Saw X

 Year:  2023

Director:  Kevin Greutert

Screenplay:  Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg

Starring:  Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Mackey Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Michael Beach

Running Time:  118 minutes

Genre:  Horror

John Kramer (Bell) has been given just months to live due to his terminal brain cancer.  In desperation, he approaches a clinic in Mexico that promises a radical new treatment to cure cancer.  Kramer soon realises, however, that he has been tricked, and the operation is merely a scam to con cancer sufferers out of thousands of dollars.  However, John Kramer has a few tricks of his own.  What the scammers don't know is that he is none other than the notorious Jigsaw Killer, and soon the predators become the prey, when Kramer forces them to play his sadistic games.

This is the tenth instalment in the hugely popular Saw franchise.  The Saw films focus on serial killer John Kramer, known as "Jigsaw", whose victims are those he deems to have done wrong or wasted their lives.  he doesn't kill his victims directly but imprisons them in elaborate, specially designed traps, which usually make some ironic comment on the "sins" Kramer believes them to have committed.  The traps, which Kramer refers to as "tests" or "games", are lethal but there is a way to escape, at the cost of extreme physical or psychological torture, which very few can withstand, and so most of Kramer's victims are killed by their traps.  The cadaverous, softly-spoken Tobin Bell once more reprises his role as John Kramer, this time taking centre stage as anti-hero rather than out and out villain.  Series regular Shawnee Smith also returns as Amanda, one of Kramer's victims who survived her ordeal and became his devoted apprentice.  The surrogate father-daughter relationship between Kramer and Amanda forms the emotional core of the film.  Norwegian actress Synnøve Mackey Lund is impressive as the heartless head of the scam operation.  Despite being the tenth film in the series, the story takes place between the events of Saw (2004) and Saw II (2005).  The film is slow to get going.   There is a brief scene at the beginning of the film where we see Kramer witnessing a hospital orderly stealing from a patient, and imagining the orderly in one of his death traps, he decides to spare the orderly when he puts the patient's possessions back after noticing Kramer staring at him, despite this it is a long time before we get to the traditional Saw action, although when it does get going it is impressive enough with all the gore and carnage that fans have come to expect from the series.  Incidentally, there is an additional scene partway through the end credits.

        The Gamesmaster:  Tobin Bell in Saw X

Friday the 13th

 Year:  1980

Director:  Sean S. Cunningham

Screenplay:  Victor Miller

Starring:  Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon

Running Time:  95 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Camp Crystal Lake is preparing for it's grand reopening after being closed for twenty years.  The camp, however, has a bad reputation town, where it is nicknamed "Camp Blood" due to it's history of mysterious deaths and disappearances.  The local eccentric, Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney), claims that the camp has a "death curse".  However, six teenage camp counsellors have arrived at the camp, along with the new owner (Pete Brouwer), to prepare for the opening in two weeks time.  When the owner leaves the camp to get some supplies, the counsellors enjoy themselves. However, the fun soon turns to terror as they are brutally murdered one by one by an unknown prowler.

Producer and director Sean S. Cunningham was known to horror fans for producing Wes Craven's notorious debut film The Last House on the Left (1972).  Prompted by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Cunningham decided to do his own take on what would become known as the "slasher" genre.  Sticking to the calendar theme of Halloween, the title "Friday the 13th" seemed like a no-brainer for a horror film title, and Cunningham was in fact concerned that the title might already have been used, and so while the script was still being drafted, he took out a full page ad in the film industry trade magazine Variety announcing Friday the 13th as being in production, partly to raise additional financing for the project, and partly to ensure that no-one objected to them using the title.  The film sticks closely to the Halloween story structure, which would become the standard for slasher films.  Beginning with a short prologue set in 1958, most of the film takes place over a 24 hour period in the "present day", on Friday 13th June.  During the scenes set during the day, the first half hour or so of the film, we are introduced to the characters, thinly sketched as they are, and there is one murder, which the main characters are unaware of.  It's at night, during a torrential rain shower, that the fun really starts.  There is nothing particularly memorable in the script, and the performances are variable at best, if effective enough for this type of film.  Future Hollywood star Kevin Bacon has an early appearance as one of the camp counsellors, and a memorable death scene.  The score by Harry Manfredini is obviously inspired by Bernard Herrmann's score for Psycho (1960), but it does have the memorable "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" motif, that represents the unseen killer.  The gore effects are by legendary special effects artist Tom Savinvi, who had previously worked on Dawn of the Dead (1978), and they are impressive.  After the controversy surrounding The Last House on the Left, Sean S. Cunningham wanted to make. film that was, as he put it, "a rollercoaster ride", the film its directed effectively, aside from some quite jarring transitions, and both script and direction suffer from some real lapses in logic (the killer always seems to know where the counsellors will wander off to on their own, and be ready with a variety of different weapons, and also seems to be able to travel from one place to another very quickly without being seen or heard).  The scenes where the camera takes the killer's point-of-view, lurking behind trees and observing the characters from a distance, are effective.  For a fun horror movie, however, it works almost as the cinematic equivalent of a campfire ghost story.  Simple, gruesome, silly and fun.  The film was a huge success, kickstarting the slasher movie boom of the early 1980s and launching a franchise which has, to date, clocked up eleven film, including a cross-over with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, a remake, a TV series, comics, novels and video games.    

Jeannine Taylor, Harry Crosby and Adrienne King in Friday the 13th

There's Nothing Out There

 Year:  1991

Director:  Rolfe Kanefsky

Screenplay:  Rolfe Kanefsky

Starring:  Craig Peck, Wendy Bednarz, Mark Collver, John Carhart, Bonnie Bowers

Genre:  Comedy, science-fiction, horror

Running Time:  91 minutes

Seven students head off to a remote house in the woods, and soon come under attack from a vicious alien creature.  However, one of the group, Mike (Peck), is able to use his extensive knowledge of horror movies to help them defeat the creature.

This low-budget blend of comedy and horror is most notable as an early example of post-modern horror, five years before Wes Craven's hugely successful Scream (1996) popularised the genre.  The film parodies the various tropes of teen slasher films, which are discussed at length by sarcastic movie fan Mike.  Bits of the film are clever and funny, such as a character escaping the monster by grabbing the hanging microphone boom and using it to swing to safety, while the soundtrack plays a riff on the "Indiana Jones" theme.  It's the kind of film that would probably work best if played at a horror festival or convention or towards the end of an all-night horror movie marathon, when an audience might be more kindly disposed to laugh at it.  The film suffers from low production values, atrocious performances, and terrible special effects.  The monster is a puppet that looks like a cross between a giant frog and a fish with large teeth and shoots green rays out of it's eyes, which enable it to take control of the minds of its victims.  The female characters really have nothing to do except run around wearing as little as possible, and the film's ostensible hero is extremely unlikeable, with his constant sarcastic comments.  The film is an interesting curio for fans of horror, but has little real value as a movie.  

