Letter from an Unknown Woman

Year of Release:  1948

Director:  Max Ophuls

Screenplay:  Howard Koch, based on the novella Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig

Starring:  Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan

Running Time:  86 minutes

Genre:  Romance, drama 

Vienna at the turn of the 20th century:  Teenage Lisa (Fontaine) becomes smitten by her new neighbour, charismatic musician Stefan Brandt (Jourdan).  When her mother remarries, Lisa is forced to leave Vienna, but, still madly in love with Stefan, she returns some years later to find him.  Stefan is now a celebrated concert pianist. They finally meet and spend one romantic evening together, which proves to have devastating consequences.

This is one of those films where it seems like you could take any given frame, blow it up, and have something impressive to hang on the wall.  Shot in shimmering monochrome, it is incredibly beautiful, the period detail of Vienna is sumptuous, and every frame is carefully composed.  The acting is impressive, particularly from Joan Fontaine as the heartbreaking Lisa, from the wide-eyed lovestruck teenager to the devastated woman who sees her world crumble around her.  Louis Jourdan is charming and dashing as the roguish pianist, and it's easy to see her attraction to him.  Jourdan is slightly affectless in the role, but then Stefan is something of a hollow man.  The film is constructed in flashback, opening with Stefan planning to run away from a duel he is due to fight, declaring "honour is a luxury only gentlemen can afford", but is interrupted by his mute butler bringing him a letter from Lisa, which narrates the events of the film.  Everything in the film is shown from her perspective, aside from the sequences which bookend the flashback, so Stefan is seen only from her point of view, we never find out what he does when he disappears from the tale for long periods of time, although it's fair to say we can make an educated guess.  The centrepiece of the film is the long evening they spend together which must rank as one of the most dizzyingly romantic passages in all of cinema.  Despite a brief running time, however, and the story taking place over a long period of time in which a lot a happens to the characters, it's paced very sedately and the pacing feels slightly off at times.  That being said it is a powerful and tragic film, in which the intricate, polished surface, hides ultimately tragic passions.

Louis Jourdan and Joan Fontaine in Letter from an Unknown Woman

The Awakening

Year of Release:  2011

Director:  Nick Murphy

Screenplay:  Stephen Volk and Nick Murphy

Starring:  Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, Isaac Hempstead-Wright

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Horror

The year is 1921 and Britain is reeling in the aftermath of the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic.  Interest in spiritualism is high as grieving people search for any shred of hope.  Florence Cathcart (Hall) is a controversial author who specialises in debunking alleged hauntings and exposing fraudulent mediums.  She is contacted by Robert Mallory (West), a teacher at a boy's boarding school, who wants her to investigate sightings of the alleged ghost of a boy, which might be connected to a recent death at the school.  Reluctantly Florence agrees.  However, as her investigation proceeds she soon comes to believe that the ghost may be more real than she thought, and more dangerous.

This film is essentially an old fashioned ghost story with an additional mystery element.  It's a mostly slow, sedate film that relies more on atmosphere than gory thrills, and it does have a real doom-laden feel to it.  It's set in the years following the First World War and Spanish Flu outbreak, where people are searching for something to hold on to and there was an increase in belief in the supernatural and spiritualism was at it's height, as grieving people were desperate to contact the people they had lost.  Robert Mallory was in the war and experiences survivor's guilt, whereas the school's groundskeeper, Judd (Joseph Mawle) didn't fight in the war and feels guilty and resentful towards Mallory for being seen as a war hero.    The film opens with Florence exposing an elaborate fake seance and, as the fraudulent mediums are lead away by the police, she is slapped in the face by the grieving mother who had paid for the seance, and has had her last hope ripped from her.  She receives angry letters from people enraged by her book which debunks the supernatural and any idea of an afterlife.  However Florence herself has a deep need to believe, and she investigates mediums an hauntings desperately hoping to find one that is genuine.  The film uses a washed out colour palette, and everything looks gloomy, grey and cold, and almost everyone in the (all white) cast looks practically translucent.  The film was directed by Nick Murphy, whose background is largely in television, and indeed it does often look and feel like classy TV movie although it did have a theatrical release.  The script was written by Murphy and horror veteran Stephen Volk, who is most famous for writing the controversial BBC drama Ghostwatch (1992), and it is reminiscent of the works of  M. R. James, Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson and Henry James.  The film falls apart somewhat towards the end where there are several twists that defy credibility, and feel like they belong in a different film, and there is also a disturbing and intense scene where Florence is attacked.  The ghost boy, with his distorted face, is only glimpsed briefly and at first it's startling but let down by unimpressive special effects.  Rebecca Hall is very good as Florence, and the film is worth seeing for her performance alone.  Dominic West is good in his typically gruff, period drama role as the teacher, turned paranormal investigator, even if he would rather be investigating Florence.  Imelda Staunton is as impressive as ever in the supporting role of housekeeper Maud, who is a fan of Florence's work.  Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who is probably most famous as Bran Stark in Game of Thrones (2010-2019), plays a   lonely pupil who forms a bond with Florence.  This is a far from perfect film, but then it is by no means bad either.  It has some great performances, particularly Rebecca Hall's.  It's certainly worth watching if you're a fan of elegant ghost stories.

