A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

 "Stupidity has saved many a mind from going mad."

This is certainly a contender for the finest film I've ever seen and although, at the time I blogged my first film in 2011 I felt myself slghtly uncultured when it came to cinema (if you grew up wearing hearing aids in an era of videotape, with no subtitles, reading books becomes a much lazier option) but I suspect I may have a broader perspective now, aged 44 in 2021. This may well be the film I currently believe to be the greatest ever made, flexible though such statements are. Ask me tomorrow.

What makes this film great isn't necessarily the superb direction by Powell and Pressburger- many films are well shot. Nor is it the charismatic performance from David Niven. It's impressive, but hardly the only excellent performance from a star that there ever was. It's well made, well acted, well-written and all the things one usually praises a film for. These things explain why it's good, but not why it's great.

No; what makes this possibly the greatest film ever made is... well, the wit, yes, but it's better than that. The opening line "Space. Big, isn't it?" seems to presage Douglas Adams in four words. The parallel between Peter's operation and his trial in the gloriously bureaucratic afterlife is exquisite and, in hindsight, much imitated. Kim Hunter is sexy. The use of poetry, and not just the usual F.R. Leavis-approved stuff, is glorious. One has to admire a film that, in 1946 and at the height of Sir Walter Scott's unfashionability, slips him in among the Marvells and a nicely obscure work from Ralegh.

The dialogue is lierature. The people are real. This is the greatest film ever made. Possibly.

The Vampire Bat (1933)

 “You give me apple. Herman give you nice soft bat."

These '30s horror films, by no means all of them Universal, are certainly something to be enjoyed. Not all  of them, alas, can be directed by James Whale. Yet this one is, as the amusingly hypochondriac maid in the film keeps saying, rubbish.

On paper it should at least be fun, if not necessarily good. Fay Wray is the leading lady, albeit in an underwritten role. Yet Dwight Frye, such a cult favourite that Alice Cooper wrote a rather good ballad about him, gets a nice and juicy part which shows how stereoyped he has become as the Renfield figure, but he's bloody good at it. He's the best thing in the film.

And yet... Lionel Attwill and Melvyn Douglas give passable performances, but the burgomeister is shocking. And, while there is some good visual stuff, the film is sloooow and dull, with appallingly functional dialogue. I suppose it's a plus to focus on vampire bats from South Ameirca somehw biting people here in central Europe and turning them into vampire-like people, but the resolution at the end is silly.

And so is the film as a whole, worth seeing only for the sake of the lovely Fay Wray and the splendid Dwight Frye. Not all of these '30s horror films, alas, are any good.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment 5- The Dinner Party, Part 1

 "Why did it choose this house?"

The penultimate assignment begins: there's only so much left of Sapphire & Steel. On first glance this story appears to be some sort of metaphor on the dangers of excessive nostagia and the dangers of dwelling overly on the past. This is an interesting observation to make while discussing a forty year old television programme from a time, shockingly, when 1930 was fifty years ago and very much in living memory.

So far we have a dinner party held by self-important tycoon Lord Mullrine, who seems determined ti make everything as much like 1930 as possible. Yet it seems time is taking the hint and, in places, making this literal. There are a couple of nice and subtle illustrations of this, with the radio and the green door, but so far these light hints are all we're getting, as we spend the first episode getting to know the various guests. The posh dinner setting, the country house and the sort of 1930 setting feels a bit like an Aldous Huxley novel.

It's certainly an intriguing start, but thus far there are few truly new ideas. We shall see.

WandaVision: Don't Touch That Dial

 "Are you using your night vision, Vision?"

For a second wek in a row we get a genuinely funny piece of retro comedy... bt it's becoming more obvious that none of this is actually reality, and that it may represent a world that Wanda has retreated into in order to avoid an unpleasant reality.

The comedy is similar to last time, and represents more of '50s suburbia, and we're introduced to more of Wanda and Vizh's neighbours as they try to fit in. The comedy is great, with a stage magic act going all Tommy Cooper in entertaining fashion. Emma Caulfield from Buffy has a great part, too.

And yet... things from the real world are blending in. For the second episode in a week we get a mock advert- this time not Stark Industries but Strucker. And there's a scary moment at the end where the menacing noises from the start seem to be caused by a bloke in a hazmat suit emerging from a manhole... until Wanda seems to panic and alter reality. Hmm.