Sally (Lisa Grant) in There's Nothing Out There

Lost Highway

 Year:  1997

Director:  David Lynch

Screenplay:  David Lynch and Barry Gifford

Starring:  Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Gary Busey, Robert Loggia

Running Time:  135 minutes

Genre:  Thriller, drama, horror

Jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Pullman) and his wife Renee (Arquette) are disturbed to receive a series of mysterious VHS tapes of their large Los Angeles house.  Fred is convicted of Renee's murder, and sentenced to death.  In his jail cell, Fred transforms into Pete Dayton (Getty), a mechanic who has seemingly no connection to Fred.  The authorities release Pete, who comes under the influence of violent gangster Mister Eddy (Loggia), and finds himself drawn to Eddy's moll, Alice (Arquette again).

David Lynch saw in the 1990s on a critical and commercial high, with his cult TV series Twin Peaks (1989-1991, 2017) at the peak (no pun intended) of it's success, and his film Wild at Heart (1990) winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.  However, Twin Peaks came to an end and Wild at Heart received mixed reviews and underperformed at the US Box Office.  Lynch's next film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), seemed like a guaranteed hit, however, the film, which leaned heavily into all the darkness, violence and weirdness that he was unable to put on mainstream TV in the early '90s baffled and dismayed both fans and critics, and was a commercial disappointment (except in Japan where it was a smash hit).   

The five years between Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway were the longest gap between film projects of Lynch's career to that date.  Lynch's inspiration came from coming across the term "lost highway" in Barry Gifford's book Night People (1992), and also the O. J. Simpson murder case.  Lynch, who knew Gifford after adapting his novel Wild at Heart, teamed up with the author to work on the film's screenplay.  The film is a "2 A. M." movie.  Whatever time of the day or night you put it on, it feels like it is two o'clock in the morning.  That kind of night time delirium, where the world feels like it made of shadows and ghosts.  Lost Highway does not offer up its secrets easily or willingly, working as it does with a kind of dream logic.  Among the cast, Robert Blake, who would be accused of murder in 2001, although he was acquitted, is genuinely terrifying as the "Mystery Man", dressed in black, with slicked back, black hair, white makeup and black lips and eyes.  Patricia Arquette appears as the mysterious woman in both Fred and Pete's lives (although as Renee she has dark hair, and as Alice she is blonde), who may in fact be the same person, or may not be.  Gary Busey appears as Pete's dad, and Richard Pryor has a cameo as Pete's boss.  Robert Loggia plays the seemingly affable but threatening gangster, in one of the film's standout scenes, he violently attacks a tailgating driver, yelling lessons on road safety while savagely pistol-whipping the man, in a scene that could have come from a Quentin Tarantino film.  Lynch regular Jack Nance appears in a small role as Pete's coworker, however Nance died before the film was released, following injuries sustained in a brawl outside a donut shop.

The film's baffling narrative, surrealism and graphic sex and violence, put off many viewers and critics.  However, it has its own beauty.  Lynch is a master at using sound and visuals, and this is a film that benefits hugely from being seen with the best possible screen and sound system.  Lynch started out as a painter, and the film has some beautifully composed shots, and a complex sound design, ranging from sinister low rumbling, and quiet whispering, to loud industrial rock from the likes of Marilyn Manson and the Nine Inch Nails.  If some of Lynch's films are dreams wrapped in nightmares, this is like a nightmare in hell with dreams of heaven.

  Patricia Arquette and Bill Pullman in Lost Highway

  

The Mark of Zorro

 Year:  1940

Director:  Rouben Mamoulian

Screenplay:  John Taintor Foote, story by Garrett Fort and Bess Meredyth, based on the novel The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley

Starring:  Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Basil Rathbone

Running Time:  94 minutes

Genre:  Action, adventure

19th Century California:  Don Diego Vega (Power) is summoned home from Madrid by his father.  In California, Diego is horrified by how the local people are oppressed by the cruel and corrupt governor.  Outwardly coming across as a wealthy, cowardly fop, Diego adopts the secret identity of masked outlaw El Zorro ("The Fox") to fight for justice.

The swashbuckling hero Zorro had previously rode onto cinema screens in the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro, which starred Douglas Fairbanks in the lead role.  This is a spirited old fashioned adventure film, with some enjoyable action, and some exciting sword fights.  The film's title comes from Zorro's habit of marking things and sometimes people with three quick sword slashes to form the letter "Z".  Also it doesn't take itself too seriously and there is a welcome vein of humour throughout.  Tyrone Power is good in the lead role, obnoxiously foppish as Diego, but athletically physical and romantic as Zorro.  Basil Rathbone is good as the evil master swordsman who Zorro must defeat.  Linda Darnell doesn't really have anything much to do other than be courted by Diego, as she falls in love with his Zorro persona.  This is the kind of Saturday matinee film that really doesn't get made much anymore, and while it hasn't aged well in places, it is still a very entertaining film.   The Mark of Zorro has gone on to become part of the Batman mythos.  In both comic books and movies, it's depicted as the film that the young Bruce Wayne watched with his parent's the night that they were killed.  Although it differs among various versions whether it was the 1920 or 1940 film that they watched.  

Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro

The Big Heat

 Year:   1953

Director:  Fritz Lang

Screenplay:  William P. McGivern, based on the novel The Big Heat by William P. McGivern

Starring:  Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

While investigating the apparent suicide of a police officer, detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Ford) finds himself pitted against a powerful crime syndicate that effectively owns the city including the police department.  When Bannion's wife is killed by a bomb that was intended for him, his pursuit for justice becomes a quest for vengeance.

This is a powerful slice of film noir from legendary director Fritz Lang, who began with such ground-breaking films as Metropolis (1926) and M (1931) before moving to America where he specialised in bleak crime dramas.  Beginning as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post by writer William P. McGivern, who subsequently published the story as a novel and wrote the screenplay for the film, the tale is tense and exciting, with often darkly witty, hard-boiled dialogue.  Beginning as a square jawed heroic tough guy, and devoted family man, Glenn Ford's Dave Bannion devolves into an obsessive antihero increasingly consumed by his desire for vengeance.  Gloria Grahame is impressive as the gangster's moll who becomes consumed with her own quest for vengeance as well as offering salvation of a kind for the tormented Bannion.  Jocelyn Brando, the older sister of Marlon Brando, doesn't really get to make much of an impression as the devoted wife before she gets blown up.  The film is surprisingly violent for the time, in particular the notorious scene where Lee Marvin throws boiling coffee in Gloria Grahame's face.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat

Wolfen

 Year:  1981

Director:  Michael Wadleigh

Screenplay:  David M. Eyre Jr., Michael Wadleigh and Eric Roth, based on the novel The Wolfen by Whitley Streiber

Starring:  Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan

Running Time:  114 minutes

Genre:  Horror, crime, drama

New York City:  Troubled former detective Dewey Wilson (Finney) is brought back on the job when a wealthy property developer, his wife and their bodyguard are found brutally murdered.  As he investigates, Dewey connects the murders to a string of similar slayings throughout the city.  Dewey eventually discovers the existence of savage, intelligent wolf-like creatures prowling the city.

