IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)

IN A LONELY PLACE is a superbly acted thriller starring Humphrey Bogart as a once-successful, no cynical Hollywood screen-writer called Dix.  As the film opens he asks a coat-check girl back to his apartment, ostensibly to tell him the plot of a murder-mystery she's reading so he doesn't have to read it before adapting it.  Naturally this involves her screaming "help" as she re-enacts it.  The problem is that the girl is found murdered the next day and Dix is the prime suspect until his new neighbour Laurel (Gloria Grahame) provides a false alibi and they start an affair. It starts ominously. Laurel is interviewed by the police with Dix sitting behind her looking menacing - the picture shown above. He reveals he saw her wearing a negligee. There's a lot of sexual tension and provocation right there. After this, the film really gets interesting, as we see these two characters evenly matched. Both are mature, probably sexually experienced, and go into their new relationship with their eyes open.  Both are also flawed. The question is how far this hard-drinking, violent, resentful man can ever be healed by his lover, and how far Laurel will stick it out against a background of increasing distrust and then fear.  Grahame's portrait of a woman genuinely in love with a man who is at the very least bordering on alcoholic and violently angry and at most a murderer is nuanced, heart-breaking and feels authentic.  It's one of her best, and is what I would love her to be remembered for, rather than the silly "girl who can't get enough" from OKLAHOMA!

THE BIG HEAT (1953)

To complement the release of FILM STARS DON'T DIE IN LIVERPOOL - the true story of ageing Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame's affair with a younger British actor - the BFI is showing a number of her most famous films. This weekend sees the release of THE BIG HEAT and IN A LONELY PLACE. The former is a digital restoration of the 1953 noir thriller by Fritz Lang - the iconic director of METROPOLIS and M. It has long been a favourite of mine - a taut tale of corruption and the price of doing right - beautifully acted and shot. The film stars Glenn Ford as Sergeant Dave Bannion - a lone ethical cop in a dark world. Ford is perhaps best known to modern audiences as Clark Kent's dad in the original Christopher Reeves SUPERMAN film but before then he had long established himself as a charismatic if not conventionally good looking character actor, best known for the original 3:10 TO YUMA. Bannion is married to a loyal loving wife, Katie, played by Jocelyn Brando (MOMMIE DEAREST - and yes, the sister of Marlon Brando), and has a cute daughter. Every time we see his family home the score is upbeat and cutesy - a haven of good wholesome family values - all teddy bears and frilly curtains. 

The Best of 2012 - GENRE MOVIES

Critics drawing up lists of the best films of any particular year tend to focus on the arthouse wonders and avant-garde. You know what I mean - the latest subtle deeply affecting Iranian agit-drama in which the death of a tree symbolises the ruling neo-fascist kleptocracy. And there'll be more of that to follow. But in this post I want to give mad props to all those film-makers who took the hackneyed genre tropes that make up the vast majority of theatrical releases and reinvigorated them.

First up, CHILDREN'S movies, and PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS!  This is an absolutely hilarious, beautifully created, intelligent kids claymation picture that casts Hugh Grant as a hapless but well-meaning pirate going up against the nefarious Charles Darwin.  This movie has heart, but not in that schmaltzy manipulative Pixar way (controversial!)  It has wit, style, irreverence, a very British sense of humour, and a kickass Queen Victoria.  Why don't we see more of Hugh Grant in roles like this? 

I don't really watch HORROR movies, as I'm totally gutless, so in this category, I'll have to nominate FRANKENWEENIE, Tim Burton's return to form with this poignant horror homage featuring a little boy who re-animates his beloved dog, Sparkie. This is a kids movie that's really for cineastes, with wonderful in-jokes and references, and a genuine love of cinema-history.  Again, no false schmaltz here, but a genuinely tearful experience.  Just goes to show you can make a great film that clocks in at under 90 minutes. Not sure you really needed the 3D though. 

Next, DRAMA. For me the best was J C Chandor's MARGIN CALL. I have an on-going beef with how Hollywood represents my day job, and this is the first (and probably last) time that I've seen the reality of life in an investment bank depicted accurately on screen. If you want to know what really happened in the Global Financial Crisis, watch this film, and realise that we were all drinking the cool-aid.  Also memorable for a genius slippery cameo from Jeremy Irons as a thinly veiled version of Lehman Brothers' chief, Dick Fuld. This is the movie WALL STREET 2 should have been.