And Wanda is, impossibly, pregnant. Tommy and Billy, from that '80s Bill Mantlo limited series? Leading potentially to... well, what John Byrne went on to do in West Coast Avengers?

Regardless, this is magnificently original, brave and superb telly.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Four- The Man without a Face, Part 4

 "A few cheap tricks to impress the ladies!"

"Well, at least he bothered to impress them..."

And so the serial ends; there are a few fantastical leaps of logic, but the concept makes this appropriate, and it's a satisfactory conclusion. The faceless baddie even gets a final monologue intended to scare us, P.J. Hammond-style, as the evil spirit is trapped in a container until the day it is released. It's episodes like this that remind you that Sapphire & Steel is really horror fairytale fantasy with scientific trappings. It's about exorcists and evil spirits.

The stuff about how Williamson's trickery summoning the spitit makes little sense, but it doesn't have to. It works, odd though it is in 2021 to see such a focus on analogue photography. The whole episode drips with atmosphere and dread, yet there's time for a heartbreaking couple of lines from Liz where she realises her lot in life will never improve. 

This is the best conclusion so far, and easily the best serial. Let's hope the high standards continue.

WandaVision: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience

 "Oh, what kind of housewife would I be if I didn't have a gourmet meal for four just lying about the place?"

Yes, I know: I have loads more of the Netflix Marvel series to do (although apparently Kevin Feige has de-canonised them and there is bad blood), and I will do so, but the new stuff on Disney Plus is extremely zeitgeisty, so I'll do that firs. And WandaVision is a brilliantly brave and creative choice to be the first Marvel series on Disney's own streaming service- weird, genre-busting, metatextual and wonderful.

On the surface, this is an I Love Lucy-style '50s American sitcom episode, set in '50s middle American suburbia, in black and while, with the Vision doing an undefined (and lampshaded as such) job while Wanda stays at home as exactly the sort of housewife Betty Friedan was talking about. We even have a standard retro sitcom plot in that the boss is coming to dinner.

The comedy really works, especialy with the addition of Wanda's magical powers and Vizh being a synthetic being capable of phasing through matter. It's a fun, if short, half hour. Yet already there are hints in the background of something very odd. The titular couple can't remember anything about their pasts when pressed. Lots of detail about their lives are hazy. It's all quite deliberately made so as not to feel quite real.

So far I think it's all in Wanda's head, the grief of someone with hex powers. But we'll see...

TRON: Legacy (2010)

 "Life has a way of moving you past wants and hopes.

TRON is not, on its merits, a particularly good film. It just benefits from the early Cyberpunk zeitgeist, released two years before William Gibson published Neuromancer. The film caught a wave, and gained a reputation beyond what it deserved, aesthetics aside.

And now we have a sequel. And, despite Jeff Bridges being superb; despite an impressive performance from Olivia Wilde;despire a nice little part for the great Michael Sheen... the film really is utter pants.

Partly, I suspect, it's the dull cinemtography and sleepily blue colour palette, that does the film no favours. But the script isworkmanlike and predictable and, moreover, the Cybrpunk themes just don't have the futitistic resonance in 2010 as they did in 1982. The entirety of not only the aesthetics but the concepts look both retro and quaint. It so doesn't work, however much Michael Sheen may evoke Ziggy era David Bowie in his scene-stealing appearances which certainly manage to liven up a dull film somewhat.

The narrative is fairly exciting, and I'm left suspecting that the workmanlike script, while not setting the world on fire, may have led to a significantly better film if the visual style for this sequel were not so tired and derivative.

A poor and disappointing sequel, but then again a late sequel to a film so very much of its time was always going to be a doubtful proposition.

Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988)

  "OK, you big hunk of a man. Come and get me!"

I've reached the seventh film on eight years. The pace at which I'm watching the Friday the 13th film is a bit of a blatant clue in how bored I've been with them- although the fourth on was nicely metatextual.

Perhaps part of the problem is that ever since Scream, and certainly with The Cabin in the Woods, we've thought of the slasher genre (and it is a very trope-driven genre) in a very fourth wall-breaking way- sex means death; drugs mean death; nerdiness means death; going out in the dark means death... and that's all just literally from this film.

Halloween wasn't the first slasher film, as late as 1980. Psycho and Black Christmas were predecessors, and so the first Friday the 13th film turned up and proved to be a fairly perfunctory recital of previously established tropes. The sixth film stands out for the fact that it does as much violence to the fourth wall as to the characters, but the franchise is mostly meh.

