Jekyll and Hyde (1990 TV Film)

 "'Evil' is not a scientific word!"

Adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde always have a bit of a problem in that you can't just adapt the source material- the novella is entirely framed around the big reveal at the end that Jekyll is Hyde, rather than being blackmailed and controlled by him. And... we've all been spoiled that surprise for 139 years. Any adaptation therefore has no choice but to craft its own tale based around the duality of Jekyll and Hyde, overemphasising the difference between them in terms of personality, and sometimes crowbarring in other characters from the novel in another context.

So it is here. There's no mystery; Jekyll transforms for the first time fairly early on in what is a rather good effect. Utterson appears, in the person of Ronald Pickup, but the excellent Joss Ackland gives us a very different Dr Lanyon, not a friend of Henry Jekyll but a true antagonist.

And this antagonism between them grows into a complex love tragedy between Jekyll (Michael Caine may be phoning it in a bit but he can't ever fail to be excellent) and Sarah (Cheryl Ladd is rather good here, and her accent never slips) which takes up a huge amount of screen time.

However, this is a cut above most adaptations in that it shows Dr Jekyll's deep moral flaws rather than using his two selves as representing good and evil. In particular, Jekyll gives a deeply chilling speech on what is essentially eugenics during a lecture and this, rather than anything Hyde does, is easily the film's most chilling moment.

Well, aside from the shockingly clever ending!

Tenet (2020)

 "We are being attacked from the future."

This is one of those Christopher Nolan films that are a massive puzzle box, like Inception and The Prestige, if not quite as good as those two. How much you enjoy these types of film depends on whetheryou like a film to be a puzzle box, in this case a big timey-wimey palindrome thingy. 

Confession time: yes, I understood the broad nature of the plot, but I immediately went on to watch a YouTube video to so I understood it... well, "fully" is an awfully strong word. Again, there will be those who, understandably,don't fancy the idea of a fil that takes effort, and even multiple viewings,to work out what's going on,especially if said film happens to be two and a half hours long.

It's worty it, though. This film is extraordinary, and it's a shame how a certain spiky virus sort of sabotaged it at the box office, although admittedly that's hardly the worst of the many sins of said virus.

The central concept is fantastic- inversion of entropy, meaning that an object or person can be "inverted", moving backwards through time instead of forwards. Hence, there's a lot of time travel in this film, but you have to live through events in real time, whether forwards or backwards. There are great concepts arising from this, such as the "temporal pincer movement" and the rather clever little time paradoxes around the characters, and particularly around the true nature of John David Washington's Protagonist. The fact he's known only as that is a clue.

It's not all that, of course. There's humour. There's Kenneth Branagh being superb as an evil (is there any other kind?) Russian oligarch. There's a chilling yet tasteful exploration of domestic abuse. There's a delightful cameo from old Michael Caine. This film is a joy.

The Prestige (2006)

"You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."

I've seen this film before, a few years before this blog was ever envisioned. I haven't read the original novel be Christopher Priest, but I understand there are a few differences; I won't look them up, as I have a vague intention to read the novel someday- although the ever-moving onset of middle age is making me aware that I have a finite number of decades left in order to consume all the culture I would like to consume.

I don't intend to simply rercount the intricate and clever plot, but, obviously, SPOILERS.

This filom, as one would expect from Christopher Nolan, is supremely entertaining and bloody clever. Let's get the evaluation out of the way now: it's superb. The whole plot is constructed and layered like a magic trick, ending with not one but two prestiges: the revelation that Borden is in fact two twin brothers, and that Angier goes to such lengths for revenge on Borden, potentially dying every night: the latter of these is positively existential. Yet the final prestige is that yes, Borden is judicially murdered, but his daughter still has her father. For Borden, there is hope. For spoilt rich boy Angier, there is only empty death.

It's even cleverer than it seems, with the structure of the whole thing and the foreshadowing- early on there is a trick with a bird being made to disappear, and the small boy realises that the way it's done is for one brother to die and be replaced by the other. Quite.