This is a mixture of gory horror, police procedural and social commentary.  While the different aspects of the film don't always hang together particularly well, it is a slick and often suspenseful monster movie.  Albert Finney is very good as the cynical rumpled detective for whom carnivorous wolf spirits are just one more story in the Naked City.  Diane Venora is good as the criminal psychologist who Wilson is partnered with, and there is good support from Gregory Hines, as Wilson's pathologist friend, Edward James Olmos, as a Native American activist, and Tom Noonan as a sinister wolf expert.  The film gets good milage out of the run-down inner city setting, and it has some really effective horror moments.  It uses a kind of electronic effect to depict the point of view of the Wolfen, which is slightly overused but effective, and also features a few too many fake scares where a character is startled only for them (and the audience) to realise that it's nothing.  The Wolfen themselves are kept mostly off screen only appearing fully towards the end of the film.  The explanation as to what the Wolfen actually are (a kind of Native American animal spirit) is muddled, particularly at the end.  While the Wolfen aren't strictly speaking werewolves, they are lycanthropic enough for the film to be lumped in with the other, better known, werewolf movies released at the time, namely The Howling (1981) and An American Werewolf in London (1981), both of which were more successful at the Box Office.  Despite its flaws, Wolfen is consistently suspenseful, and intriguing, the police procedural elements and the New York setting are effective, and the script has a welcome vein of cynical, hard-boiled humour.  The plot is intelligent, and while the different themes don't always hang together, the film deserves credit for trying to do something different with some well-worn tropes. 

Albert Finney and furry friend in Wolfen

 

She Said

 Year:  2022

Director:  Maria Schrader

Screenplay:  Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on the book She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, Ashley Judd

Running Time:  129 minutes

Genre:  Drama

In 2017, New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor (Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Mulligan) investigate allegations by actresses Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd against powerful film producer Harvey Weinstein.  As they investigate the claims, Kantor and Twohey uncover a history of abuse by Weinstein stretching back decades, against numerous women.

When allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, co-founder and one time head of Miramax Films, with his brother Bob Weinstein, and later co-head of The Weinstein Company, first hit the headlines in late 2017 it had a seismic impact not just in Hollywood but around the world, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and harassment.  Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who investigated and reported on the claims for The New York Times, detailed their investigation in the 2019 book She Said.  The world of journalism has always provided a rich source for filmmakers, and the film certainly echoes the classics of the genre, such as All the President's Men (1973) and Spotlight (2015).   However, the film moves away from the some of the cliches of boozy, chain-smoking, fast-talking men, barreling down corridors, shouting, instead the journalists are depicted as hard-working, dedicated, professionals who have full lives outside the newsroom, and we see both Kantor and Twohey at home with their respective young families, and Twohey's struggle with postpartum depression, having recently given birth.  Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan both give strong, empathic performances in the lead roles, and Samantha Morton and Jennifer Ehle give powerful performances as two of Weinstein's victims.  With such a recent, high profile and important case, filmmakers have to perform a very delicate balancing act, between creating a compelling piece of drama, while more importantly not exploiting, or sensationalising the horrific crimes.  The film mostly plays as a docudrama and, wisely, the decision is made not to centre Weinstein, who is only glimpsed once in the film, towards the end and only seen from behind amidst a huddle of people striding through the New York Times building.  Mike Houston provides Weinstein's voice on the phone rasping insults and threats to the journalists.  Weinstein's crimes are not dramatised.  Instead we have victims giving their accounts over images of empty hallways and dishevelled hotel rooms.    At one point a recording of voice recording of Weinstein harassing and threatening Ambra Gutierrez is played.  The film's main issue is that the story is so recent, and has been so well-covered, that most viewers will already be familiar with it all.  However, even while the story may be familiar, and the pacing is sometimes uneven, this is a compassionate and gripping film.  

Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan in She Said

The Dunwich Horror

 Year:  1970

Director:  Daniel Haller

Screenplay:  Curtis Hanson, Henry Rosenbaum and Ronald Silkosky, based on the short story The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft

Starring:  Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner, Donna Baccala, Joanne Moore Jordan, Sam Jaffe

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Horror

At the Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, student Nancy Wagner (Dee) becomes fascinated with the strange Wilbur Whateley (Stockwell) who is desperate to get his hands on the University's copy of a very rare and valuable book knows as the Necronomicon.  Nancy accepts Wilbur's invitation to spend some time at his mansion in the nearby small town of Dunwich.  At the mansion, Nancy is disturbed by Wilbur's grandfather (Jaffe).  It turns out that the Whateley's have a very bad reputation in the town.  Wilbur is obsessed with using the Necronomicon to bring back the "Old Ones" who used to rule the earth, and plans to sacrifice Nancy in an occult ritual.

American writer H. P. Lovecraft has been hugely influential in the fields of horror and science fiction.  In particular his brand of cosmic horror known as the "Cthulhu Mythos" which postulates that long ago, Earth was ruled by monstrous creatures known  as the "Old Ones" who, due to their evil ways, were banished to another dimension by the yet more powerful "Elder Gods".  The immortal Old Ones still exist and are eternally desperate to get back and reclaim their dominion over Earth.  They can be summoned by various rituals and incantations, which have thoughtfully been written down in various ancient grimoires, most famously the Necronomicon.  While Lovecraft has certainly been influential his work has proved challenging to filmmakers.  His conception of creatures that can drive to madness any human unfortunate enough to so much as look at them is difficult to render on film, even with CGI.  Lovecraft is also controversial due to his blatant racism and misogyny.  There have been successful Lovecraft adaptations, however, such as Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986) and Color Out of Space (2019).  This film, from the stable of B-movie maestro Roger Corman, is enjoyable enough, but not one of the best.  Incidentally, Roger Corman previously directed one of the first Lovecraft adaptations, The Haunted Palace, which was officially part of Corman's series of eight films based on Edgar Allan Poe, but the plot is actually from the Lovecraft story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.  Loosely based on the 1928 short story by Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror does a decent enough job of putting Lovecraft onto the screen.  Although Sandra Dee never really seems particularly frightened by the goings-on around her; Dean Stockwell gives an intense, quiet performances as the wicked warlock, and is really the film's highlight.  Veteran actor Ed Begley, in one of his final roles, seems slightly embarrassed in his role as the heroic professor who races to save the day.  Talia Shire (here credited as Talia Coppola), who would go on to appear in The Godfather and Rocky series, appears in a small role as a nurse.  The film is full of bizarre psychedelic effects, which are lively if unintentionally funny, and frequent dream sequences, which just really seem shoehorned in to get some nudity into the film.  The film is watchable enough, and there is enough going on that it never really gets boring, however it is likely to disappoint Lovecraft fans and is probably not enough to convert non-fans.  

