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Reviews
Documentary New Zealand: Hudson and Halls - A Love Story (2001)
A great love story
I saw this documentary about 8 years ago, wow, that long? Hudson and Halls have both been dead for longer than that and probably largely forgotten. However, even if you don't remember seeing them camp around your TV screens in NZ or the UK this is worth a watch.
Its, in fact, precisely what is says; a Love Story. Peter Hudson and David Halls were a couple for many years and despite their on and off screen bickering very much devoted to one another. When Peter died of cancer David was heart-broken and committed suicide a year later.
The documentary recreates the world, not so long ago, when gay men had to be at least discreet and where everyone knew but pretended not to. Probably until the last ten years of their lives Hudson and Halls would have never admitted they were gay, but of course, it was obvious. In a small way they helped to blow the lid off that world. Their cookery programme in NZ was quite explosive for the time, instead of staid matrons and sound blokes you had two screaming queens careening about the studio. As a gay teenager in the UK I was amazed and delighted to see these camp old flamers, seemingly so confident and careless of what anyone thought of them, mocking their star guests and taking the p, on TV. There was nothing quite like it. I can't imagine anyone watched it for the cookery.
The documentary shows them to have been challenging people and possibly alcoholics, but none the less loving and caring and full of fun and love of life. Its very sad and very funny and well worth a watch, even if you never saw them
Blackbeard (2006)
So bad I can't find words...
Really, Its hard to find words for how bad this was. I lasted half an hour and then I just couldn't stand any more. Its not just that the acting and script were bad, and they were, the setting, costumes and general atmosphere were so wrong that a bad film failed even to transport you to the world it was meant to portray which might at least have made me watch a bit more of it.
I was put off right at the beginning by Edward Teach (Blackbeard) having a Scottish accent when of course he was English. Angus MacFadyen can act English why didn't he? Stacy Keach looked embarrassed as well he should and Richard Chamberlain tried to rise above it but his costume prevented him. Thailand does not look like the West Indies and the Thais don't look like African slaves.
the acting was truly awful and the script sounded like a teenager had written it after watching a few old movies. The costumes were particularly awful. Richard Chamberlain's looked like a High School pantomime costume and the wigs looked as if someone had once seen a picture of an English lawyer and tried to reproduce it from memory with cotton wool. About the only decent thing in it was the ships and the at sea sequences where at least they'd spent a bit of money.
I know it was Hallmark but they can do an reasonable enough job, Moby Dick was OK, this was bad, bad, bad. So bad I felt insulted and bitterly resented the rental fee. If you're thinking about watching it don't, just look out the window for an hour its bound to be more entertaining.
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
A Curate's egg..but a fun one!
A friend passed this on to me with a laconic "let me know what you think". I wasn't expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised. The silent b/w thing was great and just the right atmosphere for a Lovecraft film. I especially liked the real period feel of the title cards. The acting was surprisingly good, particularly the professor and the degenerate swamp dweller. Silent film acting is much more like stage acting, i.e. it has to be somewhat exaggerated or the audience will lose it. This film understood this and bravo. The production was far better than might be expected on something I suspect to have been low budget and the expressionist set of R'lyeh was fantastic! That said I have a few plaints. Firstly; costumes. Unfortunately they fall into an all too common trap of period film making. Don't assume you know, get someone who really does know, look at old photos or paintings very carefully. In the 1920s men wore suits and ties and hats but that doesn't mean if you put a man in a suit and a tie and a hat he will look like he stepped out of the 20s. The suits here were mostly the wrong cut and style. Henry Wilcox was wearing a pair of ridiculous knickers that looked cheap and ill made, in the 20s they would have been far baggier. The shape of the ties was very modern.In one flashback scene to 1908 they lost it all together with an array of modern jackets and a pathetic attempt at period look by everyone wearing the same wing collar...SOFT ATTACHED WING COLLARS!!!! How 1980s! a variety of stiff detached collars, please! I know I seem a pedant but what is the point in establishing a great period atmosphere if you can't get the clothes right? Some scenes fell very flat and this seemed to be down to underacting and bad direction e.g the archaeologists conference. The music was buzzing and highly annoying. There were definitely moments of drag and tedium and the pace could have been picked up or cuts made, frankly it was too long.
Despite this for what it was it was a valiant and amusing attempt to render a great story in an appropriate context. If you complain about the shoddiness of sets or the crap special effects then you are missing the point. THEY ARE MEANT TO BE! It wouldn't be as good otherwise but I accept some people just won't get the joke. This kind of thing is not for everyone but I'm glad they did it. Being involved to some degree in projects of a similar level I know that it's easy with modern technology to make crap look good. I think it's great that they did the opposite...If you love old movies and Gothic drama have a look at this, it's fun.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004)
A gorgeously wrapped turnip
This is one of my all time favourite books. I found it in our attic when I was 17 (some while ago) and devoured it in a sitting, finding it had that rare power to take one completely into it's world and make the real world a shadow around you. I found myself saying the beautiful, polished phrases out loud. They demand to be spoken. I've read periodically ever since. Thus, I was delighted when I heard a modern film was to be made of it with such a magnificent cast.
Oh dear though. The idea of putting the narrator's voice into different characters was a clever one and almost worked but it fell down at the end because of course no one who is actually involved is meant to see the invisible pattern of the lives. The acting is very disappointing from such able stars. The Perichole was far too Dresden shepherdess and not fiery or Latin enough. Robert de Niro was crashingly miscast as the Archbishop. He looked every inch a prelate if you wanted Richielieu or Mazarin but the Archbishop of Lima should be enormously fat, as physically corrupt as he is morally and certainly not an inqusitorial type. Furthermore he is an effete scholar and his lapidary lines should have been delivered that way. When I saw de Niro's name I confidently expected him to play Captain Alvarado where he would have excelled whereas that splendid character was underplayed and underused. the same might be said of Manuel and Esteban (why were they not allowed to speak?. Harvey Keitel was another miscast or at least misdirected. A character who loves the beauty of the Golden Age of Spanish Drama demands a frankly more classical delivery. The marvellous Cathy Bates was another disappointment, she should have looked older and crazier. The performance was very flat and lacking the eccentricities and slovenliness for which she was laughed at and condemned. The only two who approached the spirit of the novel were F Murray Abraham's Viceroy and Gabriel Byrne's sad friar.
The look of it was very pleasant. gorgeous costumes and settings although everything and everyone looked a bit too clean for that time. The music was good too but overall it was very disappointing. The woodeness, the throwing away of beautiful lines and tedium of it all must be laid squarely on bad writing and worse direction. Don't bother, read the book instead.
The Producers (2005)
Amidst all the praise, a downer.
I was really excited to see this both because the original is one of the best comedies ever made and because I'm a great fan of Nathan Lane ( a natural to play Max) and Matthew Broderick. I was, however, sorely disappointed within the first ten minutes and it didn't get much better. Lane IS very good as Bialy and probably the best thing in it, the other treat is Roger Bart's Carmen Ghia. The elasticity of their faces is quite something. The rest of it I found far too laboured and obvious with a terrible performance from Will Ferrell. Broderick is just plain irritating as Bloom, despite the character's nerviness he is supposed to be the everyman that we identify with who carries us through the story. He plays it just as cooky as the people he encounters and is consistently overshadowed by Lane so there seems no centre to the thing its just a jumble of crazies vying with each other. Uma Thurmann's part seems unnecessary although the love interest with Bloom was a nice addition. Roger de Bris and Carmen Ghia are well played and funny and it was a fun twist to have Roger play you-know-who. However the the gay theme was completely overplayed and not that funny. In the original it is handled much more subtly. By that I don't mean that it is underplayed I mean it is far more sophisticated. It wasn't that they didn't want to say "GAY" in 1968, they didn't need to, they certainly didn't need to hit you over the head with a sledgehammer. The relationships were evident through the acting and Roger's attraction to Bloom was virtually lost in the more recent one. Will Ferrell was pretty appalling as Liebkind. Assuredly, the character is over the top but Ferrell fell right into the trap of playing larger than life characters, which is he made him a caricature and an unfunny one at that. Its a mistake at least Nathan Lane knows not to make.
I know it was taken from a Broadway show but I found the songs unnecessary, tiresome and a distraction. They aren't even memorable.This may work in front of a live audience but it's pretty disappointing as a film. Apart from Lane the whole thing lacks subtlety, the acting is often fairly poor and the adaptations largely a mistake. Go and see it on the stage or better still watch the original.
Jungfrukällan (1960)
A fine, grim, little tale that will make you ponder afterwards.
I have to agree with the previous comment, this is certainly a sad film I would go further, it's actually a grim little tale. Bergman pulls no punches, the medaeval world he shows is a hard, harsh, bleak place. There is a sense of menace in almost every scene and the actual rape is graphic and nearly unwatchable. The characters are not finely drawn, but after all this is a fairy tale in the older mould. They are there to represent types and conditions. The sad, doting mother; the unbending Christian gentleman; the flawed cleric; the ferocious, deceitful rapist-murderers. The tale on one level is very simple and can be simply followed; jealous sister curses more favoured sister, favoured sister is cruelly killed, killers ironically claim refuge of her father, father exacts revenge on them. So far we have something that could have come out of many a European ballad tradition. However, on another level it contains fundamental comments on humanity and human behaviour, Christian moral theology and our reaction to it. The father's faith is tested, he is not the man he thinks he is and his religion is not what he thinks it is either, though he submits and adopts a position of blind hope. The killers represent the complete absence of good that Aquinas maintained was the definition of evil. The young brother is the pain of conscience. In many ways it is a play on the deadly sins, apart from gluttony they are all there; wrath on the part of the father and pride in his daughter; envy in the half-sister; lust and avarice in the herdsmen and so on. It is truly an exemplary tale, as a medaeval legend should be. I bought this film casually at a street stall in Taipei for an absurdly small amount of money and it lay on a shelf unwatched for quite some time. In a bored moment one night I slipped it in the player and found myself enthralled until the finish. The cinematography, of course, is excellent but the joy is the dark threat that filigrees it, the simple but powerful emotions both quietly and violently displayed. It lacks the grandeur of "The Seventh Seal". It's a smaller and more compact number but it some ways the better for it, the evocations are more direct and the violence unnerving. I recommend it very highly indeed, you will be thinking on its themes long after this simple little tale finishes.