A Fish Called Wanda

Year of Release:  1988

Director:  Charles Crichton

Screenplay:  John Cleese, from a story by John Cleese and Charles Crichton

Starring:  John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Tom Georgeson, Maria Aitken

Running Time:  108 minutes

Genre:  Comedy

In London, a gang of thieves led by George (Georgeson), with his American lover Wanda (Curtis), her mercurial "brother" Otto (Kline) and stuttering animal lover Ken (Palin), successfully steal a fortune in diamonds.  However Wanda and Otto, who are actually lovers, betray George to the police, in order to take the diamonds for themselves.  However George has played his own trick and the diamonds have been hidden.  With the loyal Ken intent on assassinating the only witness who can identify George: a dotty old lady (Patricia Hayes) with three little dogs, Wanda and Otto set their sights on George's barrister: the straight laced Archie Leach (Cleese), who Wanda plans to seduce and persuade to reveal the location of the diamonds.  What follows is a hilarious string of doubles-crosses, slapstick and seduction.

Directed by Ealing Comedy veteran Charles Crichton, this is a delightful crime comedy in which the laughs come thick and fast throughout.  The script, by John Cleese from a story by him and Crichton allows Cleese plenty of scope for his manic comic energy, and he is always best at those roles in which he has to go from uptight authority figure to raving maniac.  Kevin Kline is very funny as the brutal thug who is both pretentious and pretty thick.  Cleese's fellow Monty Python alumni Michael Palin as the eccentric animal lover Ken (who owns the fish of the title) has the most Pythonesque story line as his repeated attempts to assassinate this one old woman go constantly awry (fair warning for dog lovers, her three prize pooches do come to pretty bad ends).  Jamie Lee Curtis anchors the film as the seductive femme fatale who sets the happily married Cleese's stiff upper lip quivering.  This is one of those constantly entertaining films, the convoluted plot really being an excuse to string a succession of gags and slapstick set pieces together, and for the most part it works really well.  Fans of British comedy will recognise a few familiar faces in small roles, such as Geoffrey Palmer as a judge, and Stephen Fry as an unlucky man in an airport.  The main cast reunited for a follow up film, Fierce Creatures, which was released in 1997.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline and Tom Georgeson in A Fish Called Wanda

A Quiet Place Part II

 Year of Release:  2021

Director:  John Krasinski

Screenplay:  John Krasinski, based on characters created by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck

Starring:  Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou, John Krasinski

Running Time:  97 minutes

Genre:  horror

The world has been decimated by a race of savage, predatory monsters which hunt by their acute sense of hearing.  Evelyn Abbott (Blunt), her deaf daughter Regan (Simmonds), son Marcus (Jupe) and newborn baby ferried in a soundproof cooler to muffle his cries, search for survivors and stumble upon a deserted factory, occupied by the bitter Emmett (Murphy) who doesn't trust others.  When Regan sneaks out to discover the source of a mysterious radio broadcast, Emmett reluctantly agrees to find her and bring her back, while Evelyn remains to take care of Marcus and the baby.

The original A Quiet Place was a sleeper hit 2018.  Aside from a lengthy prologue depicting the start of the invasion, the film picks up straight from the end of the first one.  Once again, the film makes use of a brilliantly simple premise, a world where any noise above the faintest whisper could mean death.  It was originally intended to be released in March 2020 but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed, and the film belongs in a cinema rather than on Blu-ray, DVD or a streaming service, because you get the big image and sound design.  It is full of tension and suspense.  It does deliver more of the same thrills from the first film, but it does expand the world more.  It's well paced, and writer, director, actor John Krasinski (best known as prankster Jim Halpert in the US series of The Office (2005-2013)) keeps things moving at a good place and wrings all the suspense out of each scene.  The performances are good with Millicent Simmonds and Cillian Murphy being particular standouts.  

      Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe and Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place Part II

 

Nomadland

Year of Release:  2020

Director:  Chloé Zhao

Screenplay:  Chloé Zhao, based on the book Nomadland:  Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

Starring:  Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Drama

In 2011, recently widowed Fern (McDormand) loses her job when the US Gypsum plant she has worked for for year shuts down.  This devastates her hometown of Empire, Nevada, for which the plant was the principal employer.  Fern hits the road, living out of her van, travelling the highways and byways of the United States, taking casual work to make ends meet and becoming part of an extensive, supportive community of fellow nomads.

Written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao, and based on a non-fiction book by journalist Jessica Bruder, this is a powerful, beautiful and meditative film.  It captures the beauty, camaraderie and freedom of Fern's lifestyle while not ignoring the rootlessness, loneliness and hardship of her way of life.  Many of the cast are real nomads playing fictionalised versions of themselves.  It has a real documentary feel, even with established actors such as Frances McDormand and David Strathairn, you forget that they are actors and see them as real travellers.  It has a slow, languid place, and doesn't really have a story to speak of, it follows a year in Fern's life as she travels around and takes various jobs, such as packing boxes for Amazon, working in a fast food restaurant, and doing odd jobs at a campsite among other things.  The film is full of beautiful images and bleak images, sometimes both beautiful and bleak at the same time.  It's a vision of America that you don't really see often, particularly not in Hollywood films.  Frances McDormand has given many great performances throughout her career, but she has never been better than here.  The film could be accused of not going into some of the darker aspects of the nomad lifestyle, but this is a minor issue.  This is one of the best new films that I have seen in a long time, and it is definitely worth seeing at the cinema, if at all possible.

 Frances McDormand in Nomadland 

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Mike Newell

Screenplay:  Richard Curtis

Starring:  Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Simon Callow, James Fleet, John Hannah, Charlotte Coleman, Corin Redgrave, Rowan Atkinson

Running Time:  117 minutes

Genre:  Romantic comedy

Londoner Charles (Grant) is invited to several weddings without getting married himself, until at one wedding he meets and falls for fellow guest, American Carrie (MacDowell).  Over a number of weddings and a funeral, the couple bond but constantly seem to be kept apart.

Four Weddings and a Funeral was released to comparatively little fanfare in the summer of 1994 and became a global smash hit, ending up as the most successful British film ever made up to that point. It made a star of Hugh Grant, and crowned writer Richard Curtis (at the time best known for TV comedies such as Mr. Bean (1990-1995) and Blackadder (1983-1989)) as Britain's romcom king.  The film is set almost entirely at the weddings and the funeral of the title (presented as chapters divided by title cards designed as wedding invitations).  This gives the film an episodic feel and means that we never get to know much about Charles and his friends.  Andie MacDowell as Carrie, in particular suffers from this approach.  We only ever see her through Charles' eyes, drifting in and out of the proceedings, and she doesn't really make much of an impact, and while we are constantly told that he is in love with her, it never really feels that way.  However this is a film that is full of small, incidental pleasures.  Hugh Grant gives his definitive performance as the quintessential bumbling, polite Englishman, and John Hannah gives a powerful performance, with his moving reading of W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" a highlight.    This is one of the classic comedies, and while it is far from perfect, it is consistently funny with moments of real emotion.  

 Andie MacDowell and Hugh Grant attend Four Weddings and a Funeral

2 Days in Paris

 Year of Release:  2007

Director:  Julie Delpy

Screenplay:  Julie Delpy

Starring:  Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg, Daniel Brühl

Running Time:  101 minutes

Genre:  Romance, comedy, drama

French photographer Marion (Delpy) and her American boyfriend Jack (Goldberg) are on a holiday in Europe.  Following a less than romantic trip to Venice, they go to Marion's native city of Paris.  Jack is immediately uncomfortable by the cultural differences between France and America and his own ignorance of French, as well as by Marion's bohemian parents (Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy) and most specifically by the fact that they keep running into Marion's ex-boyfriends, all of whom she still seems to be friends with.  

