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Reviews
Emergency Call (1952)
A good thriller
I found this film on "Talking Pictures" and was pleasantly surprised by a story that moved along well, held the attention with some well-wrought tension and drama and also had believable characters from a broad cross-section of British life in the early1950s.
The story is about a search for three donors with a very rare blood group who can help to save the life a little girl - she's dying of a very rare leukaemia and desperately needs a transfusion to save her. It manages a to create a slice of post war British life with almost every character bringing in a new angle to the story.
One particular characterisation caught my attention that was the very sympathetic (NOT some silly caricature) treatment of a black stoker who is refusing to give his blood and is also refusing to say why. The character's name was George Robinson and he was played by Earl Cameron (who is at the time of writing still alive 101 years old! and was known as a story teller on the Children's TV programme: Jackanory) The refusal stems from his perception that his "black blood" would be regarded as not being as good as "white blood" - he is persuaded otherwise, which for those days in the UK was quite a strong and positive message (there was indeed quite a bit of racism about in those times too!). There are some very good bits of casting and acting with the dependable Jack Warner playing a Scotland Yard Chief Inspector, Anthony Steel as the young hospital doctor, Sidney Tafler as the nasty crook, Sid James as the boxing manager and (to my astonishment!) Freddie Mills (formerly a real-life world boxing champion) giving a good acting performance as a boxer (also one of the potential blood donors).
All in all, this is a film that I enjoyed and would watch again.
The Borderlands (2013)
Bordering on being boring
If we start with the idea that many very old churches in Europe were built on top of old pagan places of worship (as if to cap-off the "evil")and then consider the premise that somehow the "evil" refuses to be capped-off and is making itself felt, we are at the starting-point of this movie. The Borderlands of the original title is intended to convey this juxtaposition of the old and the new and the idea that there is "cross-over".
The movie centres on the idea that "strange and spooky things" are happening in a village Church and the Vatican sends in a dysfunctional group of "hi-tech" investigators to look into the matter. They are met with increasing hostility in the local village - it may be that we are to assume that the villagers are in favour of the old "pagan" religion, and don't appreciate this meddling about. The team's quarrelsome and drunken efforts to gather evidence are irritatingly haphazard, punctuated with spooky noises and things moving etc. Most of this is portrayed using "found footage" techniques - which you either like or you don't. The team's dysfunctional nature leads them into more quarrelling and blundering about and inevitably getting themselves into dangerous territory without much seeming to realise what they are doing (another fine mess!).
The movie has its moments but basically I did not really enjoy it and felt that it relied too much on clichéd "scarey" moments and (nowadays) hackneyed techniques like "found footage" (enough of the Blair Witch Trial, already!). The acting was mostly good with some characters being rather unbelievable - e.g. the Parish Priest. If I were wanting spooky happenings investigated, I certainly would not have deployed this team.
Macbeth (2015)
Truly awful!
If you take the Shakespeare out of this mess, you would have an amateurish "sword and sorcery", pot-boiler movie which would (and should!) be laughed at.
Re-insert Shakespeare (who must be disturbing his own bones by turning in his grave in Stratford-upon-Avon)and you have one of the most mangled versions of "The Scottish Play" that has been my misfortune to sit through.
Briefly: scenes chopped, changed but not for the better; significant events simply skimmed over or missed; scenes invented and gratuitously inserted (e.g. the daft opening scene); lines entirely stripped of their power; lines entirely missed out and not for any particularly good reason. There is nothing wrong with interpreting Shakespeare and (say) missing out scenes and lines to give a vision of the meaning of the play as the director sees it - e.g. Olivier missed out nearly 1,000 lines of Henry V in his 1944 film production of Henry V (not a film that I personally care that much for but it was effective and did not do a violence to the play). However Justin Kurzel's effort strikes me as the production of someone who simply did not understand his material.
The casting was frequently dire, Marion Cottilard was simply miscast as Lady Macbeth she may be many things but this was a step too far for her in my opinion. Malcolm was, in effect, a bit-player, mostly shorn of the small role he has; there are too many other examples. That said, Michael Fassbender gave an almost creditable/credible performance as the eponymous hero but he had a mangled text to work with.
The Scottish accents were a curious mishmash of the genuine (i.e. the role was actually played by a Scot) and the dreadful made up, modern-day "Glasgow" accents that the BBC seems to trot out when it wants to do something about Scotland and show it elsewhere. That said, the diction was very poor - we certainly do not need declamation a la Henry Irvine but having lines mumbled in a hoarse "tough guy" whisper (a la Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry) was neither helpful nor illuminating.
The choice of locations was quite bizarre - some were very good and atmospheric - conveying extremis well but others were, it seems, simply plucked at random from something like the Lord of the Rings.