The London Film Festival brought us the best THRILLER of the year.  ARGO came with the fanfare of the Hollywood machine, cueing itself up for Best Picture. It's basically just a very well put together political thriller, but there's  no harm in being just that. Even though I knew the outcome of the US diplomats trying to escape from Iran, I was on the edge of my seat for the whole film.  And, let's face it, we and the Academy love a movie in which Hollywood saves the day!  With ARGO and THE TOWN, Ben Affleck becomes the best actor turned director since Clint Eastwood, and given the latter's recent poor form, perhaps the best currently working. It's just a shame the phrase "Argo fuck yourself" never caught on. 

Perhaps the most unexpectedly brilliant film of the year was debut director Barnaby Southcombe's City-set NOIR, I, ANNA starring Charlotte Rampling as an enigmatic murder suspect pursued by Gabriel Byrne's rumpled cop.  Beautifully acted and shot, satisfyingly slippery and stylish - a movie whose confidence belies its low budget.

When it came to DISASTER movies, Joe Carnahan's THE GREY blew me out of the water. Taut, spare, tense, emotional.  Who knew Liam Neeson would emerge as an action hero with actual klout, flying in the face of the buff, waxed, pumped up muscle-hounds that fill the pages of Men's Health. Don't go gentle, motherfuckers.

When it comes to BUDDY COP movies, especially those set in LA, you can assume that you're going to get 2 hours of profanity, macho bullshit and corruption.  The genius of David Ayer's END OF WATCH is that it turned that assumption on its head, with a portrait of true, real friendship and integrity.  Sad to say that we live in such a cynical world, seeing two good guys just going about their business is enough to be considered genre-redefining. 

My penultimate choice is a movie from a genre that I think is typically ill served by mainstream Hollywood: the ROMCOM.  I'm not sure why  modern rom-coms are so banal and assinine, when the golden era of precode Hollywood produced such wonderfully acerbic, pugnacious and magnetic relationships. What kind of a world takes us from HIS GIRL FRIDAY to the latest Katherine Heigl vehicle?  Anyways, it was refreshing to see David O Russell give us an off-beat odd-couple in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.  Perhaps the cutest moment in this year's cinema is when Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence unconsciously hold hands as they walk into the pivotal dance comp at the end of the flick and each denies they did it first. 

Finally, hands down the best genre film of the year belongs to the franchise that has become a genre in its own right, the BOND movies.  SKYFALL was, to my mind, the best Bond of the modern era.  Psychologically realistic, beautifully shot and superlatively cast.  And yet it had enough irreverence and good humour to understand that just as we don't want stupid gadgets ("What were you expecting, an exploding pen?") we still do want to see a glimpse of the Astin Martin.  Truly, this was a post-modern Bond and worth every second of its three-hour running time. And remember, my dear readers, if you need any advice on mixing martinis, don't listen to that nucklehead Ian Fleming, but head over to our sister site, CYBERMARTINI.

KILLER JOE - some thoughts from Bina007

KILLER JOE is a visceral and provocative trash-noir film from director William Friedkin - most famous for THE EXORCIST - but more similar in tone to his more recent tour-de-force examination of mutual psychosis, BUG. Shot in three weeks on a $10m budget, KILLER JOE has a similarly creepy, violent, sexually tense, sleazy atmosphere, and is similarly tightly written - and it comes as no surprise that both movies were based on plays written by Tracy Letts, of Steppenwolf Theater fame. 

The movie focusses on a messed up southern family - dumb naive father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church); sexually provocative stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon); failed drug-dealer son Chris (Emile Hirsch) and the apparently mentally disturbed daughter Dottie (Juno Temple).  The family live in a trailer, want to bump off Ansel's first wife for the insurance money, and hire Matthew McConaughey's Killer Joe to do the job. Trouble is, he wants more than money - he wants the sexually naive Dottie.

The resulting thriller is both a film of double crosses in the standard style, but also a psychological drama about Dottie (Juno Temple) - her violent childhood; her twisted virginity; her seduction; her escape.  More widely, it's about Killer Joe bringing the entire family under his control, resulting in the two set piece scenes of sexual power - the aforementioned with Dottie, that's really at the centre of the film - and the second, likely to become the film's notorious calling card, involving Sharla and a piece of fried chicken.