Julie Delpy is probably best known for starring in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy along side Ethan Hawke, and 2 Days in Paris is definitely from the same stable, once more about being a French woman and an American man wandering around a glamorous European city while discussing life, love, art and various things in between.  With this film Delpy not only writes, directs and stars, she composed the score and edited the film, and cast her real life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy, as her character's parents.  This has few surprises, and sometimes feels like a quirkier version of one of Woody Allen's later travelogue films but it is consistently funny, and the cast have real charm, despite the fact that their characters are intensely annoying, being judgemental, sanctimonious and often surprisingly cruel.  The film is certainly no love letter to Paris, showing the City of Lights and it's inhabitants, in a pretty unpleasant light.  Delpy directs the film with real style, although it always feels like a pretty good, but not stand-out quirky indie film, complete with voice-over and animated diagrams.  It is a good film and pretty enjoyable.  Followed by 2 Days in New York (2012).

   

Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg spend 2 Days in Paris

 

Willow Creek

Year of Release:  2013

Director:  Bobcat Goldthwaite

Screenplay:  Bobcat Goldthwaite

Starring:  Bryce Johnson, Alexie Gilmour

Running Time:  79 minutes

Genre:  Horror

This found-footage horror film revolves around a young couple: Jim (Johnson) and Kelly (Gilmour), who are on a trip into the Six Rivers National Forest in California to make a documentary about the legendary Bigfoot.  Jim is an enthusiastic believer in the creature, but Kelly is a sceptic.  Needless to say, they soon discover the truth.

Written and directed by comedian turned filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwaite (possibly best known for his recurring appearances in the Police Academy films), this is similar in style to The Blair Witch Project (1999) if the opening scenes of the Blair Witch extended for over half the film, and the wandering around in the forest only lasts for the last half hour or so.  For much of the film it's like a satirical look at the Bigfoot tourist industry, and pop culture impact.  They travel through towns where everything seems to revolve around Bigfoot, and visit a Bigfoot diner, bookstore, and eccentric local folksinger who sings Bigfoot-themed songs.  Jim and Kelly are searching for the location of the famous Patterson-Gimlin Film, which purportedly shows a female Sasquatch walking, and you have probably seen a still from it if you have ever looked up Bigfoot.  Aside from a disturbing encounter with a aggressive local, the scares don't come in until late in the film, in an extended scene where Jim and Kelly are in a tent and we hear strange noises and something thrown against the tent.  It all ends very abruptly.  It does have some very effective moments, and Jim and Kelly are likeable and engaging characters who, unusually for a found footage film, actually do have character and personality. It's not really scary enough to work as a horror film, but it is an entertaining diversion.

Kelly (Alexie Gilmour) meets a new friend in Willow Creek

      

"Single & Single" by John le Carre

 Year of Publication:  1999

Length:  374 pages

Genre:  Thriller

What connects the murder of an English lawyer in Istanbul, a shabby children's party magician in Devon who finds a vast fortune mysteriously deposited in his daughter's trust fund, and the disappearance of the head of a once respected financial institution with ties to organised crime?  Tenacious British customs officer Nat Brock investigates the mystery and uncovers a vast international criminal conspiracy.

The death of British author John le Carré, the pen name of David Cornwall, in December 2020 robbed the world of one of the great writers of popular fiction.  Making his name with Cold War spy thrillers in the 1960s, le Carré managed to navigate the complex and ever shifting landscape of international politics.  As with most le Carré novels this is essential of a conventional thriller and more a psychological piece about the moral and spiritual price of lives built entirely on deceit.  It's not one of his best books, the book starts well and then gets bogged down in the middle with complex debates on money laundering and other legal and financial issues, but it does pick up as it moves towards it's conclusion.  However, it ends so abruptly I thought my book was missing a chapter.  Like a lot of John le Carrè, the characters are all deeply flawed, which makes it more realistic but also means that it's really hard to care about most of them, which really isn't good for a thriller.