Rebecca Hall in The Awakening
 

Pale Rider

Year of Release:  1985

Director:  Clint Eastwood

Screenplay:  Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack

Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Chris Penn, Richard Dysart, Sydney Penny

Running Time:  116 minutes

Genre:  Western

19th century, California: A group of independent prospectors, panning for gold, are regularly harassed by a gang of thugs in the pay of wealthy mining baron Coy LaHood (Dysart), who is determined to drive off the prospectors so he can seize their land.  Following a raid in which her pet dog is shot dead, 14 year old Megan Wheeler (Penny) prays for a miracle to save them.  Shortly afterwards a mysterious Preacher (Eastwood) arrives to help the prospectors.

Plot wise, this is similar to endless Westerns in which a lone hero arrives to defend the good and the helpless against brutal villains.  This film however has a strange supernatural angle to it, similar to Eastwood's directorial debut High Plains Drifter (1973).  It is very strongly hinted that the unnamed Preacher is a ghost, although it is left ambiguous.  The Preacher's backstory is hinted at, but never really revealed.  It's even hinted that the Preacher is Death himself.  He seems to appear in answer to Megan's prayer, riding in accompanied by thunder, lighting and howling winds, and he enters the prospector's camp accompanied by a reading if the Biblical verse from which the film takes it's title: "And lo, I beheld a pale horse, with a pale rider on it, and the name of the rider was Death.  And Hell followed him."  As an actor, Eastwood does what he does best, with his squinting glares, and snarling drawl, as a director, Eastwood handles the material with style, often using interesting framing and camera angles, that take advantage of every part of the screen, and the wintery landscapes are beautiful.  The influence of Sergio Leone, who directed the Dollars trilogy that made Eastwood a movie star, is very strong here.  There is also a slight environmental element to the film with LaHood's controversial hydraulic mining technique destroying the landscape, as opposed to the prospectors peacefully panning for gold in the river.  Michael Moriarty plays Hull Barret, the put upon but determined leader of the prospectors, Carrie Snodgress plays Sarah Wheeler, Megan's mother who has become increasingly cynical after she was abandoned by Megan's father, but with whom Barret is in love, and Chris Penn plays LaHood's son and head of the thugs.  Richard Kiel (best known as the metal-toothed Jaws in the James Bond movies The Spy who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)) has a small role as one of LaHood's heavies.  The performances are all fine, if unmemorable,  they do what they need to do.  Snodgress probably gives the best performance, and the film does build up a fairly complex relationship between Sarah and Barret.  There is a brief but very unpleasant scene of an attempted sexual assault on the 14 year old Megan, although is is stopped and she is rescued by the Preacher.  It sours an otherwise innocuous film, and really serves little purpose.  Despite being an action film, this is mostly quite a slow film, and all wrapped up in a fairly neat, if disappointing climax.  This is not an essential film but, if you like Westerns, you may enjoy it, but if you're not a fan of the genre this will not convert you.     