Dean Stockwell in The Dunwich Horror

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

 Year:  1922

Director:  F. W. Murnau

Screenplay:  Henrik Galeen, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Ruth Landschoff, Wolfgang Heinz

Running Time:  84 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Wisborg, 1838:  Young clerk Hutter (von Wangenheim) is sent by his sinister boss, Knock (Granach), to a remote castle high in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to negotiate the purchase of a house by the mysterious nobleman Count Orlok (Schreck).  Hutter soon discovers the horrific truth that Count Orlok is a blood-thirsty vampire or nosferatu.

This classic silent horror film is technically the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula.  However the adaptation was unauthorised and unofficial.  The filmmakers approached Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, for the rights to adapt the film, but they decided that they couldn't afford the price she was asking, and so they just decided to go ahead anyway.  When Florence Stoker found out, she was furious, and sued the filmmakers, bankrupting the studio, with the court ordering all copies of the film to be destroyed.  However it had already been exported internationally and some prints resurfaced in France and the United States.  The film is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  While not as heavily stylised as the surreal dreamscape of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), it is part of the German Expressionist movement, in which the character's inner worlds are reflected in the outer world.  Viewed today, it does suffer from overly melodramatic acting, as well as director F. W. Murnau's decision to use sped-up motion in scenes such as the carriage driving through the forest, and Orlok loading his coffins into a cart.  Murnau, apparently thought that sped-up motion was scary, but today it looks more comical than anything else, although at this point cinema was still very new and was still trying to find it's own language and style.   In fact some of Murnau's innovations work very well, for example the novel Dracula is told through diaries, journals, newspaper cuttings, and so on, and Murnau carefully designed the intertitles of the film himself to replicate the pages of old books and documents.  Despite being 100 years old, the film is still hugely effective, and is still one of the greatest vampire films ever made.  The vampire in Nosferatu is based on the traditional European folkloric vampire, as a hideous reanimated corpse rather than a suave lounge lizard in evening dress.  Max Schreck makes an indelible impression as Count Orlok, a cadaverous figure incased in black, his hands as grotesque talons, bat-like ears, bald, with a pinched face and sharp, rodent-like fangs.  The vampire is explicitly connected with disease, arriving in the town of Wisborg, accompanied by hordes of rats, and bringing the plague.  Schreck's portrayal was so convincing that there were rumours at the time that he really was a vampire.  The rumour inspired its own film Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a fictionalised version of the filming of Nosferatu starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe.  The film contains some unforgettable images, such as Orlok on the death ship; the shadow of the vampire creeping up the stairs towards his victim; and also the climax where the vampire is dissolved by the rays of the sun.  Possibly the film's biggest contribution to vampire lore is the idea of the vampire being destroyed by sunlight.  In Dracula, the vampire is weakened by sunlight, but it is not lethal.    Nosferatu was remade in 1979 as Nosferatu the Vampyr, written and directed by Werner Herzog, with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, and another remake is set for release in 2024.  Although originating as an unauthorised adaptation of a popular novel, Nosferatu has grown beyond its origins, casting an indelible shadow that lingers to this day.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
     

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

 Year:  1976

Director:  John Cassavetes

Screenplay:  John Cassavetes

Starring:  Ben Gazzara, Timothy Agoglia Carey, Seymour Cassel, Azizi Johari

Running Time:  135 minutes (cut to 109 minutes)

Genre:  Drama, thriller

Cosmo Vittelli (Gazzara) owns and operates the sleazy, failing nightclub Crazy Horse West in Los Angeles.  To make matters worse Cosmo owes a large gambling debt to the Mob.  The gangsters order Cosmo to kill a bookmaker, Harold Ling (Soto Joe Hugh).  After some less than gentle persuasion, Cosmo reluctantly accepts his task, but soon finds the hit is much more complex than he had expected.

Writer, director and actor John Cassavetes appeared as an actor in a number of big Hollywood movies such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and most notably a starring role as Mia Farrow's traitorous husband in Rosemary's Baby (1968).  However, he is most influential as a writer and director, and his echo is still felt today in the world of Independent Cinema.  Despite its seemingly conventional thriller plot, in terms of style and approach, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is anything but conventional.  More a character study than a thriller, the film focuses on the dilemmas and pressures of Cosmo Vittelli, a man whose entire world is this sleazy club, and who puts all of the money he earns back into the club, as well as spending a lot of time and effort writing and directing the cheesy cabaret acts, hosted by the club compere "Mr. Sophistication" (Meade Roberts), even though he knows that the audience only care about seeing naked women.  He also has a severe gambling problem.  To celebrate making his last payment on a previous debt to a loan shark, he immediately goes out on a night on the town and ends up losing everything on poker.  Ben Gazzara, who saw Vittelli as a kind coded version of Cassavetes himself, gives a great performance, giving Vittelli a kind of down-at-heels charm, and a cocktail of hope and despair.  As is common with Cassavetes' work, the film has a loose, documentary style look, filmed guerrilla-style on the streets and in nightclubs, restaurants and homes.  The performances, which include Cassavetes regular Seymour Cassel and veteran gangster movie actor Timothy Carey, have a naturalistic, improvised feel about them.  The film was originally released in 1976 with a running time of 135 minutes, and immediately tanked at the box office, being withdrawn from general release after a week, with even Gazzara stating that it "was too long".  Cassavetes re-released the film in 1978 in a much shortened version of 109 minutes, with scenes drastically rearranged and some new footage.  For a long time this was the only version available, but in 2004 the 109 minute and 135 minute versions were released on DVD, so now you can watch both, should you care to.

The eagle-eyed viewer may notice a familiar face in some of the crowd scenes.  David Bowie sat in on much of the filming, just to watch Cassavetes at work, although he was not involved in the film.  However he can be glimpsed in the audience during some of the nightclub scenes.

Ben Gazzara in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

   

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

 Year:  1979

Director:  Robert Wise

Screenplay:  Harold Livingston, from a story by Alan Dean Foster, based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry

Starring:  William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Stephen Collins, Persis Khambatta, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig

Running Time:  132 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

When a mysterious alien cloud possessed of powerful destructive capabilities is detected on a course heading directly for Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk (Shatner) is put in charge of the newly overhauled USS Enterprise, and reunites his old crew to investigate and stop the cloud's path of destruction by any means necessary.