It's no surprise to find that these scenes have provoked unease in viewers, and in its final reel, the movie really does just go crazy with the violence.  But what I found most disturbing wasn't the movie's violence (particularly toward women) but its humour. Because, make no mistake, this film is funny, particularly in its depiction of caricature  tuna-casserole-eating white-trash.  The genius of the film is, then, Friedkin's ability, to walk the tight-wire between dark comedy, and genuinely horrific violence, in a way that, say, Werner Herzog's BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, didn't.  I also rather like the casting - Juno Temple is particularly impressive as Dottie, but the real genius move is the casting of McConaughey.  Friedkin has realised that McConaughey's too perfect, too manicured beauty is slightly unnerving and creepy, and harnessed that for the Killer Joe persona - the knowing, sleazy, seductive bad cop.

KILLER JOE is on release in the UK. It opens in the USA on July 27th; in Finland on August 10th; in Russia on August 23rd; in France on September 5th; in Belgium on September 26th; and in the Netherlands on November 8th.

Pantheon movie - BRIGHTON ROCK (1947)

This review reveals the plot of both the novel and the film.

Full disclosure: I am the cliché. I converted to Roman Catholicism at Oxford and transferred the zeal of the convert into an obsession with the writings of the two most famous Catholic converts - John Henry Newman (now on his way to Sainthood) and Graham Greene (whose works appeared on the now thankfully defunct Index Librorum Prohibitorum). Greene's honest portrayal of the difficulty of reconciling Catholicism with humanism - his rejection of simplistic certitude, even though that was what his Church seemed to demand of him - resonated deeply with me. And so, as many other readers, I started off, predictably, with his novels, especially the "Catholic novels" - Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, Monsignor Quixote....It developed into a solid collection of literary criticism of Greene's work, thence into biographies and came full circle, reading Greene's superbly analytical criticism of others, not to mention his substantial body of film reviews. Finally, I came to the films. Of the works he scripted, THE THIRD MAN is simply untouchable and perfect. Taut, harsh, unsentimental. Of the films adapted from his novels, surely the greatest is the one he himself adapted (reworking Terence Rattigan's initial screenplay), The Boulting Brothers' 1947 version of BRIGHTON ROCK.

The novel was based in a world that Greene was fascinated by and closely observed - Brighton's underworld of black marketeers, Italian gangsters and sawdust bars. What was fascinating was the Greene depicted Brighton's public face as being no less vulgar, menacing and and disgusting than its underworld. Greene barely concealed his contempt for day-trippers looking for superficial, transient pleasures. Their faults are magnified in the character of Ida Arnold - a vulgar woman, completely of her time and locale. Ida drinks, flirts, visits clairvoyants, and has that complete and utter moral certainty and righteousness that fills the pages of the Daily Mail. She stands in contrast with Greene's anti-hero, the teenage gangster, Pinkie Brown. Pinkie Brown is a man out of time - by virtue of his Catholicism, which makes him "other" in Anglican England - but also because he is emotionally sterile - disgusted by sentiment and sex. He wanted to be a priest not because he felt a calling, but because he thinks that being a priest will allow him to live as a neuter - as nothing. This is the nihilistic outlook embodied in T.S.Eliot's early poetry.

The novel plays itself out as a battle between Ida's simplistic superficial morality and Pinkie's grander conception. He can be demonic, yes, but he also has grasped more firmly what true grace is, and so has a glimmer of a chance of something greater. Pinkie commits murder, but doesn't drink. He seduces the innocent young waitress, Rose, and marries her, simply to prevent her from giving evidence against him. He hates Rose because he hates her wilful naivety and because he finds her loving him absurd. It is absurd. But it is also frightening for him. Because, as in all sado-masochistic relationships, Pinkie realises that it's Rose who has the power. And so he tries to blot her out in the most complete manner - by making her commit suicide. He is not merely removing the threat to himself (the dead cannot give evidence), but removing her absolute faith. By tempting her into committing a mortal sin, he is killing innocence itself. Of course, the irritating, do-gooding interventions of Ida Arnold save Rose from suicide and damnation, and Pinkie is killed instead. But Pinkie is triumphant in the end. For the more charitable, the parish priest holds out the hope of grace and mercy, even for the murderer and seducer. For the less charitable, Pinkie's triumph is that he will ultimately destroy Rose's innocence from beyond the grave, thanks to a malicious recording he left her, telling her that he hates her. The end of the novel is utterly chilling. And for a novel that is widely seen as a "Catholic novel" it seems to dash away Hope and easy religious answers. There are no trite miracles. No easy fixes.