And yet... this film cheerily announces its cheesiness with the voiceover during the opening recap. The conceit is that Tina, a telekinetic teen a la Poltergeist, has resurrected Jason through her passionate guilt at killing her father (who hit her mother and was thus irredeemable scum) and the shifty doctor who is "treating" her. There are no stars, as one woid expect for the seventh film in the franchise, but Tina's mum is Susan Blu- Arcee from Transformers: The Movie.

This film doesn't pretend to be anythng more than a B movie. But it's a sound, an fun, example of ts genre, far more so than it's firsr five predecessors. Even the writing is hack-like but solid. This is ctualky, and by far, my second favourite film after the sixth. However, I must confess that I have just imbibed a splendid bottle of classy Rioja.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Four- The Man without a Face, Part 3

 "Perhaps you could tell them that. When you join them..."

This third episode may echo earlier stories, very much indicating that P.J. Hammond is a writer who ery much likes his favourite tropes. The old-fashioned rhymes made to feel creepy. The prospect of being trapped in an image. Yet it all feels fresh, and this episode adds a lot of tension in advance of the conclusion.

A surprising amount happens here. The faceless man has a civil but creepily threatening parley with Sapphire and Steel, toying with them as a cat toys with a spider. We learn that Liz's old landlord, as well as her friend Ruth, have been trapped in a photograph from the 1890s. And Liz finally gets to understand the true nature of those creepy children. We learn a bit more, if nothing concrete, about what is going on. And it'sll rather nostalgic to see scares that reflect the anxieties of pre-digital technology.

This is superb, and the cliffhanger- the faceless man sets fire to a photo with two people trapped in it, one of them conscious- is uniquely horrifying.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 16- The Rescue

 "You are not a Mandalorian."

"Never said I was."

SPOILERS ABOUND. You have been warned! 

This is the perfect finale, and would have been so even without the fanwank, which itself was nonetheless the cherry on the cake. 

The character of Dr Pershing is used, at the start, to up the ante by blatantly foreshadowing the entire platoon of droid Dark Troopers (whom we have seen before) that await our heroes as they plan their assault on Moff Gideon's "light" Imperial Star Destroyer. There's some nice character stuff as a baddie goads the good Marshal about being on the Death Star when the Grand Moff Tarkin destroyed Alderaan. This is the sort of little touch during an action-packed finale that shows real quality.

Bo-Katan and her sidekick are tagging along for the Darksabre- with a little light racism aimed at Boba Fett for being a clone along the way. But the assault goes to plan... until Mando unexpectedly comes across the Machiavellian Moff Gideon, in a superb performance from Giancarlo Esposito. He has three aces up his sleeve. He's got what he wanted out of Grogu; there are hordes of Dark Troopers about to attack against whom they have no hope; and, in defeating Gid and unwttingly claiming the Darksabre, he is forcing Bo-Katan to fight and kill him for it in order to regain the throne of Mandalore, because it's not the sabre that matters, it's the "story". I love this. Perfect plotting.

And then the mysterious Jedi arrives, slicing through the Dark Troopers with his green lightsabre, although interestingly only through screens within screens. This turns out to be highly appropriate when said figure turns out to be a CGI Luke Skywalker, with Mark Hamill's face rejuvenated by a cheaper version of the process used for Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel. The parting betwen Mando and little Grogu is heartbreaking, as he removes his helmet(!) and allows his baby to touch his face. He's a proper dad.

This is magnificent stuff, even before we get to the post-credits teaser for Boba Fett's forthcoming series, as he and the uber-cool Fennec Shand enter Jabba's old palace, kill Bib Fortuna (my first ever Kenner figure back in '83) ad take over.

This is simply superlative telly.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 15- The Believer

" I never saw your face..."

The penultimare episode... and it's a superbly taut and brilliantly made action thriller in which our heroes brave all sorts of dangers order to find out the location of Grogu next season. Boba Fett and Fennec Shand are now confirmed members of Mando's gang alongside Cara Dune- and our old friend Mayfeld is sprung in order to get inside the Imperial base. It's a nicely rich mix of people with some excellent characterisation on display.

The opening scene, with its CGI-enhanced depiction of a New Republic prison, is amazing. So is Boba Fett's ship Slave-1 (friends of mine had the Kenner toy of this when I was a nipper), which appears rather a lot though the magic of CGI. There's some awesome action with some pirates. There are tense scenes with a total bastard of an Imprerial officer.

But the episode focuses around a fascinating conversation between Mando and Mayfeld in which the later points out that Mando is happy to bend the rules about removing his helmet when something he cares about is at stake- over the course of two seasons we've seen the grizzled, taciturn bounty hunter turn into a devoted father. We see him first bend then break this rule, a rule that means a lot to him. For such an undemonstrative man this shows us that Mando cares a lot for this kid.

And so we see at the end, as Mando sends a threatening message to Moff Gideon. This is simply superb telly.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Four- The Man without a Face, Part 2

 "It's like a cupboard that's been shut for two hundred years..."

Second episodes, by their very nature, are unlikely to be as crammed with awesome ideas as first episodes. It is to be expected. Yet the amount of creativity here is impressive. The faceless man is able to make a face appear where needed. And, of course, we begin to understand the nature of the phenomenon after Sapphire turns back time a bit: "I can only borrow time", she says. "I can't keep it."

Brilliantly, the suggesrion is that something got into the very first photograph in the 1820s and is somewhere within every photograph- either partly seen or completely hidden. This is an ingenious and very P.J. Hammond concept.

What isn't very P.J. Hammond at all is a character like Liz, very demotic, earthy and normal and a nice contrast in a very conceptual series like this. 

So far this is holding my attention and enthralling me, and we are already halfway through.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 14- The Tragedy

 "They're back. The empire. They're back."

It's all go in this very eventful episode: Grogu goes to do that magic Jedi thing on the planet Tython but, awkwardly, Mando is attacked at the worst possible moment by a not dead Fennec (the ageless Ming-Na Wen) and... a hooded Boba Fett. Who claims that Mando's Beskar is his armour. Oh dear.

All this is a side-show, of course, to the clever bit of misdirection with stormtroopers from a more than normally moustache-twirling Moff Gideon who, finally, manages to nab cute little Grogu, who now faces an immediate future as a "donor". Brr. And those "Dark Troopers" are cool.

Yet there's another big reveal going on- Mando's armour is indeed his, and Mando eventually accepts that: honour succeeds where battle failed. It's a nice touch, that the esteemed Mr Fett agrees to help return the child as a quid pro quo. We also get a nifty bit of subtle retconning: Jango Fett was a foundling. This is the Way.

The script from the dependable Favreau, the direction from the Hollywood guest helmer, the performances, the whole damn thing... it's excellent. I'm loving this.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Four- The Man without a Face, Part 1

 "Would you like to play with these children? Shall I bring them?"

Wow. I've criticised Sapphire & Steel in the past for its glacial and plodding pace, which goes way beyond the generally slower pace of television drama circa 1980 into some very poor sttucturing. Yet the ideas have always been awesome to the point of genius, and it's clear that the programme could have been great if P.J. Hammond as the ideas man had had an experienced writer as a collaborator- a Gerry Davis to his Kit Pedler, if you will. 

That said, it must be said that this episode can't be faulted on pace, although perhaps first episodes generally don't, precisely because of their place in the narrative. I know that Hammond, like Steven Moffat, has his favoured tropes- and both Assignment One and, indeed, Hammond-penned episodes of Torchwood have shown his fascination woth individuals within images coming to life. Yet the opening teaser of Edwardian(?) children stealing other children from old photograths to play with is eerily effective, however much the nursery rhyme treads old ground.

The cool stuff then keeps coming thick and fast. An old pawn shop is full of memories, which Steel calls "triggers". Time breaking through again. A distinction between "specialists" and "operatives" like Steel (and implicitly Sapphire, with "specialists" being the likes of Silver?) and some amusingly banal-sounding workplace whingeing.

And then, suddenly, we get a real person, a young woman, who speaks of ghosts, a missing friend and a mysterious new landlord. And then we see- he's the pied piper for all these kids. And his face is just blank.

This is amazing. More please. And please, please, please stay this good.

Men in Black II (2002)

"Anyone could take over the place with the right set of mammary glands..."

I was lukewarm about the first film. This is MUCH better, and a rare example of a sequel that's better, despite the cameo from that disgusting paedo Michael Jackson.The critics are wrong- this film sizzles in a way the first didn't. It's also one of the last Hollywood sequels to use Roman numerals. Grr.

It's the same director. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones (in that order this time) are just as superb, and Rosario Dawson no less so. It looks much the same, although with much more CGI. