The Devil Rides Out

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  Terence Fisher
Screenplay:  Richard Matheson, based on the novel The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
Starring:  Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Nike Arrighi, Leon Greene, Patrick Mower, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davis, Sarah Lawson, Paul Eddington
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Set in England, in 1929, the film tells the story of the Duc de Richlieau (Lee) who learns that his friend, Simon (Mower), has become involved in the occult and is under the influence of the evil Mocata (Gray) and his coven of Satanists.  As Richlieau and his friends attempt to rescue Simon, and another young initiate, Tanith (Arrighi), from the forces of darkness they find themselves in danger from mortal and supernatural forces.

During the 1930s into the 1960s, Dennis Wheatley, dubbed the "Prince of Thriller Writers", was one of the bestselling authors around, although he is now largely forgotten.  Specialising in adventure stories, thrillers and horror novels, and was best known for his books about Black Magic, of which The Devil Rides Out was the first and most popular.
The film itself is from Britain's legendary Hammer Films and is scripted by horror novelist Richard Matheson.  It's really more of an adventure story than a proper horror tale.  While it has plenty of supernatural goings on, it has a heavy focus on car chases, narrow escapes and fist-fights.  It moves along at a fair old pace, and is entertaining enough.  Christopher Lee gives a powerful performance in a heroic role, for once, and the supporting cast all seem to be having a good time.  While there are some memorable set-pieces, the special effects are not very good, with a scene involving a giant spider more funny than frightening.  Another odd element, that was apparently pretty common in Wheatley, is that all the characters are frightfully upper class, and everyone seems to live in huge mansions, when someone asks Richlieau if he can borrow the car, he breezily replies: "Oh, just take any of them".
This is a far from perfect film, but the script is witty, it's well-made, well paced, full of action, and Christopher Lee is at his best.  If you want a couple of hours entertainment, it's worth giving it a shot.

Christopher Lee fights the forces of darkness in The Devil Rides Out     

     

Zelig

Year of Release:  1983
Director:  Woody Allen
Screenplay:  Woody Allen
Starring:  Woody Allen, Mia Farrow
Running Time:  72 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, mockumentary

The film is structured as a documentary, exploring the phenomenon of Leonard Zelig (Allen), a nondescript individual who develops an ability to take on the personality and even the physical traits of people around him.  As the "Human Chameleon" Zelig unwittingly becomes one of the biggest sensations of the 1920s and 30s. 

This is one of the most innovative films Allen has made.  The film has the appearance and style of the newsreels of the 1920s and 30s, interspersed with interviews from contemporary intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow.  Similar to Forrest Gump (1994), at various points throughout the film the actors are edited into contemporary photographs and footage from the 1920s and 30s enabling Zelig to appear with everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald, to Charlie Chaplin, to Adolf Hitler.  The effects are quite astonishing, looking extremely convincing throughout, and the documentary format works well.  The film is pretty funny throughout, and there is a lot of fun to be had with the novelty songs about Zelig at the height of his popularity.  Leonard Zelig really just wants to be accepted and loved, but the cost of that is he drowns his own personality and identity to take on those of the people around him, and the film does have a point to make about the dangers of being too eager to be part of the crowd that you lose who you are.  One of the problems with the film is that so much of it seems to take second place to the technical aspects.  Mia Farrow never really gets to make much of an impression as the kindly psychiatrist who helps Zelig, neither really does Allen as Zelig, who of course is supposed to be kind of a blank slate.  It is one of Allen's most impressive films, if not one of his best.

Mia Farrow and Woody Allen in Zelig 

The Post

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Steven Spielberg
Screenplay:  Liz Hannah and Josh Singer
Starring:  Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys
Running Time:  116 minutes
Genre:  Drama, thriller

In 1971, the struggling Washington Post newspaper is owned by heiress Katherine Graham (Streep) with editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee (Hanks).  Graham has inherited the paper following the suicide of her husband, and has severe doubts as to her ability to run a paper, while Bradlee constantly sees the paper being left behind by other, larger newspapers, and is determined to break a big story.  When they become aware of a leak of thousands of pages of Top Secret documents from the Pentagon relating to America's involvement in the Vietnam war (the so-called "Pentagon Papers"), they are forced to decide whether or not to publish, even if it means severe consequences.

Based on a true story, this is definitely part of the "newspaper drama" subgenre, full of serious looking people running around corridors with files and large boxes, chattering typewriters, bustling newsrooms and stirring speeches about the integrity of the press.  Apparently the film was made while Spielberg was waiting for the special effects to be completed for Ready Player One (2018).  The echoes with current events cannot be ignored, at a time when the press and the veracity of news seems to be constantly under fire, this is a film about why journalists and editors cannot allow themselves to be bullied by governments and politicians.  The villain of the piece is then-President Richard Nixon who appears very briefly seen from the back through the White House windows, ranting and growling threats.  It's an intriguing film, which tells an interesting and relevant story with a real sense of urgency.  The performances are excellent, especially from Meryl Streep, who plays someone who is kind of in both camps.  She is someone who is very much part of the Washington establishment, she is friends with many of the politicians, many of whose careers, as she well knows, will be ruined by the publication of the Pentagon Papers.  She is also someone who is perpetually patronised, overlooked and belittled by people who are technically her employees.  An early scene shows her at a board meeting where the all-male board talk over her, ignore her and sometimes repeat exactly what she's just said. 

Compulsive viewing at The Post               

Twin Peaks (2017 series)

Year of Release: 2017
Director:  David Lynch
Screenplay:  David Lynch and Mark Frost
Starring:  Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Michael Horse, Chrysta Bell, Miguel Ferrer, David Lynch, Naomi Watts, Robert Forster, Harry Goaz, Kimmy Robertson, Harry Dean Stanton, Laura Dern
Running Time:  18 one hour episodes
Genre:  Horror, crime, mystery

The original series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, ran for two seasons between 1989 and 1991 and centered on eccentric FBI agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) investigating the murder of teenager Laura Palmer (Lee) in the picturesque small town of Twin Peaks.  The show mixed murder mystery, small town soap opera, cozy comedy and surreal fantasy.  Despite only lasting for two seasons, before being cancelled due to declining ratings, the show was hugely influential and is probably one of the biggest cult TV shows of all time.  The series was followed by a movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which despite being released to largely negative reviews and poor box office back in 1992 has come to be regarded as a major work.  For years Twin Peaks appeared to be pretty much dead in the water, though, with David Lynch going back and forth over whether there would be a return to the strange, small town.  Until a new eighteen part Twin Peaks series was broadcast on Showtime in 2017, every episode written by Lynch and Frost and directed by Lynch.  It could have been that the new Twin Peaks would be yet another exercise in the recent nostalgia boom. 

In fact, it was anything but.  If the original Twin Peaks broke the rules of traditional TV, this pretty much explodes the whole concept of traditional narrative television.  David Lynch has described it as an eighteen hour movie and it kind of is.  Most of the episodes end with a musical performance in a bar, otherwise the episodes just stop usually with no cliffhanger or real conclusion.  There is no real plot either, it's a collection of plot strands, which are picked up and dropped seemingly with no rhyme or reason, but most involve the reappearance of Dale Cooper after 25 years stuck in the bizarre netherworld known as the Black Lodge.  Or is it?  Is it Cooper's demonically possessed doppelganger?  Or is it Las Vegas accountant Dougie Jones (Maclachlan again)?  Or all three? Where as the original Twin Peaks was essentially a murder-mystery/soap-opera with surreal fantasy overtones, in this one the weirdness is central throughout the entire show.  Even scenes that seem to be relatively straightforward are filmed and performed in a strangely off-beat way.  It also opens the story up, taking place not only in Twin Peaks, but in New York, South Dakota, Las Vegas, Texas, and even New Mexico in the 1950s.  Frequently serving up some of the most bizarre and, at times, deeply disturbing images and sequences you are ever likely to see on your TV screen, this won't appeal to everyone.  I would recommend watching Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk With Me first, if you liked that then you will probably like this.  The series as a whole is David Lynch's masterpiece: a fascinating, maddening, funny, disturbing, scary, frustrating, mesmerising puzzle box that lingers in the mind, and makes me for one keen to watch it again to work out the clues that I have missed.

 

It only gets stranger: MIKE (Al Strobel) and Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in Twin Peaks

Broadway Danny Rose

Year of Release:  1984
Director:  Woody Allen
Screenplay:  Woody Allen
Starring:  Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte
Running Time:  84 minutes
Genre:  Comedy

Danny Rose (Allen) is an unsuccessful talent agent, who is stuck with acts such as a one-legged tap dancer, balloon animal makers, and novelty bird acts.  The one act on his books that is showing any kind of promise is washed up lounge lizard, Lou Canova (Forte), who is enjoying a comeback due to a nostalgia craze.  Danny manages to get Lou a very prestigious gig, but Lou, who is already married, refuses to go on stage unless his girlfriend, Tina (Farrow), is in the audience.  He persuades Danny to not only go and pick up Tina but to pretend to be her boyfriend in public, in order to keep her and Lou's affair secret.  To make matters even more complex, Tina's ex-boyfriend is a gangster, who is convinced that Tina left him for Danny, and puts a hit on him. 

This film really is a romp.  It abandons the usual intellectual, up-town Woody Allen style of comedy for a more earthy style, with the humour coming more from situation and character than the usual Allen wisecracks and quips.   It also abandons the Manhattan elite setting more typical of Woody Allen films with Allen here playing the fast-talking agent,  and set in the swamps of New Jersey, seedy clubs, cheap offices and warehouses.  The film even has some action sequences with chases, and fights.  Mostly it is a nostalgic tribute to the New York showbiz world of the 1950s, despite apparently being set in the 1980s, it's filmed in black-and-white, and is bookended by scenes set in a deli where agents and ageing comics gather to tell jokes and showbiz stories.  Mia Farrow turns in a great performance as the loud, brassy Tina, all gravity-defying hairdos and huge sunglasses that hide half of her face.  It's not a great film and it's not hugely funny but it is very enjoyable and features a very funny shoot-out in a warehouse.       

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Martin McDonagh
Screenplay:  Martin McDonagh
Starring:  Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage
Running Time:  115 minutes
Genre:  Drama, dark comedy, crime

Mildred Hayes (McDormand) is a single mother who lives in the small town of Ebbing, Missouri.  Mildred is consumed with grief and rage over the brutal murder of her teenage daughter seven months previously.  Angry at the lack of progress in the official police investigation, Mildred hires three advertising billboards along a road into town and uses them to personally call out the town's police chief, Willoughby (Harrelson), as to why no arrests have been made.  This, of course, does not go down well with either the police or the townspeople, and Mildred soon finds herself a target.

This is something of a tragicomedy, dealing with seriously dark and disturbing themes and occasionally brutal violence, however it is also very funny, with some laugh out loud lines.  Frances McDormand dominates the film as Mildred Hayes, a tough, witty and angry woman, who does not care about what anyone thinks, but who still has doubts about her mission.  One of the strengths of the film is the way characters are introduced one way, and then are revealed to be more complex, particularly Woody Harrelson's turn as the troubled police chief.  The film raises some issues regarding police racism which it never really deals with, and some viewers may find the arc of Sam Rockwell's racist police officer hard to stomach.  However, this is certainly worth seeing, it's a dark but hilarious film, well-made with some fantastic performances.  It's a film about the corrosive effects of anger, revenge of violence, how it can become an endless cycle that consumes everyone and everything.

Frances McDormand and two of the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Needful Things

Year of Release:  1993
Director:  Fraser C. Heston
Screenplay:  W. D. Richter, based on the novel Needful Things by Stephen King
Starring:  Ed Harris, Max von Sydow, Bonnie Bedelia, J. T. Walsh, Amanda Plummer
Running Time:  120 minutes
Genre:  Horror

A mysterious stranger named Leland Gaunt (von Sydow) arrives in the small Maine town on Castle Rock, where he sets up a strange antiques/curiosity shop called Needful Things.  Gaunt appears to have an uncanny knack of finding the one thing that every customer most desires, and each is priced to just what the customer can easily afford, but there is a catch:  The cash price is only half of the payment, the rest comes in the form of a deed, usually a cruel prank played on someone else in town, and all designed to point to someone other than the prankster.  Before long, the nice little town becomes torn apart with suspicion, paranoia, hate and misplaced revenge. 

While this is far from the worst movie to be based on one of Stephen King's works, it's also far from the best.  Although it really does as well as it could do at compressing King's sprawling, episodic doorstop of a novel into a coherent film.  It's well cast with solid character actors, and the story is interesting.  The problem is that the film doesn't have much of a consistent tone, the mixture of supernatural horror, dark comedy and small town soap opera worked a lot better on the page, where there was more space to go into the characters and their relationships.  The performances are good, especially Max von Sydow as the devilish Leland Gaunt, and the story is interesting enough to carry it along, but it's neither scary or funny, and the climax is ridiculous.

Max von Sydow in Needful Things