From Beyond

Year of Release:  1986

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Screenplay:  Dennis Paoli, story by Brian Yuzna, Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli, based on the short story "From Beyond" by H. P. Lovecraft

Starring:  Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ted Sorel, Ken Foree, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon

Running Time:  82 minutes

Genre:  Horror, science-fiction

Dr. Edward Pretorius (Sorel) and Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) create a machine called the Resonator which stimulates the pineal gland in the human brain, allowing a person to see beyond normal, perceptible reality, revealing grotesque monsters.  One of them bites off Pretorius' head, and Crawford is accused of his murder.  Intrigued by his story, ambitious psychiatrist Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Crampton) and Detective Bubba Brownlee (Foree) persuade Crawford to recreate the experiment.  They soon discover that Crawford was telling the truth, and that Pretorius has been absorbed by the creatures and returns hungry for more prey.

This film reunites many of the cast and key behind the scenes personnel behind cult hit Re-Animator (1985) for another take on the works of influential American writer H. P. Lovecraft.  This film, written by Dennis Paoli from a story by Paoli, director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna is very loosely based on a very brief minor H. P. Lovecraft story written in 1920 and published in 1934.   As with Re-Animator much of the material is played more for laughs than scares, and is full of slimy, rubbery monstrosities and gore galore.  There's a surprisingly strong sexual element here as well.  A scene where a monster attempts to assault Barbara Crampton is queasily unpleasant and strikes a sour note on what is otherwise an essentially fun, gory monster movie.  Later, in one of the film's most memorable scenes, the buttoned-up, serious Crampton appears in full leather bondage gear and also, if you are so inclined, there is the sight of Ken Foree in very small briefs.  It's one of those films where everyone seems to be having a ball.  Jeffrey Combs overacts tremendously as the twitchy, bug-eyed scientist; Barbara Crampton is good as ever as the sympathetic if slightly sinister psychiatrist and she conveys well her slow transformation under the influence of the Resonator; Ted Sorel provides a fun pantomime performance as the hissable villain under increasing layers of latex; Ken Foree, who is possibly best known for Dawn of the Dead (1978), is engaging as the likeable tough-guy detective; and Carolyn Purdy-Gordon is fun as the psychiatrist who despises Katherine and her methods.  While the special effects may look a dated today, the gruesome monsters are imaginatively designed and it's all satisfactorily gross.  At a brisk 82 minutes the whole thing keeps moving along.  It's the kind of film that is best watched late at night maybe with a few drinks and a few likeminded friends.  None of it is supposed to be taken seriously.       

Barbara Crampton and Ted Sorel in From Beyond

Enduring Love

 Year of Release:  2004

Director:  Roger Michell

Screenplay:  Joe Penhall, based on the novel Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch

Running Time:  100 minutes

Genre:  Drama, thriller

University professor and author Joe (Craig) is having a picnic in the Oxfordshire countryside with his partner Claire (Morton) when he becomes involved with an attempt to rescue a young boy from an out of control hot air balloon, alongside several other men.  The attempt fails, and one of the men dies, although the boy ultimately lands safely.  Joe suffers a great deal of guilt over the man's death.  Later he is contacted by Jed (Ifans) one of the other would-be rescuers.  Jed has become obsessed with Joe, and is convinced that Joe is in love with him.  Initially Joe tries to gently brush Jed off, but the stalking soon  intensifies to increasingly dangerous levels.

Based on a novel by acclaimed author Ian McEwan, who is probably best known for the 2001 novel Atonement, this is really in it's basic plot a conventional psycho-thriller about stalking, but it is dressed up as an arthouse drama.  It's all very elegant and moves at a stately pace, and there are many long conversations about guilt and the nature of love (Joe lectures and writes about love and his conviction that it doesn't really exist and is just a biological impulse).  It's only really until the end that it moves fully into thriller territory.  The film doesn't really work as a thriller because there is never any feeling of threat from Jed, at least until the end.  There is never any sense that Joe is scared of Jed.  He seems to regard him at first as an irritation, and later as an annoyance.  In fact there is the sense that Joe is more likely to turn violent against his stalker than the other way around.  It's very much a respectable, serious British film, that has the lurid elements that appeal to more mainstream audiences and the somber philosophising and arthouse elements to appeal to more serious minded viewers.  The film is very well acted, with Daniel Craig in particular turning from polite, mild-mannered professor into a seething self-destructive cauldron of barely repressed rage.  Rhys Ifans makes the stalker, Jed, disturbing but also weirdly sympathetic.  Samantha Morton is good but underused as sculptor Claire, Joe's increasingly put-upon partner.  The rest of the cast is full of familiar British actors including Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch, Helen McCrory, Andrew Lincoln (from The Walking Dead (2010-2021)), Anna Maxwell Martin, Corin Redgrave, and Daniel Craig's future James Bond co-star Ben Wishaw.  Not exciting or tense enough to work as a thriller, or particularly involving as a drama, the film feels stretched even at a fairly brisk running time, but the performances are fantastic, it all looks beautiful and, despite it's flaws, it is interesting enough to see how it all turns out.