When the original television series of Star Trek ended in 1969 after three seasons and 79 episodes, it looked like it would be one more cancelled TV show that would exist for evermore in the fuzzy afterlife of repeats.  However, as the 1970s progressed, Star Trek became a major success in syndication, as well as attracting increasing numbers of devoted fans.  A 14 episode Saturday morning cartoon version was broadcast in the mid '70s, but Paramount Studios were becoming interested in a new live-action Star Trek.  In the late '70s Paramount announced plans for a new cable TV  network, to be imaginatively named The Paramount Network, and the flagship programme on launch night would be Star Trek: Phase II, which would feature some of the original cast alongside new characters.  Pre-production was already well advanced on Star Trek: Phase II, scripts had been written, sets had been built, parts had been cast, costumes designed and some special effects footage had already been shot, when Paramount pulled the plug on The Paramount Network, and Star Trek: Phase II was cancelled.  Rather than waste the considerable amount of money and time that had been spent on the new Star Trek, Paramount decided to remount what would have been the pilot episode of Star Trek: Phase II as a stand-alone feature film.  The script was rewritten and veteran director Robert Wise was hired to helm the project.  The resulting film boasts some very impressive special effects, but is hindered by a slow pace, and a drab feeling to the whole thing, from the colourlessness of the Enterprise interiors, to the new uniforms which all seem to be in varying shades of light blue, white and beige.  There is also the pretentiousness and po-faced philosophising which hampered Star Trek at its worse, with very little of the action and humour of the TV series at its best.  Many of the returning actors have little more than cameo roles, and the two new additions Stephen Collins as Kirk's rival for the Enterprise, Captain Decker, and Persis Khambatta at the alien Deltan Ilia, never really get the chance to make much of an impression.  Despite the plot being a race against time to save the earth, there is very little dynamism, and the story essentially calls for the actors to do little more than react to what they see on monitor screens.  It's clear that what the producers were going for was a serious cerebral science-fiction epic along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but that is the wrong approach for Star Trek.  The film does have its good points though.  The opening sequence, where the alien cloud encounters three Klingon spaceships is exciting, the special effects are still impressive even after all this time, and there are moments when that create a genuine sense of wonder.  Also the climax, with its clear sexual metaphor is quite daring.  

William Shatner, DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek: The Motion Picture
  

Evil Dead Rise

 Year:  2023

Director:  Lee Cronin

Screenplay:  Lee Cronin, based on characters created by Sam Raimi

Starring:  Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher

Running Time:  97 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Guitar technician Beth (Sullivan) goes to visit her sister Ellie (Sutherland), who is a single mother to teenagers Bridget (Echols) and Danny (Davies), and pre-teen Kassie (Fisher).  Following a minor earthquake, a hole opens up in the ground of the underground parking garage of Ellie's condemned apartment building.  Curious, Danny investigates and discovers an abandoned subterranean bank vault in which he finds three phonograph records from 1923 and a strange old book.  When Danny plays the phonograph records he discovers that they have been made by a strange priest, who has discovered one of  three surviving volumes of the Naturom Demonto, a book bound in human flesh and inked in blood, which has the power to resurrect evil demonic forces.  The priest thoughtfully recites these spells on the records, and the family soon find themselves assaulted by terrifying supernatural forces.

This is the fifth film in the Evil Dead franchise.  While Sam Raimi's original The Evil Dead (1981) was a fully fledged horror film, the sequel Evil Dead II (1987) was more of a comedy film influenced by Raimi's enthusiasm for the Three Stooges, and the third film in the series, Army of Darkness (1992), was pretty much a full on fantasy comedy with lead character Ash (Bruce Campbell) transported to the Middle Ages. In 2013 director Fede Álvarez released Evil Dead, a reboot of the series which returned it to its gruesome, horror original.  Evil Dead Rise continues this approach by being a full on horror film.  The blood doesn't so much flow here, as gush, pour, rain and flood.  It opens with a prologue, set in the familiar Evil Dead territory of a bucolic woodland, however the bulk of the film is set a day earlier in an unnamed rain soaked city.  The grim setting of a condemned, decaying, sparsely occupied apartment building works for the material.  It also takes it's time to set up the characters, particularly the tension between Ellie, a financially struggling tattoo artist, due to be evicted in a month, raising three children on her own, and her sister Beth, a freewheeling guitar technician, who is seen as the "cool aunt" by her nieces and nephews, but is frequently dismissed as a "groupie", a description which she angrily rejects.  It is Ellie who becomes possessed by the demonic forces, forcing Beth, who has just discovered that she is pregnant, to step into the maternal role and protect the children.  While there are some nods to the earlier Evil Dead films, this is a stand alone film, and can be watched even if you've ever seen any of the other films.  The performances are good, and the horror, when it comes in, is unrelenting.  It is graphically violent, in the best Grand Guignol tradition of splatter films, and will surely be a late night favourite for horror fans.

     Mother isn't quite herself today:  Alyssa Sutherland in Evil Dead Rise

Searching

Year:  2018

Director:  Aneesh Chaganty

Screenplay:  Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian

Starring:  John Cho, Debra Messing, Michelle La, Sara Sohn, Joseph Lee, Steven Michael Eich

Genre:  Thriller

Running Time:  102 minutes

San Jose, California:  David Kim (Cho) desperately searches for his missing 16 year old daughter, Margot (La).

There is very little that you can say about the plot of this film without giving away one of its many twists.  The storyline is, in many ways, a traditional mystery thriller in which a widowed father desperately searches for his missing daughter, following clues, chasing down red herrings, and investigating suspects. However, what is innovative here is that the whole film takes place on computer screens.  David conducts his investigation mostly from his own home, searching through his daughter's social media feeds, Skypeing and WhatsApping potential witnesses and suspects, and finding clues through CCTV footage that he has been sent by the detective investigating the case (Debra Messing).  The film opens with a moving sequence of the family in happier times before David's wife and Margot's mother's death by cancer, depicted through the family's various screens, setting up family accounts on their new computer, videos of birthdays and holidays, online posts and calendar appointments.  Although the film was released two years before Covid, in a way it feels more pertinent in a covid and post-Covid world, now that we are living our lives more online than ever.  John Cho gives a strong performance as the tormented father, who for most of the film is sitting looking directly at the camera (his various screens).  The film mixes traditional detective story elements with modern technology, and at times the many twists and turns of the narrative strain credulity, but it is involving throughout, and the style manages to be more than just a gimmick.  The computer screen subgenre of found footage film is a difficult one to make work, partly because they look dated very quickly, due to how quickly computer technology moves forward.  Searching, however, is well worth the time.  