The Boulting Brothers' 1947 film of the novel is a tour-de-force of British noir - far surpassing their later social satires (LUCKY JIM, I'M ALRIGHT JACK) in visual style, if not in substance. From the opening chase scene, and the murder of Fred Hale, the movie is fast-paced and menacing. Brighton is menacing - both the grim under-world and the lurid sea-side attractions. DP Harry Waxman (THE WICKER MAN) and cameraman Gil Taylor (later DP on DR. STRANGELOVE) light everything with stark contrasts and frame scenes from unsettling angles. The point-of-view shots are un-nerving - often taking the audience through someone's hands to the scene beyond, as every scene is one of potential strangulation. That's how we first see Pinkie - a close-up on his hands playing with twine, as if to strangle. Richard Attenborough's performance as Pinkie is superlative - the contrast between his innocent baby-face (he was only 23 and looks 17) and the coolness with which he commits murder and the ease with which he picks up Rose. And, much as Greene reputedly didn't appreciate her performance, Hermione Baddeley is suitably crude and intrusive as Ida - an essential characteristic in confirming our sympathy for Pinkie, despite his heinous crimes.

There are two key changes from the novel. First, it's Catholic debate is essayed more lightly and subtly than in the book. But this is surely the right move. After all, without using an intrusive voice-over for internal monologue, it's hard to see how the Catholic angle could've been explored more explicitly without seeming heavy-handed. The second change is the ending. Where the novel has Rose walking home to listen to Pinkie's vicious record, the film ends with Rose in a convent, listening to a record which, thanks to a scratch that cuts short the monologue, allows her to believe that Pinkie did love her. Her Catholic faith is in tact, she can believe that she did "change him", and all this because of, we are supposed to believe, Divine Mercy. For years, I hated this ending, until I realised that actually one could choose to read it as the bitterest and most ironic ending of all. After all, is it more cruel that Rose has her illusions shattered, or that she lives on completely deluded? Still, this seems like a second-rate shabby sort of fix. Worst of all, one cannot blame Rattigan or the Boulting Brothers for this easier, more commercial ending, because it was Greene himself who changed it, apparently to appease the censors. Greene has been quoted as noting: "Anybody who had any sense would know that next time Rose would probably push the needle over the scratch and get the full message." I don't think that's right. I think you can't have it both ways. Either the end is sugary, or she is deluded. The evasion at the end weakens what is otherwise a sublime picture.

BRIGHTON ROCK was released in 1947.

Pantheon movie of the month - DOUBLE INDEMNITY

Phyllis: I'm a native Californian. Born right here in Los Angeles.

Walter Neff: They say all native Californians come from Iowa.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY is a brutal, enigmatic film noir - one of legendary director Billy Wilder's best films (a bold claim seeing as he helmed SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and SOME LIKE IT HOT) - a slippery masterpiece, like all of Raymond Chandler's slippery thrillers - and creepily shot by John Seitz, DP on SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS. Watching the film today is to find a film that still feels modern, perhaps because of its cynical approach to relationships, and puzzling, because of the conundrum at its centre.

The film takes the form of a crime thriller. Beautiful Barbara Stanwyck is a ruthless woman who uses her sexuality to manipulate men for money. She does a quick number on an insurance salesman called Neff (Fred McMurray), convincing him to murder her husband but to make it look like an accident so that they can both collect on his life insurance. Under the double indemnity clause, an accidental death pays out double. What's completely bizarre is that there is no heat in the relationship between Phyllis and Neff, and it's not clear why he'd switch from being a successful businessman to a murderer. There is something willfully, arbitrarily self-destructive which is utterly sinister and incredibly compelling to watch. The relationship that's arguably even more compelling is that between Neff and Keyes - the boss sent to investigate the "accident", prove it was suicide or murder and deny the claim. Keyes (Edward G Robinson) is the hero of the piece, if you can have a hero in a noir. He forms a genuinely empathetic relationship with Neff and the real suspense of the film comes not from whether Keyes will track Neff down, but why Neff feels compelled to collude in that process.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY was released in 1944 and is available on DVD. It was nominated for seven Oscars. Barbara Stanwyck lost out to Ingrid Bergman for GASLIGHT; John Seitz lost to Joseph LaShelle for LAURA; Billy Wilder lost to Leo McCarey for GOING MY WAY; Miklos Rozsa lost to Max Steiner for SINCE YOU WENT AWAY; it lost Best Picture and Best Screenplay to the Bing Crosby comedy GOING MY WAY; it lost Best Sound to WILSON.

Eventual tags: barbara stanwyck, billy wilder, black and white, edward g robinson, fred macmurray, james m cain, jean heather, john seitz, miklos rozsa, noir, pantheon, porter hall, raymond chandler, thriller

HE WAS A QUIET MAN - a brilliant, slippery little movie

Writer director Frank A Cappello followed up CONSTANTINE with a bizarre, twisted little film called HE WAS A QUIET MAN. I'm not entirely sure why this didn't get more play but it's a brilliant, slippery little movie. Combining black humour, social satire and elements of noir, HE WAS A QUIET MAN is a truly original and ever so slightly fucked up flick.

The movie opens with a uglied up Christian Slater as the office nerd, Bob, seething with hate in his cubicle. He dreams of unleashing a shooting frenzy on the superficial slimeballs he works with, but - and here's the genius twist - he's beaten to it by a fellow violent geek. In the heat of the moment, Bob stops the mass-murderer killing office babe Vanessa, so becoming the hero of the hour. Suddenly, he's feted by his colleagues and strikes up an unlikely romance with the surprisingly spiky Vanessa. The question is, how far will Bob allow himself to buy into this new life, and how far can he repress his old hatred?

Christian Slater is both sinister and believable as the geek but it's Elisha Cuthbert who is a scene-stealer as the pretty Vanessa. She completely subverts the image of the sweet, dumb blonde. And the movie itself is a wry commentary on fairy-tale happy endings and other delusions.

Definitely one to seek out on DVD.

HE WAS A QUIET MAN opened in the US and UK last Christmas and opened in Italy earlier this year. It is available on DVD.

Otto Preminger retrospective - DAISY KENYON

The first is an occasional series looking at the films of Pantheon director of movie such as ANATOMY OF A MURDER, BONJOUR TRISTESSE, THE MAN WITH A GOLDEN ARM, CARMEN JONES and....

DAISY KENYON is a refreshingly adult, modern drama about a mature, career woman (Joan Crawford) with a conflicted love life. She is having an affair with a married rich lawyer (Dana Andrews) and hasn't got the strength to leave him. He spins her a fancy line but doesn't want a messy divorce. At the same time, Daisy is being romanced by a charming, grieving, soldier (Henry Fonda). He is aware of her love for the lawyer, and she cannot resolve her feelings for either of them, but knowing all this, they get married anyway. At which point, the lawyer's wife starts divorce proceedings, naming Daisy, and opening up the possibility of a new life with her old lover.

This movie isn't classic noir in the Philip Marlowe style, but it is noir in its moral complexity, emotional ambiguity and sexual tension. Daisy, the lawyer and the soldier are all confused about what they want and their motivations are complicated. Even at the end, we are not particularly convinced that the "happy couple" have moved off of shifting sands. Adultery is not judged harshly, but neither is it condoned. The writers just face up to messy reality. We also have some class criticism, with the lifestyle and casual power of the lawyer contrasted with Daisy - a middle class career woman - and the soldier - who has returned to his working class life.

All of this elevates what might seem to be a superficial soap opera story into a work of interest that still seems modern - and more honest - than SEX AND THE CITY and its ilk.

DAISY KENYON was released in 1947.

Pantheon movie of the month - THE KILLERS

THE KILLERS is a great film noir, originally released in 1946, and back on release as part of the British Film Institute's Burt Lancaster retrospective. It's now seen as the film that launched Lancaster's career, and one of the best examples of Ava Gardner's explosive screen prescence.

