(2010, Ger, 101 min) Dir Heinz Fäberhöck. Cast Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Nina Hoss.
1918. Gerhard Franz Holstein returns home from the front. He left his home a budding economics student and has returned the shell of a man. He sits in the attic of his family’s home day after day now, working on his grand project: he is working on the history of Umber, a country he invented to keep him sane during his time in the trenches. Now , far from saving his mind, it is taking it over instead. Decades pass outside his window and inside Umber takes on ever more a layered history with a national anthem he plays each morning on the trumpet, a flag that hangs on his bedroom wall and paintings and drawings in his own naïve style that illustrate every corner of the world that he has invented where brotherly love fills every corner and peace reigns eternal. Outside the Nazis rise to power and it seems his days of peace are numbered – war returns to Germany and contact with the outside world grows ever more inevitable. Of course there are no happy endings here. Based on the true story of the outside artist whose works now grace the wall of prestigious galleries the world over, Umber Erneut treads carefully on the line between worthiness, whimsy and the sober realities of Germany at the time and mostly gets it right, ably abetted by a strong cast doing what they can to help.
(1953, GB, 102 min) Dir Aldous Oxbury. Cast David Niven, Dirk Bogarde, Charles Falder.
Florist duo Ted and Gerry decide to do their bit in the war and sign up for duty in Her Majesties navy, both assigned to the same ship, the HMS Pielight under the watchful eye of the notoriously humourless disciplinarian Captain Reginald Oxphroy. Ted and Gerry, being incorrigible cut-ups (as we have seen in training when they snuck a goat into their Sergent’s bedroom), decide to have themselves a little fun decorating the ship with flowers of all sorts and sizes and the more Oxphroy clamps down on them the more they appear. They find themselves eyeing up a court-martial for insubordination when suddenly, on the horizon, a U-boat! A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues and wouldn’t you know it the only thing that keeps the ship’s morale up is those damned pansies! Of course the krauts get a jolly good thrashing and of course Oxphroy comes around to the mischievous florists way of things and before the films out it’s medals all round. Hurrah!
(1969, It, 130 min) Dir Paolo Andreotti. Cast Franco Nero, Klaus Kinski, Luigi Pistilli.
Nero and Kinski star in this effective, if derivative, addition to the stuffed Spaghetti Western genre, as a bounty hunter and desperate criminal teaming up despite their own personal animosity to battle it out with Pistilli’s crooked lawman Oates. You see Nero’s wife was brutally raped and murdered by the man and buried out in the desert where he’ll never find her, hence the title which is bellowed at the felled Oates come the finale. If you’re into Spaghetti Westerns (particularly Leone’s) then you’ll love this, packed as it is with sweaty theatrics, agonizingly drawn out stand-offs and a veritable delirium of dreamy flashbacks. It’s particularly recommended for Kinski’s performance, which sets a new height of crazed eye-rolling in a career stuffed with barking loonies.
(1996, US, 121 min) Dir Charles V. Holden Cast Halle Berry, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Chris Tucker, Vivica A. Fox.
An R&B version of A Star is Born with Halle Berry as the Whitney Houstonesque singer Pamela Brown who catches the eye of Vondie Curtis-Hall’s music mogul Eric Hitz. He coaches her to success with the help of dance instructor Ice (Chris Tucker in his usual role of ‘comic relief’) and singing coach Alicia (a cameoing Aretha Franklin whose acting is shaky but still has the voice). Needless to say she becomes a star and she and Hitz become a couple despite the dire warnings of his ex, who is herself a fading star. Unlike A Star is Born this ends on a real bum note that could be seen coming a mile off – Brown’s star goes into descent and she soon finds that Hitz is seeing one of her backing singers (Fox) who he leaves Brown for and then coaches to success as well. At the end Halle Berry’s nursing a big ol’ bottle of vodka and watching Fox picking up some award while blowing kisses to her new husband, the bastard Eric Hitz. Despite a strong, vulnerable performance from Berry the film is let down by pedestrian direction, a predictable plot and, worst of all, an unmemorable soundtrack.
(1958, US, 110 min) Dir George McAnderson. Cast Anthony Perkins, Shirley MacLaine, James Mason.
Bright cartoonish comedy set in the world of big business. Anthony Perkins is Osgood Berenson, a country kid come to the Big Apple with his County College Certificate of General Excellence in his suitcase and the will to achieve in his heart. After a promising interview with Flexible Industrials he turns up on his first day dressed for his very own office only to be met by the mop and a bucket needed for his new position as janitor. By chance he meets the head of Flexible Industrials, the business titan Olivier Welles (Mason), when he’s taking care of the private washrooms up on the 32nd floor and makes an impression with his can-do attitude. “I have to say you seem like a most competent and assured young man,” says Olivier, “Which makes me all the more impressed that you’re willing to work your way up to the boardroom from down in the basement. I’ll see you up here in a year and I’ll make you partner, how does that sound?” That’s when Olivier’s daughter Pat (MacLaine) comes in and the smitten Osgood’s mind is made up, kicking off twelve months of begging, borrowing and stealing his way up the greasy ladder. A fine fun and funny film.
(1988, Fr/US, 130 min) Dir Roland Sacher. Cast Christopher Lambert, Antonio Banderas, Fernando Rey.
Tense Day of the Jackal style thriller based on true life events surrounding the assassination of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle while he was living in exile in Alfredo Stroessner’s Paraguay. The guts of the film detail the lead up to the act itself – how the team entered the country, how they were armed, the months of meticulous monitoring of Debayle’s movements. The scene of the assassination itself is suspense brought to the point of dread perfection – as if the lead up to Debayle’s car being stopped in the road wasn’t bad enough the rocket launcher that is to deliver the killing blow suddenly stops working and Banderas’ character has mere seconds to act. I could feel everyone in the cinema leaning into the screen at that moment and could hear the sound of gripped armrests creaking under the stress. Everything works here from the unshowy performances to the matter of fact photography to the clear, propulsive editing. This is the film that set Sacher back on the straight and narrow after a string of flops and misfires, setting him up nicely for his streak of classics through the nineties.
(1982, US, 79 min) Dir Leck Mitchum-Arsch. Cast Al Pachinko, Joey Fantastic, Gorey George.
Infamous rebuttal to Friedkin’s Cruising by then notorious (and now respected) gay punk director Leck Mitchum-Arsch here working with almost half a budget for the first time following a half-dozen shoelace shorts with the money allegedly provided by Andy Warhol (though why a self promoter as thorough as he decline credit gives lie to the rumour). Much like Cruising, Detective Corleone (Pachinko) is sent undercover to the homosexual underground (as typified here by the titular gay club) where he’s tracking down a serial killer. Also as in Cruising the detective gets to like the hot man on man action he’s privvy to. The difference being that in The Hot Box the culprit (SPOILERS!!) is in fact the very chief who put him on the case (played by old horror ham Gorey George himself), his motive to attract Corleone’s attention. To cut a long story short Corleone shoots the chief dead and goes back to the swinging manly life he’s grown accustomed to, much to the consternation of his poor fiancé (marvellously essayed by drag queen Fantastic). To be honest it’s about as offensive as Cruising itself was but in more of a fun John Waters kind of way.
(1983, Fr, 101 min) Dir Roland Sacher. Cast Alain Delon, Philippe Léotard, Claude Jade.
Based on his controversial memoir, L’Oeil Intérieur de L’Esprit tells the story of Paul Dumas, an ex-soldier who claimed to work for the French Army as part of a psychic cell in North Africa and French Indochina, a little like The Men Who Stare at Goats but even less funny. The film begins in 1970 and Dumas is working as a vegetable delivery man with no recollection of his top-secret army service. An accident when he’s unloading his truck causes a knock on the head from a crate of cabbages and suddenly it all comes back. His wife Anne (Jade) doesn’t know what to do but call his old army buddy Pip (Léotard) who talks him through his memories of pinpointing terrorist cells with the power of his mind and prognosticating enemy attacks. At this point the film departs from Dumas’ book, dramatizing the process of writing the book itself and his disastrous television appearances to publicise it, including his infamous appearance on TV ’73 with Serge Gainsbourg who mocked him, saying “If you’re such a good psychic then why did we lose both wars you fought in?” The film tries to have its cake and eat it too – it obviously doubts Dumas’ story but still insists on framing him by the end as some sort of hero. The effects at youngifying Delon for the flashbacks are distractingly bad too. Sacher’s first film after the debacle of The Pass to Heaven’s Arms, it would be another couple of films before he got back into his stride.
(1970, GB, 100 min) Dir Joseph P Pritchard. Cast Harry H Corbett, Hans Pickert, Melanie Marie.
It’s no Convoy and despite its jokey title it’s no comedy either – the title was pasted on by the producers who also furnished the film with posters that suited both their new title and leading man’s Steptoe persona but didn’t spend any money in recutting the film, perhaps surmising that no amount of editing could transform what they had into something more amusing. It’s hard to disagree with them on that point though they seem to have missed the gem of a film they had too. Corbett – a Shakespearian actor once dubbed “the English Marlon Brando” but forever typecast by Steptoe&Son – plays the transcontinental lorry driver Oliver Brady, a man who lives in the perpetual grip of existential woe writ large across his doleful features. No matter that he traverses epic vistas in the shape of the snow-capped Alps, the vast Bavarian forests and so on, his face betrays no joy in any of this splendour. It seems his only relief is in people watching at the various truck stops along the way, particularly the prostitutes that work the drivers but don’t talk to him. It seems as though at some point something’s might give… A quiet, low-key film that shares its namesakes documentary realism and Corbett’s a fine lead too, effortlessly suggesting the great depths of feeling that run inside this lonely man. Unfortunately the film was unloved by comedy fans for not being a comedy and serious film aficionados were put off by how it was presented. Both sides lost out on a true classic.
(1970, Mex, 128 min) Dir Jose Samson Tio. Cast Lee Huerta, Franco Nero, Esmeralda.
With the flowering of the Spaghetti Western international variations sprouted up around the world like the sauerkraut Western out of Germany and, from Mexico, the politicised Zapata Western. The wannabe king of this genre, it’s aspirant Sergio Leone, was the expert self-publicist Jose Samson Tio and what was to be his OnceUpona Time in the West was DinamitaJoe. Local hero Lee Huerta (a singer songwriter in his only film role) is simple sheep farmer Joe in Northern Mexico in the 1880’s who takes in the half dead mercenary Jean-Luc (Nero) when he turns up on his farm. Jean-Luc, it turns out, is a French mercenary and before you can say “violent posse” all of Joe’s sheep are dead and his house is a smoking ruin. It’s only a matter of time before Tay gets himself politicised, becoming the legendary dynamite slinging revolutionary Dynamite Joe. It can’t last of course – by the end of the film he’s a bullet riddled martyr to the cause of an independent Mexico, his corpse slung over the cannon that he defended to the death. It’s epic stuff and Tio has his idols eye for a character, a sense of place and a bard-storming set piece.
Imaginary Film Guide 