John Cho in Searching
  

Cold Light of Day

 Year:  1989

Director:  Fhiona Louise

Screenplay:  Fhiona Louise

Starring:  Bob Flag, Martin Byrne-Quinn, Geoffrey Greenhill, Mark Hawkins, Andrew Edmands, Claire King

Running Time:  81 minutes

Genre:  drama, true crime, horror

In a police interview room, unassuming middle-aged civil servant Jordan Marsh (Flag) is interrogated about a series of murders, which are depicted through a series of flashbacks.

True crime is a perennially popular genre in all kinds of media.  This film is based on the true story of serial killer Dennis Nilsen.  Sometimes dubbed "The British Jeffrey Dahmer", Nilsen murdered at least twelve young men and boys between December 1978 and January 1983.  His crimes were discovered in February 1983 when some human remains were found to be blocking drains in the building where Nilsen lived in an attic flat.  While this is not as good as the three part miniseries Des (2020) which starred David Tennant as Nilsen, this low-budget, low key drama is fairly effective in its own right.  Here Dennis Nilsen is called Jordan March and played by Bob Flag, who is probably best known as the face of Big Brother in 1984 (1984).  Saddled with a terrible wig, Flag gives a striking performance as the repellant Marsh, alternately arrogant, petulantly angry or cringing under his increasingly aggressive police interrogation.  Marsh however does have some moments of kindness, when he helps an elderly downstairs neighbour.  Written and directed by Fhiona Louise, who at the time was a 21 year old drama student, the film suffers from a very low budget, it's technically very crude, the performances are variable, sometimes the sound is hard to hear particularly under the loud soundtrack of pulsating breathing and tolling bells.  There are several flashbacks to Marsh's rural childhood and the death of his beloved grandfather (where his mother tells him that his grandfather is "just sleeping").  Even though it is short, the film seems to move at a snail's pace, and everything is bleak, depressing and grimy - which may be the best approach for a film about a serial killer.  There is stuff to admire here, but very little to really like.  

Bob Flag in Cold Light of Day

 

Dracula

 Year:  1974

Director:  Dan Curtis

Screenplay:  Richard Matheson, from the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Jack Palance, Simon Ward, Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner

Running Time:  100 minutes

Genre:  Horror

1897:  Solicitor Jonathan Harker (Murray Brown) is in Transylvania to visit mysterious nobleman Count Dracula (Palance), who plans to buy property in England.  However, Harker finds out too late, what his host's true motivations are.  In England, Arthur Holmwood (Ward) discovers that his fiancé Lucy (Lewis) is Dracula's latest victim, and it is up to him and Professor Van Helsing (Davenport) to stop the vampire for good.

The good count himself may not have proved to be immortal, but Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel has proved to be well nigh un-killable, with numerous adaptations in almost all forms of media.  Every Dracula fan has their favourite, and while this made-for-TV movie may not be one of the best, it is still a solid adaptation.  Producer and director Dan Curtis was familiar with horror having created the frankly bizarre supernatural daily soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971), as well as the TV movie The Night Stalker (1972) which was also scripted by Richard Matheson, and other adaptations of horror classics such as The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde (1968) which also starred Jack Palance.  As scripted by horror writer Richard Matheson, this adaptation of Dracula remains faithful to Stoker's novel, albeit streamlining it a lot and cutting many supporting characters, including Dracula's bug-eating servant  Renfield.  Jack Palance, who was best known for playing heavies in gangster films and Westerns, may seem a strange choice for Dracula, but he does well, giving Dracula a Byronic menace, as well as a physicality often absent in other versions of the character.  The other performances are solid, and the film benefits from being filmed largely in England and Yugoslavia, despite being made for American TV.  While the film has its slow points, and there are times when the fairly low budget is obvious, it is a pretty impressive piece of work, and well worth checking out for horror fans.  The film's on-screen title is Bram Stoker's Dracula but, when Francis Ford Coppola was preparing his own film, also titled Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), he bought the rights to the title in order to avoid comparisons, and the 1974 film is listed as either Dracula or Dan Curtis' Dracula.  There are a couple of other points of similarity between this and the 1992 film, in both Dracula is explicitly referred to as the historical Vlad Dracula (aka Vlad the Impaler) and in both versions Dracula hunts down the reincarnation of his lost love (Lucy in this film and Mina in the 1992 film).     

Jack Palance is Dracula

The Long Good Friday

 Year:  1980

Director:  John Mackenzie

Screenplay:  Barrie Keeffe

Starring:  Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren

Running Time:  114 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

Harry Shand (Hoskins) is a powerful, ruthless gangster, who has plans to go legitimate with a scheme to redevelop the London Docklands with the aid of mafia investors from New York.  However, on the day of the mafiosi fly into London, Harry's empire is threatened by a series of bombings, and the stabbing of one of his closest associates.  Tasking his mistress, Victoria (Mirren) with handling the negotiations, Harry sets out on a violent quest to put a stop to the attacks.

This is one of the great, underrated classics of British gangster films.  The film mixes themes of political and police corruption, and the IRA, as well as an optimism about Britain becoming a European powerhouse, which in these days rings bitterly hollow.  Bob Hoskins had made a name as the star of the 1979 TV series Pennies from Heaven, but this was his first major film role.  He gives a fantastic performance as the brutal Harry Shand, mixing affability with menace, presenting himself as a legitimate, reasonable businessman but turning on friend or foe alike with brutal ferocity when crossed.  Helen Mirren is also memorable as the icy, intelligent Victoria, who serves almost as Shand's PA, and the acceptable face of his organisation.  The rest of the cast is full of now familiar faces from British TV and film, including Pierce Brosnan in his film debut as an IRA hitman.  The script is intelligent, with moments of dark humour, and the direction is slick, and the film maintains tension throughout, along with frequent, and often shocking moments of explosive violence.

Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday

Marathon Man

Year:  1975

Director:  John Schlesinger

Screenplay:  William Goldman, based on the novel Marathon Man by William Goldman

Starring:  Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marthe Keller

Running Time:  125 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

In New York City, history student Thomas "Babe" Levy (Hoffman), who is also training to run a marathon, becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving sadistic Nazi Christian Szell (Olivier) and his attempt to obtain a cache of stolen diamonds.