It's an entertaining film behind the cleverness, with a first rate main cast and a delightful supporting role from David Bowie himself. It is, naturally, exquisitely shot and written. The score by Thom Yorke is exquisite. And the film has understated but very real heart too. A triumph.

Inception (2010)

 "The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you."

I can't believe it's taken me until 2023 to watch this uniquely brilliant film. Better late than never, right?

As you can imagine, this Christopher Nolan masterpiece (he has more than one of those, of course) has quite blown me away. It's not the conceit of entering people's dreams, or of dreams within me: that was spoiled for me by the episode of Rick and Morty that was riffing on Inception. Nor, really, is it the intricacies of the plot, brilliant though that is. 

No: it's the very human tragic romance between Cobb and Mal. My mind was blown by the revelation that, after exploring dreams within dreams and spending a subjective fifty years in a self-constructed dream paradise, Mal became convinced that it was the dream world that was the real one... so she demapped herself, as David Foster Wallace would put it, ensuring that Cobb would be framed for her death so he would be motivated to follow her into what she sincerely believed would be blissful, loving happiness. She died pointlessly, and made her husband's life a living hell with his children forever denied to him... out of love.

And then, later, we have bombshell number two. Yes, the main plot concerns a kind of reverse heist trying to plant an idea, an "inception" in the mind of a corporate heir in order to enrich Cobb's client so his life can be unruined, etc, blah blah. And that's all fascinating. But far more mind-blowing is the realisation that it was Cobb who planted the idea of the world not being real in his wife's mind so they could leave their dream world in the first place, by being run over by a train together. And the dialogue exactly parallels that in bombshell number one. It's all quite existentially jaw-dropping.

The ending, with the top still spinning, is nicely ambiguous: can Cobb finally have happiness with his children or is he still dreamimg? I would suggest that the answer to this question lies not in the spinning top, which may or may not fall, but in the fact that the two children have not seemingly aged since Cobb last saw them.

The impressions left in my mind, though, are certainly of admiration at the ideas and the plot, but of deep engagement with the very human emotions at the heart of this film. Cobb and Mal are both decent people, and a genuinely loving couple- indeed, no one in the film can be said to be "bad", just fundamentally decent people trying to do the right thing and sometimes making very human errors. That's quite profound. And both hopeful and horrifying in equal measure.

The Wrong Box (1966)

 "Yes, I enjoy an egg myself. They don't make good pets, though."

This splendid film is, yes, a farce, quite literally, and one executed with delicious clockwork precision, the climactic scene at once wonderfully chaotic and utterly orderly in how everything is tied together. This is entirely true. Yet the farce, perfect though it is, is merely the plot as background: this film is memorable for the wit and the performances.

There is, of course, exquisite visual humour, not least at the end whith the hearse chase, the unexpected real funeral, the band. The concept is delicious: a tontine. A sum of money is invested for a large number of young boys, with the last surviving to inherit all. The film begins with a highly entertaining series of, well, stupid deaths, crammed with cameos from British character actors. Finally, we are left with two brothers, played by those great theatrical knights John Mills and Ralph Richardson, both as adept at comedy as one might expect. The peerless Peter Cook and the no less inspired Dudley Moore steal the show, of course, but Michawl Caine is a superb comic straight man.

It's a shock to see Tony Hancock in colour, at this late stage. He is, let's be honest, phoning it in, and past his best. Yet he phones it in with aplomb. Peter Sellers is superb, but that's a given.

This superb cast, though, would be nothing without the sparkling, witty script, of a type that, despite its Vicxtorian setting, is redolent of the era between the satire boom and Monty Python, when British comedy was in glorious ferment, with Peter Cook at the centre of most things that mattered. A masterpiece that ought to be much better known.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

 "No guns. No killing."

"Where's the fun in that?"

I've been putting off this film for years. Oh, its predecessor was a good action film, and was centred around a sublime performance by the late Heath Ledger. But it wasn't a good Batman film. I was expecting the same of this.

I was wrong. This is both a brilliant action film- the set pieces are universally sublime- and an equally brilliant Batman film. The typically wooden performance of Christian Bake matters not: the characterisation of Bruce Wayne, eight years after Batman has retired and Rachel has died, is at the centre of everything. He slowly regains hope, is beaten away from it, and symbolically rises from mpossible odds. It's all sublime.

I know not of Bane from the comics. He was after my time. Yet Tom Hardy, despite some accent slippage, is excellent as the muscular, pseudo-intellectual ewpitome of the sort of characters that could only have existed in the '90s.

A more pleasing character is an unusually engaging Catwoman: Anne Hathaway is both charismatic and brilliant, with so many little nuances to her performance. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is superb as a young, orphan cop who identifies with Bruce becausevof how he lost a parent. Morgan Freeman, as Lucius Fox, commentts wryly on the corporate side. Alred, meanwhile, has lost his stiff upper lip. Yet, if he's played by the extraordinary Michael Caine, who cares?

Yes, everybody bloody knows Bruce is the Batman. But I found this film to be excellent. Both the direction and the performances were sublime .

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

 "This ain't that kind of movie, bruv."

This, in spite of being from pretty much the same creative team as the rather good Kick-Ass and ultimately, indeed, the creation of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, is a film I've somehow avoided seeing for seven years. I'm glad thise years are now over; ths doesn't pretend to be anything other than a gloriously violent and stylish blockbuster, but it does this very well indeed, and with a great deal of visual flair.

The premise- a private secret service operated as a second venture of a posh Savile Row tailors- is intriguing although, unlike Eggsy, I'd be inclined to be concerned about the acountability of such a private organisation. I don't think we should read too much into the class subtext as chav Eggsy goes through a rite of passage to become an agent, but it's fun to see him succeed. Colin Firth, too, is superb as his effortlessly awesome mentor, and inevitably there's a cool role for Michael Caine. We also have Mark Hamill playing against type as a British professor, but the most stellar perfrmance by far is that of Samuel L. Jackson, as the Bond villain he was born to play, rather intriguingly pointing out that the Chinese secret service is rather worrying as it has no particular name..

The film works superbly as a straightforward Bond-Style action film, but with the added little touch of lots of nods at the fourth wall, from the verbal sparring between Harry and Valentine on old Bond film tropes to the moment where the latter seems about to tell the former all his plans before putting him in an elaborate death trap, but shoots him instead. 

This film may not have much to say about the world, but it entertained me an awful lot. One of the better class of modern Bond pastiches.

Get Carter (1971)

"I'm the villain in the family, remember?"

This is an odd beast, very well-directed, very violent, a very gritty portrayal of various Geordie places with mostly unconvincing accents (Mrs Llamastrangler is from them there parts), an unexpectedly complex plot to put it mildly, and playwright John Osborne as a crimelord called Cyril.

It's also a vivid record of various little things about Britain in 1971- the awful brown and yellow decor; the fact that the Sixties never happened for most working class people; how bloody awful much of the housing was; the casual, unthinking sexism.

But we see all this through the amoral eyes of Jack Carter (Caine)- gangster, killer, probable psychopath, womaniser and general complete bastard, as he investigates his brother's somewhat suspicious death, all done with such cold charisma that you don't question how this apparent Geordie born and bred seems to have entirely gone native in London, accent-wise. Through violence and intimidation rather than detective work the casual womaniser soon discovers that everything revolves around the sexual exploitation of Jack's niece, who may be his daughter, and things get very violent.

It's all very watchable- imaginatively shot, well-cast if you ignore the accents and with an admirable economy of exposition. But, my God, it's complex. And all these young people with names like Doreen...

The Italian Job (1969)

"Tell Bridger this is a foreign job to help with this country's balance of payments..."

I'm beginning to be wary of going into a film with high expectations; it doesn't exactly enhance the experience. Take The Italian Job, a 1960s British classic, beloved of all the lads, but a film which I had somehow contrived, until last night, never to have properly seen all the way through- and I'm forty. I must have been blown away, right?

Only I wasn't, not really, Oh, it's good; the script by Troy Kennedy Martin, all those famous lines and iconic set pieces, national treasure Michael Caine's legendary performance, Noel Coward and, indeed the whole character of Bridger- an upper class Harry Grout who lords it over John Le Mesurier's prison governor; all these things are a joy to watch. Yet the film also seems to drag in places, and generally doesn't turn out to be as good as I was expecting. I wonder if I'd still feel that way, though, if not for those high expectations? I must confess that, Benny Hill's silly mugging aside, there's not much that's actually wrong with this film. Perhaps I just don't like heist movies all that much?

All the same, it's brilliantly shot on location in Turin, and the ambiguous ending is pure genius. If only the whole film was as good as its most famous scenes, but I really don't mean to imply that The Italian Job is any less than very, very good.

The Dark Knight (2008)

"Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person?"

I may have changed my mind about this film a bit. I first saw it about eight years ago (in Los Angeles!) and my impressions were that it worked well as a film but not so well as a part of the Batman myth is, being more interested in pursuing the then-contemporary themes of terrorism, civil liberties (which are, don't get me wrong, important) and surveillance, hence the rather. crowbarred-in scene with Batman and Lucius Fox monitoring the people of Gotham on a bunch of monitors.

That's still, I think, a concern. But eight years on it seems not to loom so large, and the film seems a much better experience. Heath Ledger is a magnificent Joker, intelligent in his madness and articulate in his pursuit of chaos. It's perhaps a very idiosyncratic take on the character, but just about close enough to the original. Again it's a complex plot, weaving the tragedy of Harvey Dent into a tale of how the Joker grows from minor sideshow beside the important work of going after the mob to existential threat to Gotham itself. All this and we find time for a trip to Hong Kong just to find a mob boss. A lot gets packed into these Christopher Nolan Batman films.

It's odd to see Maggie Gyllenhaal as the recast Rachel, but she does a splendid job. Christian Bale is adequate as always and Gary Oldman was still born to play Jim Gordon. Aaron Eckhart and Michael Caine are superb but, yeah, the film belongs to Ledger. It would even if he hadn't died so shortly afterwards. He's the James Dean of our generation, but it would be much better if instead of that he was still around.

I enjoyed the film this time around, and felt as though it respected the characters rather better than I previously thought. Behind all the spectacle there's some real depth to a film that really seems to have divided the fan from the general viewer..

Batman Begins (2005)

"What chance does Gotham have when the good people do nothing?"

Yes, it's odd to see Ra's al-Ghul used in this way, conflated with Henri Ducard from the Blind Justice arc back in '89 and bearing absolutely no relation to the character we know and love to the point that he doesn't even seem to be an Arab; Ken Watanabe's decoy character seems to hail from much farther east. Still, there are hints as to the Lazarus Pit, perhaps. And, more to the point, this is a brilliant film tacking Batman's origins and a triumph for both the fan and the general audience.

Essentially this is because of both David Goyer's perfectly judged script and the always impressive direction of Christopher Nolan; Christian Bale is a perfectly good Batman, although no more than that, and the film is very well cast indeed, with Michael Caine being a particular master stroke. Still, were I an American I'd probably raise an eyebrow at the suspiciously high number of Brits in this film based on an iconic American character and directed by a Brit; I'm surprised this isn't more often commented on. It would be a reasonable objection in my British eyes. Still, Gary Oldman is the perfect Jim Gordon.

I can't fault the film though. Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow is chilling and brilliant, with that mask and some splendidly trippy direction making a hugely effective villain. And the time and thought given to Batman's origins is clear; it is both faithful and innovative, with a focus on Bruce's relationship with his philanthropist father and his childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes, a new character. This, as well as the more jovially sarcastic edge to Alfred, works very well indeed. The theme of fear is developed throughout, with the figures of Ra's, the Scarecrow and Batman reflecting different uses of it, for good or ill. And I like the way Batman's moral scruples against killing are contrasted against the gang 'em flog 'em stupidity of Ra's and his gang, the Daily Express of terrorist organisations.

Yes, there's also a fair bit from Batman: Year One, but that's no bad thing; it's nice to see Colin McFarlane as Commissioner Loeb. And, on the subject of actors, we even get an appearance by the great Shane Rimmer! This is a long film, yes, but a dense one, with a lot going on from the evolving relationship between Bruce and Rachel to Bruce's takeover of Wayne Enterprises. It's one of the finest superhero film ever and almost (but not quite) makes me rethink my opinion that superhero films should eschew origin stories.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

"And now the woman's of Er-Heb will cut his bollocks off. Ha ha!"

Let's deal with the elephant in the room first: is this film racist?

First, let's consider that this is an adaptation of a story written in 1888 by Rudyard Kipling, and we can therefore expect a bit of raving imperialism which can't fail to be transferred to any adaptation.

Secondly, let's consider that there are two stupid answers to the question: "yes" and "no". These answers betray the mindset that thinks there are only two types of people in the world- outright Nazis and people "without a racist bone on their bodies". That's what's implied by any question that asks us to rule on whether something is either racist or "not racist" whereas, in fact, 99.99% of us fall between these poles. Personally, I'm a Guardian-reading liberal type who abhors racism, but I wouldn't dream of claiming that I "haven't got a racist none in my body". How could I possibly know that? There could be all sorts of unexamined racist assumptions hidden somewhere in my subconscious. They're unexamined. That's the point.

So let's just briefly note that the original source text, given the author, the subject matter and the setting, can hardly fail to display both racist attitudes and a voyeuristic othering of people from other cultures. Let's also briefly note that, being integral to the plot, these things are inevitably transferred to this film adaptation. Also, 1975 is an age ago in terms of attitudes to race- a film like this would never be made today- and both India and Kafiristan are presented as an exotic "other", not on their own terms. But let us also remember the context. Past attitudes are what they are. This film was less racist in the context of 1975 than it would be if made today.

So let's talk about things that are more interesting. Such a show unusual it is for John Ford to direct a film like this, how amazing the location filming looks, or how Sean Connery's Scottish accent jars somewhat with dialogue clearly written with a voice from south of the border in mind.

Also interesting is that Kafiristan was a real place, called this by its Muslim neighbours as it was the only pagan part of Afghanistan, and thus mysterious and unique, at the time Kipling wrote his original story. Sadly, though, it was converted en masse during the 1890s and is now called Nuristan. Isn't the onward march of conformity a depressing thing?

But what of the film? Well, it's superb: gripping, great to look at and full of incident and deeply charismatic performances, not least from its stars Sean Connery and Michael Caine but also from Saeed Jaffrey, whose superb comic timing helps to partly hide the vaguely racist undertones of the character he's playing.

The emphasis on freemasonry is... odd, and doesn't give us an entirely sympathetic portrayal of Kipling. Interesting. But this is ultimately a classic tragedy, where Danny is brought down utterly by his hubris and Peachy brought down low by his own relative hubris. As a tale, and as a film, it is superb. 

Battle of Britain (1969)

"So don't threaten or dictate to us until you're marching up Whitehall. And even then we won't listen."

Well, that was strangely underwhelming. I'm British. I hate the Nazis. The real, historical Battle of Britain puts fire in my belly. So why is it that this film leaves my belly distinctly cold?

What's especially surprising about this is that the film has an extraordinary cast- Lawrence Olivier is particularly superb as the drily realistic Hugh Dowding. Yet none of the characters have enough screen time, or are sufficiently fleshed out, to make a difference. Michael Caine, in particular, is wasted on a role that doesn't give him anything to do and then suddenly killed off. The only exception to all this is Curd Jurgens' charismatic general, and he's a bloody Nazi. Still, at least Ralph Richardson gets a magnificent speech in his cameo.

It must be said, too, that this film is a little deceptive in implying that Britain would have been finished if it had lost the Battle of Britain. It wouldn't. Just Google "Operation Sealion" for why. Large parts of the country are out of German bombers' air range, for a start, and there's the entire Home Fleet waiting at Scapa Flow, in an age where accurate bombing of ships was simply not a thing.

There are a couple of nice moments- I like the bit where German POWs are made to clear up their own mess- but sadly this is a film that fails to raise my patriotic heckles. A slow, meandering missed opportunity.