Recently Watched Films 2012

[Dan Warburton]

Hey Dan, did you ever get around to the third Rozier film, The Castaways of Turtle Island?

Ha! As it happens, we watched it last night!



Jacques Rozier, Les Naufragés de l'île de la Tortue, 1976

Those dates can be misleading, as with albums - the film was actually shot in 1974, but it apparently took another couple of years for Rozier to find the time and money to edit it. Pierre Richard (above) and Jacques Villeret, both great comic actors, bring a different dynamic to the film from the Rohmerian ramblings of Du côté d'Orouët. In the (unsubtitled) bonus interview, Villeret recalls Rozier's shall we say relaxed approach to filmmaking, spending the first day of shooting in Guadeloupe looking for the right hat for his actor. Great cameo from Nana Vasconcelos too. A lighter (though not shorter!) film than its predecessor, but none the worse for that. Give me the lightness of Rozier to the heaviness of the Wenders every time! (Would be keen to know what you think of that, Ben, if you get round to seeing it. I agree with you about the cynicism - it's not normally what I associate with him, but.. well, see what you make of it.)

[sevenarts]

Jacques Rozier, Les Naufragés de l'île de la Tortue, 1976

Those dates can be misleading, as with albums - the film was actually shot in 1974, but it apparently took another couple of years for Rozier to find the time and money to edit it. Pierre Richard (above) and Jacques Villeret, both great comic actors, bring a different dynamic to the film from the Rohmerian ramblings of Du côté d'Orouët. In the (unsubtitled) bonus interview, Villeret recalls Rozier's shall we say relaxed approach to filmmaking, spending the first day of shooting in Guadeloupe looking for the right hat for his actor. Great cameo from Nana Vasconcelos too. A lighter (though not shorter!) film than its predecessor, but none the worse for that.

How's that for timing? We apparently watched it on the same day. I'd say the time spent looking for a hat was well-spent, it's a pretty awesome hat, and the scene where Richard and Villeret try on different hats apparently mirrors that process within the film itself, and is very funny just for the body language.

[johnson]

[Dan Warburton]

Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, 1987

If you only know Richard Griffiths as Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter series, you ought to check out his Uncle Monty here - sensational (his dialogue in the cottage seduction scene was apparently based on Franco Zeffirelli's attempts to chat up Robinson, but bears such a striking resemblance to my old Director of Studies in Cambridge I nearly reached for the lighter fluid myself, dear boy..). So is Ralph Brown (not pictured above) as Danny the dealer, with his monster joint Camberwell Carrot ("I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain.") Interesting how the 60s were filtered through the 80s - though nominally set in 1969 (the Hendrix estate got royally pissed off with the film for once more associating Jimi's music with drugtaking), I can't believe Richard Grant wasn't familiar with Rick Mayall's character in The Young Ones, and Danny bears more than a passing resemblance to Warlock, Neil's dope fiend friend in the same series. Oh, and the washing up reminds me of the things "living" in the Young Ones' fridge. Funny to think that both Grant and McGann ended up playing Doctor Who. HIlarious at times, but deadly serious at others: Grant's closing Shakespeare soliloquy played to the wolves in Regents Park Zoo is truly magnificent. Hats off to George Harrison for stumping up the money, too.

[Gaendaal]

HIlarious at times, but deadly serious at others: Grant's closing Shakespeare soliloquy played to the wolves in Regents Park Zoo is truly magnificent.

Yes! This scene is what the film is all about to me and is often lost in the studentsville quote-frenzy (which I'm very guilty of falling into myself, I admit). The film also chimes with me perhaps because I spent a good part of my childhood being forced to go on holidays 'by mistake' in the Lake District...

[Dan Warburton]

Sergei Bondarchuk, War and Peace, 1967

If you haven't yet read the book (I haven't - reading War and Peace is a kind of running joke, like Proust..), try the film. Or films - four episodes in all, total duration 6 hours 40 minutes. The last episode's a bit ragged, and some of the plot loose ends aren't tied up as well as they could be, but episode 3, the battle of Borodino, is absolutely stunning (120,000 extras, one year of filming and a heart attack for the director). So is the ballroom scene in episode two. Makes the 1956 version with Audrey Hepburn (surely one of the most overrated actresses ever) look pretty piddling.

[Dohol]

Sergei Bondarchuk, War and Peace, 1967

If you haven't yet read the book (I haven't - reading War and Peace is a kind of running joke, like Proust..), try the film. Or films - four episodes in all, total duration 6 hours 40 minutes. The last episode's a bit ragged, and some of the plot loose ends aren't tied up as well as they could be, but episode 3, the battle of Borodino, is absolutely stunning (120,000 extras, one year of filming and a heart attack for the director). So is the ballroom scene in episode two. Makes the 1956 version with Audrey Hepburn (surely one of the most overrated actresses ever) look pretty piddling.

indeed......the battle of Boridino is mind blowing...no comparison whatsoever to the loathsome 1956 version.