The movie opens with a prologue taken from an Ernest Hemingway short story. Two assassins enter a simple diner in a small town and menace the owner, his chef and an innocent bystander. They're waiting for a garage mechanic who evidently had a previous life running with wrong crowd. Echoes of HISTORY OF VIOLENCE abound. It becomes apparent that the mechanic won't be coming in and the assassins leave. The bystander then runs through the town of picket fences to warn him. It's an exhilerating scene but culminates in an outstandingly dark, brooding scene in a boarding house. The friend bursts into the mechanic's room. He's lying on his bed, his face entirely in shadow. With a morbid passivity, he thanks his friend for coming, sends him away and wait to die. Echoes of JESSE JAMES offering his back to the coward ROBERT FORD.

The rest of the movie is, like that film, a "whydunnit", penned by Anthony Veillor and John Huston. Why did the mechanic, known as the Swede, aka Ole Andersen aka Robert Lund, refuse to run? Why didn't he want to live? The answers will be uncovered by an insurance investigator played by Edmond O'Brien. And really, this is his film in terms of screen time. In a series of CITIZEN KANE style flashbacks, he'll interview people who knew the Swede and recreate his motives.

Burt Lancaster is a charismatic presence but is only ever refracted in other people's memories. He's the boxer, forced onto the sidelines by an injury and a brutally capitalistic manager. He's the dumb lug patsy hooked by Ava Gardner's gangster's moll - so obvious and vulnerable it's painful to watch. He's the fall guy for her crime, and even upon release, when she's left him for another man, he goes along with a heist in order to be close to her. Finally, he's a broken man, violent with rage, intent on self-harm.

The supporting cast is absolutely cracking and the story hangs together in a way that a Raymond Chandler novel never does. The feel of the movie is cool and detached, maybe because it's told through the eyes of the dispassionate insurance man. All the time, this tragic love story is reduced to an irrelevance - almost daring the audience to feel involved. The insurance boss tells the investigator that all he's achieved in solving the mystery is to lower the insurance premium in 1947 by a fraction of a cent. Such is the worth of The Swede. Behind the camera, we get a great orchestral score by Miklos Rozsa and superb cinematography from Woody Bredell. There's a lot of use of crane shots and characters on different levels of a building - allowing interesting perspectives and depth of vision. The continuous crane shot of the heist is particularly memorable.

It all adds up to a great film noir, not so much because of Lancaster - although he's great in it - but because of Robert Siodmak's superb ensemble cast and bleak vision.

THE KILLERS was originally released in 1946 - the year of BRIEF ENCOUNTERS, NOTORIOUS and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. It was nominated for Oscars for Best Director, Best Editor (Arthur Hilton), Best Score (Miklos Rozsa) and Best Screenplay (Anthony Veiller) but lost out not to any of these great films but to the Myrna Loy WW2 romance, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES! THE KILLERS is currently playing at the BFI Southbank as part of the Burt Lancaster retrospective, and is widely available on DVD.

LIGHTS IN THE DUSK/LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT - tragicomedy so deadpan it makes Droopy Dog look energetic

Koistinen is a loser. He has no friends, no lover, his co-workers take the piss out of him and he is so evidently a patsy that a cynical bunch of Helsinki thugs set him up for a heist, by way of a femme fatale. The artificial courtship takes up the first half hour of this short tragi-comedy and it is replete with director Aki Kaurismäki's trademark strained conversation, stylised framing and quirky set pieces.

Take the way in which the femme fatale breaks it off with Koistinen. He tentatively places his hand on her shoulder. She removes it. "Are you trying to break up with me?" he asks. "I need to travel. My mother is sick," she replies. "When do you need to leave?" he responds, forlorn. "Immediately." She gets up. Comedy so deadpan it makes Droopy Dog look energetic.

The second half of the movie is heavier work. The audience wills the movie to its obvious pay-off but Koistinen's masochistic passivity feels uncomfortably like sadism on the part of the director, the audience now complicit. Just how much more punishment can we watch? And perhaps the most damning thing I can say about this otherwise charming, though slight, film, is that at 77 minutes it feels around 15 minutes too long.