Based on the 1974 novel by William Goldman, who also wrote the film's screenplay, this is not the film to watch just before your next visit to the dentist, as the film's most memorable scene involves Szell torturing Thomas by drilling into his teeth while intoning over and over again "Is it safe?... is it safe?... is it safe?..."  However it may be seen by the good people of the dental profession, this is an effective thriller, as with many films of the seventies there is a chilling air of paranoia that hangs over proceedings.  It does take a long time to get going, and several of the narrative threads don't really hang together, but for the most part it works really well, and has some genuinely exciting scenes.  Dustin Hoffman gives a great performance as the fresh-faced, wide-eyed marathon runner, who becomes increasingly haunted and hollow-eyed, as he is used to the limits by his torments.  Laurence Olivier is memorably chilling as the Nazi, with his collection of dental instruments and retractable knife hidden in his shirtsleeve.  One of the most famous behind the scenes anecdotes about the film is method actor Hoffman informing Olivier that he stayed up for three days to look tired on screen, to which Olivier replied "Why don't you just try acting?  It's much easier."  Roy Scheider is also good as Hoffman's older brother who is leading a double life.    

Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Year:  1988

Director:  Terry Gilliam

Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown

Starring:  John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, Robin Williams, Valentina Cortese

Running Time:  126 minutes

Genre:  Fantasy, adventure, comedy

 

The 18th Century, "The Age of Reason":  A European city is under siege.  As battle rages, the flamboyant, eccentric Baron Munchausen (Neville) offers to rescue the city, but first has to reunite his disparate group of superpowered assistants.  The Baron sets off, along with young stowaway Sally (Polley), on a surreal adventure.

Inspired by a real-life figure from the 18th century, who became something of a celebrity for spinning outlandish tall tales about his various exploits, Baron Munchausen has appeared in books, plays, radio and television shows as well as several other films.  It's easy to imagine that director Terry Gilliam probably saw more than a little of himself in the figure of the outlandish Baron, who refuses to accept reality for what it is.  Best known for his part of the Monty Python comedy troupe, Gilliam had already made a name for himself with bizarre, outlandish fantasy films, and for his refusal to compromise his vision.  Gilliam's epic struggle with Universal over the final cut of Brazil (1985) had already become the stuff of Hollywood legend.  With it's intricate puzzle box structure, tales within tales within tales, and audacious visuals and freewheeling plot, as well as the constant feeling of barely suppressed anarchy, this is a kind of Hollywood filmmaking that we are unlikely to see again, a big budget epic in service to one person's vision and imagination.  Terry Gilliam was a director who really put everything at the service of his film, regardless of the cost and it is unlikely that in modern Hollywood he would be given this much freedom again.  This may not entirely be a bad thing.  Sarah Polley, who was nine years old at the time of filming, has written that she was terrified and exhausted the whole time she worked on the film.  Although she did give her blessing for people to still watch and enjoy the film, and commented that it was still "a great film".  Even Gilliam's fellow Python Eric Idle commented that, in regard to Terry Gilliam films, "you don't want to be in them".  The film itself is a fantastic epic.  It doesn't always work, there are slow passages, and it doesn't always hang together, but there are also indelible images and delightfully bizarre moments, as well as plenty of offbeat cameos, including Robin Williams as the King of the Moon, with a detachable flying head; Oliver Reed at his most satanic as the Roman god Vulcan, depicted here as an arms manufacturer dwelling in a volcano and building a prototype of nuclear bomb; and Uma Thurman making her film debut as Venus. Right from the start where the Baron bursts in upon a theatrical depiction of his story where the cardboard sets become a lavish Sultan's palace, the film is unexpected, and sometimes disturbingly eccentric.   Gilliam saw the film as the third part of a loose "Trilogy of Imagination" beginning with Time Bandits (1981) and continuing with Brazil (1985).  

John Neville and Sarah Polley in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

      

A Streetcar Named Desire

 Year:  1951

Director:  Elia Kazan

Screenplay:  Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan and Oscar Saul, based on the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Starring:  Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden

Running Time:  125 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Leigh) leaves her hometown under a cloud and arrives at the home of her sister Stella (Hunter) and brother-in-law Stanley (Brando), in a rundown tenement in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  Under pressure from the brutal Stanley, Blanche begins a slow descent into insanity.

This is the best known of several screen adaptations of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning 1947 play.  Retaining most of the cast of the original Broadway play, with the exception of Jessica Tandy, who played Blanche on Broadway, and was replaced in the film by Vivien Leigh, because the studio wanted a bigger name.  Vivien Leigh, in an Oscar winning performance, is fantastic as the brittle Blanche, clinging to the past, with her affected gentility and manners and shunning the light to mask her true age.  The film however belongs to Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, a controlling, suspicious, violent man, who buses his wife Stella and treats Blanche with varying degrees of contempt, suspicion and violence.  Blanche often refers to Stanley as an "ape" and Brando has an animalistic quality in his performance, while Blanche wants to escape into a world of dreams and magic, Stanley is all ferocious physicality and violent sexual energy.  There is almost. strange vulnerability to him at times, such as in the film's most famous scene, where Stella leaves him and goes to the flat upstairs and Stanley stands at the bottom of the staircase, his tee-shirt torn to shreds, bellowing her name over and over again, like a wounded animal, falling to his knees as she appears and slowly walks down to him.  Kim Hunter is good as Stella torn between the love of and fear for her sister and the love of and fear of her husband.  While Blanche wanted to retain the faded dreams of youth, she went for the more physical charms of Stanley Kowalski and her own nightmare.  Karl Malden plays Stanley's poker buddy Mitch who falls for Blanche.  Mitch is a very different type of man to Stanley, seemingly more sensitive and intelligent, and yet just as capable of cruelty.  Stylishly directed by Elia Kazan, the film has a fecund, overheated quality, in fact the heat seems to radiate from the screen, the actors all seemingly drenched in sweat, and the sultry jazz score by Alex North.  This is one of the greatest of all American films.

Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando take A Streetcar Named Desire

Women Talking

Year:  2022

Director:  Sarah Polley

Screenplay:  Sarah Polley, based on the novel Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Starring:  Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand

Running Time:  104 minutes 

Genre:  Drama

In an isolated Mennonite colony women are drugged and raped over a period of years.  Their claims are dismissed by the colony's authorities as either supernatural attacks or "wild female imagination".  Until, that is one of the attackers is caught, and he promptly names the others.  The attackers are arrested and taken to the nearest city to stand trial.  The other men of the colony accompany them in order to pay their bail.  The colony elders order the women to forgive their attackers by the time they return in two days or be banished from the colony.  Left alone, the women debate how to proceed:  Should they stay and obey their orders?  Stay and fight the men?  Or leave and found a new colony?

Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, which itself was based on a real life incident that occurred in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  The film doesn't focus on the attacks, instead it focuses on the women's response, and most of the film is the debate on how they should proceed.  In fact men are more or less entirely absent from the film with the notable exception of August (played by Ben Whishaw), the gentle schoolteacher who was educated away from the colony, and takes the minutes of the meetings, because none of the women have been taught how to read and write.  In the novel he narrates the story, but in the film the voice-over narrator is the yet unborn daughter of one of the women. The other exception is Melvin (played by August Winter) a transgender man who was raped and refuses to speak except to the youngest children who he cares for while the women are debating.  However men and male violence is the spectre that haunts the entire film.  The women live in an extremely patriarchal society where they are completely subservient to the men.  The film doesn't really come down against the Mennonite way of life, none of the women want to abandon their faith they just want to interpret it in a better and more fair way.  The film has a muted, washed out colour scheme, that evokes old photographs from the 19th century.  It is briefly mentioned that the year is 2010, but the only vision of modernity is a census taker driving through the colony in an old truck, with a loudspeaker on the roof playing the song "Daydream Believer".  The film boasts excellent performances, particularly from Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw.  This is a great film, wonderfully directed by Sarah Polley, who keeps the drama tight and intense, but provides enough brief glimpses of the world away from the meetings, so it doesn't feel to claustrophobic, and also lets up the tension with some flashes of mordant humour.  It's a moving and powerful piece of quiet rebellion.

Women Talking

The Swimmer

Year:  1968

Director:  Frank Perry

Screenplay:   Eleanor Perry, based on the short story by "The Swimmer" by John Cheever

Starring:  Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule

Running Time:  95 minutes

Genre:  Drama 

Middle-aged businessman Ned Merrill (Lancaster) is visiting with some friends when he gets the idea to swim home, using the outdoor swimming pools of his neighbours as a makeshift "river".  As his journey progresses his interactions with his neighbours, become increasingly strained and confrontational, as it appears that they know troubling things about himself and his family that Ned either can't, or won't, remember.

Based on an acclaimed short story by John Cheever, which was first published in The New Yorker in 1964, this surreal film, did not do well on it's original release, and yet it's reputation has grown, and it has come to be seen as something of a cult film.  The film starts on a bright, sunny summer afternoon, with Ned Merrill, a fit, middle-aged man emerging from the forest, wearing only a set of swimming trunks.  Merrill comes across a pool party hosted by friends, all of whom are nursing hangovers, but still knocking back the gin and martinis.  They seem surprised, but happy to see Merrill, who has apparently been away somewhere (although it is not revealed where he has been or for how long).  Looking out over the valley that houses the wealthy, suburban neighbourhood, Merrill works out that all the various swimming pools make a kind of river, that he can use to go home.  Right from the start it becomes apparent that there is some secret which his friends know, but that Merrill is seemingly oblivious to.  The journey becomes increasingly uncomfortable, as it appears from his interactions with others that Merrill is in severe personal and financial difficulties, although the nature of it is never made clear.  It also becomes apparent that Merrill's family life is not as idyllic as he claims.  As the film progresses the weather seems to change as well, becoming increasingly colder and more autumnal.  If you want to plunge in the deep end, you could read the film as being about American masculinity, the middle-class, suburban life, middle-aged disillusionment, or anything.  While the film may be too strange for some tastes, it has a strange, nightmarish power, with scenes such as Merrill's frantic dash across a busy motorway, a busy public pool becoming a wet and wild inferno, and the powerful final image packing a punch that lingers for a long time.  Burt Lancaster, who spends the entire film barefoot and clad only in swimming trunks, gives a powerful performance as a man who falls apart before our eyes, and what starts as a seeming jape becoming a grim odyssey into a suburban heart of darkness.  Lancaster subsequently rated The Swimmer as his best film.  The film boasts an impressive score by Marvin Hamlisch, and features the acting debut of comedian Joan Rivers.  

Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer
   

Tár

 Year:  2022

Director: Todd Field

Screenplay:  Todd Field

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kaur, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong

Running Time:  158 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Lydia Tár (Blanchett), an acclaimed American conductor, prepares for a live recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  While living in Berlin and rehearsing the orchestra, Tár receives a series of increasingly disturbing communications from a former lover, who blames Tár for blacklisting her from various orchestras.  Meanwhile Tár becomes attracted to young Russian cellist Olga (Kaur).  However, as the pressures on Tár mount up, her personal and professional reputation is threatened by allegations of sexual impropriety.

This intense psychological drama is basically a character piece, portraying composer Lydia Tár, a driven, charismatic, talented, ruthless woman who is capable of both great kindness and extreme cruelty.  Cate Blanchett, who is on screen for pretty much the entire film, gives possibly her best ever performance.  Classical cellist Sophie Kaur plays Olga, the latest object of Tár's affections.  The film opens unconventionally, with most of what would usually be the closing credits, being placed at the beginning of the film, with only the cast and music credits at the end.  The film focuses entirely on Lydia Tár, even when she is not on screen, scenes are filmed as if from her point of view,  and she is a fascinating monster, accused of abusing her position to seduce young hopefuls with promises of plum roles in the orchestra, and cruelly vindictive to anyone who crosses her, as well as ruthlessly discarding friends, lovers and colleagues, when they are no longer of any use to her.  In Berlin she seems to lead two lives, living with her wife Sharon (played by Nina Hoss) and their adopted daughter Petra (played by Mila Bogojevic), while keeping a furnished flat which she uses for composing and rehearsals.  Despite being dominated by Cate Blanchett's performance, the rest of the cast are all excellent.  Staring as an actor, with roles in films by Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick among others, this is only writer/director Todd Field's third film as a director and his first in 15 years.  Slow-moving, with a stylish, almost documentary style look, contrasted with surreal dream sequences, and an increasingly fragmented editing style, matching Lydia Tár's increasingly disintegrating sense of reality.  This is a great film.

Cate Blanchett in Tár
   

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

 Year: 2022

Director:  Rian Johnson

Screenplay:  Rian Johnson

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista

Running Time:  139 minutes

Genre:  Mystery, comedy

May 2020:  Tech billionaire Miles Bron (Norton) invites some of his closest friends and rivals to play a murder mystery game on his private greek island.  Celebrated detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) also receives an invitation .  As the weekend progresses it becomes apparent that everyone present has motive to murder Bron, but it becomes increasingly unclear who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

This enjoyable, lighthearted murder mystery piles on twists and laughs in roughly equal measure.  Daniel Craig reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc from writer/director Rian Johnson's previous film Knives Out (2019).  The cast, which includes a number of celebrity cameos, including Ethan Hawke, Hugh Grant, Stephen Sondheim, Yo-Yo Ma, Angela Lansbury, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Natasha Lyonne and Serena Williams, all seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, particularly Edward Norton as obnoxious Elon Musk-alike "tech bro" Miles Bron, and Daniel Craig once more adopting an extraordinary Southern accent as the detective Benoit Blanc.  Among the eclectic cast,  Janelle Monáe is the standout as Bron's enigmatic former partner.  Despite a generous running time the film still manages to be consistently funny, as well as having enough twists and turns to satisfy fans of traditional murder-mysterys.  

Daniel Craig and Janelle Monáe in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery