny school in Tiboonda, a remote town in the arid Australian outback, in order to pay back a student loan from the Government.  On his way for a break in Sydney, John is forced to have a stop over in the rough mining town of Bundanyabba (known by the locals as "The Yabba").  When he discovers a local gambling craze, John sees a way to win enough money to pay back the loan and escape the outback.  However it goes badly wrong, and John finds himself trapped in The Yabba, with nothing left but drinking, gambling, fighting and hunting.

This film almost feels like a post-apocalyptic science fiction film.  It is almost a sensory experience in that the blistering heat, dust, and smell of sweat and beer practically radiates off the screen.  Almost every frame has the feel of violence just waiting to be unleashed.  John finds himself in an almost inescapable cycle because there is really nothing to do in the town is drink, and almost the stock greeting is offering to buy you a drink and the worst thing you can do is refuse an offer of a drink.  He is also trapped in the macho culture of the town.  John looks down on the people of The Yabba when he arrives.  He is a middle-class, educated city guy and believes that he is better than the rough, boozing, fighting working-class people of the town, but finds that he has more in common with them than he thought.  His dark angel is Clarence "Doc" Tydon (played by Donald Pleasence), an alcoholic medical professional who has wound up in The Yabba and stays in a run down shack,  and provides John with a glimpse of his possible future.  

The film is notable for it's brutal kangaroo hunting sequence, which features footage of kangaroos actually being shot, and is extremely hard to watch.  It is a necessary and powerful film though and provides a striking look at toxic masculinity.  The master print of the film had gone missing and so for several decades the only versions available were poor quality, cut prints.  However original film and sound elements have been recovered, and the film has been now restored, and is now regarded as a classic of Australian cinema and praised by Martin Scorsese and Nick Cave.

Donald Pleasence and Gary Bond in Wake in Fright
       

A Night to Remember

 Year of Release:  1958

Director:  Roy Ward Baker

Screenplay:  Eric Ambler, based on the book A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Starring:  Kenneth More, Michael Goodliffe, Laurence Naismith, Honor Blackman, Kenneth Griffith, David McCallum, Tucker McGuire, Frank Lawton

Running Time:  123 minutes

Genre:  Drama

In 1912 the luxurious passenger liner RMS Titanic, the largest vessel afloat and widely believed to be unsinkable, sets sail on it's maiden voyage from Britain to America.  During the voyage, however it strikes an iceberg, in one of the most famous maritime disasters in history.

While this lacks the spectacle and production values of James Cameron's Titanic (1997), this is widely regarded by historians and survivors as the most accurate version of the famous disaster.  It's filmed in a documentary style with a large ensemble cast.  It moves from the opulent splendour of First Class, to the cramped, crowded Steerage, who are more or less abandoned to their fate.  We also see the reactions of the nearby ships, the only ship to render any assistance is too far away to do anything but collect survivors, and one ship that is very near is oblivious to their distress calls.  The cast do occasionally come across as comically upper class and the upper lips are as stiff as cardboard, but there are some good performances from a number of notable British actors including Honor Blackman, David McCallum and a very early, uncredited appearance from Sean Connery.  The film is most effective in it's quiet moments and cumulation of telling details.    While the special effects look crude by modern standards, the sequences of the ship sinking are still effective.

A Night to Remember

"The Unsettled Dust" by Robert Aickman

Year of Publication:  1990

Length:  362 pages

Genre:  Horror, fantasy, short stories

During his lifetime English author Robert Aickman was probably best known as a conservationist, helping to set up the Inland Waterways Association to preserve canals in Britain, but after his death in 1981 at the age of 66, his reputation has grown as an author of unique skill.  The Unsettled Dust, which was published posthumously, contains eight of his forty eight horror stories (or "strange stories" as Aickman preferred to term them).  

In "The Unsettled Dust" a visitor to an old dust-shrouded English country house, finds something there even more sinister than the two creepy sisters who live there; in "The Houses of the Russians" a man recounts how he found a magical talisman on a forbidden island in Finland; in "No Stronger than a Flower" an unhappy woman undergoes bizarre changes after a visit to a sinister beautician; in "The Cicerones" a tourist comes to regret his visit to a remote Belgian church; in "The Next Glade" a woman is haunted by a strange man she meets at a party; in "Ravissante" a young artist has a disturbing experience when he visits the elderly widow of a famous painter; in "Bind Your Hair" a woman meets some strange new friends when she visits her boyfriend's family in their remote country village; and in "The Stains" a bereaved man falls in love with a strange young woman, and loses far more than his heart.

Robert Aickman wrote beautiful prose.  His stories are well crafted, with psychologically complex characters in a carefully described, mundane world, that become increasingly strange and disturbing, until the characters are trapped with no way out.  Even at the end of the stories, it's unclear whether it is really the end.  Often the darker elements in the stories are hinted at and are more ambiguous than explicit, and very little is actually explained.  The stories have a genuinely disquieting feel to them, and some of them are really genuinely scary.  Recommended for fans of intelligent supernatural horror.  

Event Horizon

 Year of Release:  1997

Director:  Paul W. S. Anderson

Screenplay:  Philip Eisner

Starring:  Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Sean Pertwee, Jason Isaacs, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy

Running Time:  92 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction, horror

In the year 2047, the rescue vessel Lois and Clark is on a mission to retrieve the experimental spacecraft Event Horizon which vanished on it's maiden voyage seven years previously and has suddenly reappeared above Neptune.  Upon investigation it turns out that the Event Horizon is intact, but the crew have been brutally massacred.  It soon becomes apparent that the Event Horizon's revolutionary new gravity drive which allows the ship to travel vast distances by using a sort of artificial black hole to bridge two points in space.  However, the ship has travelled further than was ever planned and has brought something back with it.

This gruesome blend of science-fiction with supernatural horror is an enjoyable slice of "B"-grade hokum.  very heavily influenced by Alien (1979), The Shining (1980) and Hellraiser (1987), as well as Don't Look Now (1973) and Solaris (1972).  The plentiful special effects haven't aged well, the storyline is very derivative and the dialogue is pretty cheesy, however it does have some impressive production design and strong performances from a solid cast.  The film had a difficult production history, was heavily cut by it's studio, and was a critical and commercial flop when it was first released in August 1997, however it has had something of a reappraisal since and is now a major cult film.  It's a consistently entertaining film, which moves quickly and never gets dull.  For some gory late night escapism, this really does the job.  

     Event Horizon

Dr. No

Year of Release:  1962

Director:  Terence Young

Screenplay:  Richard Maibaum, Johanna Hawood, Berkely Mather, based on the novel Dr. No by Ian Fleming

Starring:  Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord, Anthony Dawson, Zena Marshall, John Kitzmiller, Eunice Gayson, Bernard Lee

Running Time:  109 minutes

Genre:  Thriller, action

British secret agent James Bond (Connery) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a diplomat and his secretary in Kingston, Jamaica.  Quickly becoming a target himself, Bond's investigations lead him to a mysterious private island owned by the sinister Dr. No (Wiseman).

This adaptation of Ian Fleming's 1958 novel Dr. No has a place in cinema history as the first film to feature British super-spy James Bond, and the inaugural instalment of one of the most influential and popular film franchises in cinema history which has chalked up 25 films to date.  Produced on a low budget the film's mix of action, adventure, high living, exoticism and a dash of eroticism made it a huge hit with British audiences in the grey early 1960s. Mixing charisma, intelligence and sex appeal with a strong thread of ruthless brutality, Sean Connery became the quintessential James Bond, and is arguably still the best, and "Bond Girl" Ursula Andress has one of the most iconic entrances in cinema coming out of the tropical sea clad in a bikini.  Unlike most of the later Bond films, this is relatively faithful to Fleming's novel, and, even though the series didn't really hit it's stride until the third film, Goldfinger (1964), it does introduce sone of the elements that would become hallmarks of James Bond, including the trademark "gun barrel" opening, the rousing theme by John Barry, stylish title sequence, elaborate secret lairs for the villain, and the flirtatious banter between Bond and secretary Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell).  As with most of the Bond films, this is a bit problematic by today's standards, and it also suffers from having a fairly bland villain in Dr. No, who barely appears in the film.  It remains a hugely enjoyable adventure film though, and a fantastic slice of escapist entertainment.

     Bond... James Bond:  Sean Connery in Dr. No

Emma.

 Year of Release:  2020

Director:  Autumn de Wilde

Screenplay:  Eleanor Catton, based on the novel Emma by Jane Austen

Starring:  Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Josh O'Connor, Callum Turner, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, Bill Nighy, Gemma Whelan

Running Time:  124 minutes

Genre:  Period, comedy-drama

In Regency-era England, the wealthy young Emma Woodhouse (Taylor-Joy) enjoys meddling in the love lives of her friends, while having no intention of getting married herself.  Emma soon learns, however, that despite her best efforts, her matchmaking plans often make things far worse.

This film is based on the 1815 novel by Jane Austen.  I have never read the book and so can't comment on how faithful this adaptation is.  The film opens with Emma being described as "handsome, clever and rich", which is a perfect description of the film.  Visually it is sumptuous with every frame practically looking like something you could clip out and put on the wall, while the stories direction and the ultimate end is never really in doubt, it is a witty script, and the whole thing feels like a gorgeous cinematic confection.  Anya Taylor-Joy is perfect in the lead, giving a captivating, spirited performance.  Johnny Flynn as Emma's foil Mr. Knightley, the only one who challenges her on her schemes.  Mia Goth gives depth and heart to her role as Emma's friend, and accidental victim of her schemes.  There s also good support form established British comic actors such as Miranda Hart, Bill Nighy and Gemma Whelan.  I'm not sure how Jane Austen fans will feel about the film, but I found it a hugely enjoyable diversion.

Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy in Emma.

Metropolitan

 Year of Release:  1990

Director:  Whit Stillman

Screenplay:  Whit Stillman

Starring:  Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols, Allison Parisi,  Dylan Hundley, Isabel Gillies, Bryan Leder, Will Kempe

Running Time:  98 minutes

Genre: Comedy, drama

Over the Christmas season in New York City, middle-class socialist Tom Townsend (Clements) accidentally gets mixed up with "The Sally Fowler Rat Pack", a group of wealthy, young socialites, who spend their time going to debutante balls, endless afterparties and trying to hook up with each other.  Despite his initial objection to their conspicuous wealth and materialism, Tom soon finds himself drawn into the circle.

This marked the debut of writer-director Whit Stillman, who became quite a shining star on the American Indie scene during the 1990s.  This is basically F. Scott Fitzgerald updated to the 1990s.  Not much really happens plot-wise, one of the group falls in love with Tom, who doesn't reciprocate her affections because he is in love with someone else.  Everyone is young, beautiful, rich and witty.  Although it does gently satirise it's characters, how much you enjoy the film will really depends on how much you can connect with these extremely privileged, white, one-percenters.  The film is funny in places and the Oscar-nominated screenplay is quite clever, and the mostly unknown cast do well.  I kind of liked it, but it could have done with more bite.

Welcome to The Sally Fowler Rat Pack in Metropolitan

Dad's Army

 Year of Release:  1971

Director:  Norman Cohen

Screenplay:  Jimmy Perry and David Croft, from an idea by Jimmy Perry, based on the television series Dad's Army created by Jimmy Perry and David Croft

Starring:  Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, Clive Dunn, John Laurie, James Beck, Arnold Ridley, Ian Lavender

Running Time:  95 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, war

During World War II it looks increasingly likely that the Nazis will invade Britain, and so the British Government create a volunteer militia made up of those men who are unsuitable for drafting into the regular Army, mostly due to age (hence they were nicknamed "Dad's Army" by regular troops).  They were originally dubbed the Local Defence Volunteers, and later the Home Guard.  Their job was basically to be a last line of defence in the event of an invasion.  At the small town of Walmington-on-Sea, on the south-east coast of England, the local Home Guard, under the command of pompous bank manager George Mainwaring (Lowe) make up in enthusiasm what they lack in equipment, skills and common sense.

The television sitcom Dad's Army ran for nine seasons between 1968 and 1977 totalling 80 episodes, and to this today is still one of Britain's most beloved TV shows, and is repeated regularly.  It was inevitable that it would be brought into the 1970s vogue for adapting popular sitcoms as low-budget feature films.  This fares better than most, mainly because it doesn't stray too far from it's TV origins.  In fact the early part of the film is almost a remake of the first episode, and the things that fans expect are largely present and correct.  The main difference between this and the TV series is that there is a planned Nazi invasion of Walmington-on-Sea, which really only comes into play in the last quarter of an hour, and seems to be there just to give the film an ending.  The film is very episodic and feels like a kind of TV special rather than a feature film.  However the cast are all talented comedy actors and by this time their roles fit them like gloves.    Fans of the TV series will enjoy it, and if you've never seen the show than it is a good introduction.  The film was very popular, and as equal was planned but never made.  However the series was again adapted into a film in 2016 called Dad's Army, with a mostly completely different cast.

Don't panic, Mr. Mainwaring: Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier in Dad's Army