LIGHTS IN THE DUSK played Cannes, London and Toronto 2006 and was withdrawn by the director from the 2006 Oscar noms. It was released in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greece, France, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in 2006. It opened in Estonia, Spain, Italy and Hungary earlier this year. LIGHTS IN THE DUSK is currently on release in the UK and opens in the USA on June 13th 2007.

BRICK - This film is so cool that Richard Roundtree is by far not the coolest thing about it

This review is brought to you by Tomiwa:

There are two kinds of people who will enjoy Brick: film noir fans who don't mind seeing the form explored in a new and unexpected manner, and 13 year old kids who might not know the form but will love the characters, the language and ultimately the very idea of film noir itself. Lucky for me, I'm fit right into both of these categories (old film noir fan and a 13 year old boy at heart). BRICK doesn't do anything too original to the basic workings of film noir, but it is a very fun take on the genre. All the stock characters are there, the twists (few of which a really clever viewer will find unexpected), the feel, even despite the sunny California setting, the claustrophobia.

The main problem with Brick is settling into the world it creates. There is a reason noir movies are made with grizzled, worn out men and set in dark alleys and bars. It gives instant credibility to the characters and the metaphoric darkness of their world. In a sunny California high school, one cannot help but wonder why our would be Bogey is so hard, what it is that drives him, how his instincts got honed or his worldview is so dark. One also has to wonder where the rest of the world as we know it is in relation to this place of vice and sin. The movie does a fine job answering some of these, revealing interesting details and back story that fill out the characters, but it never suceeds in merging the world it's created with the one we know. Hence, you have a movie that's internally coherent and completely engrossing if you just surrender to it's logic, but absolutely inane if you're the kind that can't let go of reality.

The acting is superb. Gordon-Levitt's take on the hard boiled detective steals liberally from Bogart (physical mannerisms and all) but opens it up wonderfully in some fresh ways. Everyone else is pretty great as well, except for the Pin, whose character is quite overdrawn and further let down by the acting. It's also a really beautiful movie in parts, with some clever cinematography and really fun shots. And the language... The language is nothing short of brilliant, the kind of stuff that makes you want to watch a movie over and over again. It adds to the oddity of the universe constructed, but it's just so much fun to hear and repeat. So I guess, I kinda recommend this movie. It's about the most fun I've had in a theatre this year.

And a few words from Bina007: BRICK is very very odd film. Take a normal high school in modern-day California. Now, let’s give it a sort of antiquated film-noir feel. We’ll have people run to phone booths on abandoned street-corners or in empty car-lots rather than use cellphones. We’ll have the students speak in a stream of stylish one-liners full of almost impenetrable slang. We’ll have them hang out with drug-pushers and murdering thugs too. And then, we’ll populate this high school with the kind of characters who are capitalised. There will be a Femme Fatale, an Anti-Hero on the search for his missing girlfriend, who is herself kind of a Lost Soul. We’ll also have an Arch-Villain who may or may not be the real bad guy, a loyal but kooky Side-Kick. Finally, and here’s the real classy touch, we’ll cast an iconic bad-ass - Richard Roundtree – as the Assistant Vice-Principal. We’ll let these guys run around town for two hours, throwing punches and cute one-liners, and then we’ll end the film, not entirely caring whether or not the plot has been entirely wrapped up. In fact, it’s better if it isn’t – that adds to the whole noir-feel.

Like I said, BRICK is an odd film and it plays it absolutely straight. I have a feeling that whether or not you’ll enjoy it will depend on how far you are willing to just accept this odd world at face value. I went along for the ride and thoroughly enjoyed it mainly because it was just so out of leftfield, partly because it was, on occasion, hilarious, but also because Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns in another searing performance. But if you’re no fan of moody, mysterious thrillers and/or prefer your films full of nice cars, beautiful people and explosions, and there’s nothing wrong with that, then BRICK probably isn’t for you.

BRICK premiered at Sundance 2005 where writer/director Rian Johnson won a Special Jury Prize for originality of vision. BRICK went on limited release in the US in April. It opens in the UK this Friday.

KEEPING MUM - Alleged comedy about an axe-wielding au-pair that is significantly less funny than you might think from that description

KEEPING MUM is a movie made in the “British Nanny” genre. This includes many movies which are not in fact British and do not feature British characters, or even a nanny. But you know what I mean. They are movies like Nanny McPhee, The Sound of Music or Don’t tell Mom, The Babysitter’s Dead. There is a family that is troubled – the kids are unruly, the parents in difficulty – but nothing actually dysfunctional. In walks the nanny figure, who may or may not actually be a nanny. He/she starts cooking, cleaning and sorting out the local bully, and before you know it, everything is hunky-dory again. Generally speaking, I don’t mind these movies. They plug a gap in the market for safe kiddie-friendly films, and leave you with a generally warm feeling – as if all of life’s problems could be solved with some home-made scones and a cheery tune.

However, in order to bask in the audiences collective good-will, these movies need to get two things right. First, they need to have genuinely engaging and sympathetic characters. I don’t need to find the characters plausible, I just need to be happy to spend two hours in their company. Second, there have to be some good gags.

All of which brings me round to telling you why I think KEEPING MUM is a cinematic stinker. In features a bunch of great British character actors being self-absorbed and mean, even after the Nanny arrives. We have Rowan Atkinson as a vicar who is too busy with work to pay attention to his wife, and then post-nanny, too busy with his wife to pay attention to his parishioners. His wife, played by the usually marvellous Kristin Scott Thomas, is having an affair with a lecherous golf-pro, played by Patrick Swayze. She decides to chuck in her husband almost on a whim and post-Nanny undergoes a highly ridiculous conversion into…well, that would ruin the alleged plot-twist.

The second problem is that the script does not contain enough funny material. Somewhere out there there’s probably a great film about an axe-murdering au pair, but this just isn’t it. Even Swayze in a posing pouch doesn’t raise a titter, and while he does languish in sleaze, this isn’t as blackly funny a role as the one he took in Donnie Darko. Even when Rowan Atkinson gets transformed into a “funny” vicar, and is supposedly packing in the audiences with his side-splitting homilies, I could still not detect a joke. Sucks.

KEEPING MUM is now available on Region 2 DVD. But then again, so is CATWOMAN, but you don't see me renting that either.

UNION CITY - brings new meaning to the term "art movie"

UNION CITY is a bizarre little (by which I mean comparatively short) film-noir made by the artist Markus Reichert and released back in 1980. Today it is notable for the surreal, tense atmosphere achieved on zero budget and the screen debut of Debbie Harry. On the release of a shiny new DVD edition, I am here to plead its case for viewing outside the cultish band of noir-film-makers and David Lynch fans.

The movie features Dennis Lipscomb as Harlan, a paranoid, repressed accountant, living in Jersey, with his beautiful wife, played by Debbie Harry. Lipscomb becomes obsessed with the mystery man who keeps stealing the milk bottles from outside his house and concocts elaborate plans to entrap said thief. Meanwhile, his neglected wife starts pleasuring herself, not to mention carrying on with the super, played by Everett McGill. The plots sounds absurd, but somehow Reichert manages to maintain a serious tone to the piece. This is partly thanks to his use of small sets and odd camera angles. It always feels like the camera has been squeezed into a small corner, and that the viewer is a voyueur. The creeping sense of claustrophobia lends credibility to Liscomb's inceasing paranoia. Kudos to cameraman, Edward Lachman, who made this possible. In this low budget flick we have a small taste of the kind of work we'd later see in movies such as The Virgin Suicides, Far From Heaven, and the marvellous new Robert Altman movie, A Prairie Home Companion. In addition, praise is due to the score by Chris Stein.

I should make it clear that, even after being cleaned up, the DVD print does look pretty dated, and one suspects that this is just because the production values on the original shoot were constrained by lack of hard cash. In addition, the acting performances, dialogue and substance of the film are highly stylised: this is an art movie in a true sense of the term, and closer to, say, Eraserhead than Blue Velvet. I have to say that technical defects and obvious absurdity aside, the film does suck you in. You want to know who is stealing the milk, you want to know what Lipscomb will do, you want to know if Debbie Harry will finally break out of her stultifying marriage. Why? Like I said, the tone of the piece is right. But secondly, artifice aside, UNION CITY is one of the most honest portraits of a bad marriage that I have seen on screen. It resonates. And that makes it, for me, a successful film.

UNION CITY is available on a newly cleaned-up DVD complete with Debbie Harry's original screen test and previously unseen deleted scenes.