Rhys Ifans and Daniel Craig in Enduring Love
   

No Time to Die

 Year of Release: 2021

Director:  Cary Joji Fukunaga

Screenplay:  Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, from a story by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Cary Joji Fukunaga, based on characters created by Ian Fleming

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Wishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Ana de Armas

Running Time:  163 minutes

Genre:  Action, espionage

James Bond (Craig) has retired from active service for MI6, but his domestic bliss with Madeleine Swann (Seydoux) is interrupted when he suspects her of selling him out to the evil SPECTRE organisation.  Five years later, Bond finds himself drawn into a race between MI6 and the CIA to rescue a kidnapped scientist from the clutches of SPECTRE, but finds himself in a battle to save the world from a deadly weapon that has fallen into the hands of ruthless terrorist Safin (Malek).

So we have been expecting you, Mr. Bond.  And indeed we have.  Work in the film began in early 2016, and it was originally due to be released at the end of 2019, but was delayed a few months to avoid competition with Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (2019), but was delayed a couple of times more due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  In fact it seems like I have seen the trailer every time I have been to the cinema in the past two years.  Was it worth the wait?  Yes, it was worth it.  The film has all the traditional elements of classic James Bond:  glamour, exotic locations, plenty of action, humour, gadgets and a megalomaniacal villain, but it updates it to appeal to a modern audience.  The female characters are no longer just "Bond girls", there to be decoration and not much more, they are more than a match for Bond, and are the most complex, ambiguous characters.  Also supporting characters such as Q (Ben Wishaw), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and M (Ralph Fiennes) have much bigger roles than were traditional.  This is likely to be Daniel Craig's last James Bond film, and if so, this is a perfect way to end Craig's run as 007.  The action is exciting, and, despite having a running time of almost three hours, it's well paced and the narrative keeps moving along.  Rami Malek makes a satisfactorily sinister villain.  Léa Seydoux reprises her role as the tragic Madeleine Swann from the previous Bond film Spectre (2015) and provides the film with it's heart.  Lashana Lynch is good as the new "00 agent" who acts as Bond's partner / rival and possible successor.  This mayn't be the best of the James Bond films, but it is certainly one of the best ones,  the thing is that it's hard to see where the Bond films will go from here, but it will be interesting to see what the future holds.

Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas in No Time to Die
  

A Cure for Wellness

Year of Release:  2016

Director:  Gore Verbinski

Screenplay:  Justin Haythe, from a story by Gore Verbinski and Justin Haythe

Starring:  Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth

Running Time:  146 minutes

Genre:  Horror, drama

Lockhart (DeHaan), an ambitious young executive at a New York financial services institution, is assigned to retrieve the company's CEO from a remote "wellness centre" somewhere in the Swiss Alps.  When Lockhart arrives he soon discovers that the centre's grotesque treatments hide a disturbing secret.

Loosely inspired by the Thomas Mann novel The Magic Mountain, this is an impressively mounted, handsome film, stylishly made, with an intriguing mystery.  There are also some impressive performances such as Jason Isaacs as the sinister head of the institution and Mia Goth as the strange, otherworldly girl who lives in the institute.  However the film is overly long with a running time of almost two and half hours, and there are some gaping plot holes.  Also the lead character, as played by Dane DeHaan, is so obnoxious it's really hard to care what happens to him.  It starts out as an elegant "elevated horror" film (basically horror for people who look down on horror films), but moves into full on gothic horror by the end.  Despite the sedate pace, the film boasts some genuinely horrific moments of body horror, including a genuinely nightmarish dental scene.  There are very obvious parallels to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), and Phantom of the Opera and even to bizarre sixties TV series The Prisoner (1967-1968).  It won't be too everyone's tastes, but if you have the patience and stomach for it, it is intriguing and beautiful enough not to feel like a waste of time.

    Dane DeHaan in A Cure for Wellness