Audrey Hepburn (surely one of the most overrated actresses ever)

and I thought I was alone in this...

[Dohol]

and I have read W&P...(as difficult as that is to confess..)

[Wombatz]

Isn't that the book where the author for 600 pages again and again tells us how we live in the post-heroic age and nothing the dictator general can say or do matters anymore, only to wallow in Napoleon's EPIC FAIL for 600 pages more after events have turned? That was a waste of time.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Isn't that the book where the author for 600 pages again and again tells us how we live in the post-heroic age and nothing the dictator general can say or do matters anymore, only to wallow in Napoleon's EPIC FAIL for 600 pages more after events have turned? That was a waste of time.

Yes, we did'nt read the same book. Would like to know your take on Anna Karenina, though (just kidding).

[MRS]

The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)

Visually without peer, the child acting incredible, yet the ceaseless motivic saturation; I can't help but come away a bit underwhelmed. Hexagonal lead glass into freezing husband and wife, dead earth, hot sun, honeycombs and Franco's imprint from 35,000 feet, we get it. Isabel playing dead though nearly makes up for anything else, don't think I've seen viewership channeled into childhood naïveté quite like that. Worth seeing, succinct almost considering the pace and utility of identical set pieces again and again.

[Dan Warburton]

Silvio Narizzano, Georgy Girl, 1966

Another offbeat Brit New Wave comedy (despite that Eye-Tie sounding name, director Narizzano hailed from Canada, and spent most of his career in England) to gently flick the scabs off the sores of unwanted pregnancy and other"issues" that keep London swinging at the time. Charlotte Rampling looks gorgeous but plays the bitch to perfection (lines like "I've destroyed two of yours already!" will have the Pro Lifers screaming for blood), James Mason dusts off his old Huddersfield accent, Alan Bates (over)plays the clown, but the show belongs to Lynn Redgrave, who stood in for indisposed big sister at the last minute.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

I don't know anything about baseball, but Moneyball was highly enjoyable. Emotional too.

[johnson]

[Dan Warburton]

Jean-Luc Godard, Bande à part, 1964

Yes, again. Wonderful!

[cheerios]

One of my favs! Watched "A Woman is a Woman" two nights ago.

[Dan Warburton]

Francis Ford Coppola, Rumble Fish, 1983

Wanted to like this more than I did. The wild expressionist angles and deep focus cinematography are gorgeous, but you wonder what they have to do with the banal little story. And FFC overloads the whole affair with symbols - scudding time lapse clouds, clocks all over the bloody place, OK, we geddit, time is running out, so what, bla - which only widens the gulf between style and substance. The acting's pretty good, not that any of the roles are very difficult to bring off, with the exception of Rusty James and Motorcycle Boy (Matt Dillon owes Warren Beatty some serious royalties, and Bruce Willis owes his entire career to Rourke); Stewart Copeland's music seemed right at the time but now comes across as arty and inept.

[Dan Warburton]

Claire Denis, Chocolat, 1988

What a great debut. Though as several commentators, including our own Ed Howard, and the author of the article where I swiped this photo http://www.reverseshot.com/article/chocolat point out, she was already 40 and had worked with Costa Gavras, Jarmusch and Wenders (one of Chocolat's co-producers). Everything I like about Denis (ha, that makes me sound like some kind of expert, whereas I've only seen four of hers so far) is already here: the stately pace (stately, not slow: compare Akerman), the elliptical dialogue (unanswered questions left hanging - for you, dear viewer, to use your intelligence and fill in the gaps, not that many people seem to be able to do so.. just read some of the idiotic comments over at IMDb), the tension just under the surface. Bankolé and Boschi absolutely perfect - this scene with the mirror says it all: the gulf that cannot be bridged, the conventions that cannot be broken. Masterly. And a Dollar Brand soundtrack to boot - what more could you want?

[Dan Warburton]

Don Siegel, The Beguiled, 1971

Two goodies in a row.. great discovery, this. Apparently Don Siegel's own personal favourite of his films, but a box office disappointment. Not surprisingly, because on paper nothing should work: there's no action as such - Clint Eastwood is a wounded Yankee soldier recovering (imprisoned, in fact) in a girls' boarding school in an old plantation house in the South during the Civil War, and spends most of the film on crutches - and none of the characters is really sympathetic (and all become much less so the more we learn about their murky past - this one's a field day for Freud fans), but I bet it'll have you on the edge of your seat. Great score from Lalo Schifrin, smart script, superb acting from Geraldine Page as the seriously repressed headmistress (Jeanne Moreau was apparently considered, but she wouldn't have done it better than this) and, yes, Clint. Recommended viewing, if you don't know it.

[Wombatz]

Seconding this and the earlier sentiment that Rumble Fish has aged much badlier than Mickey Rourke.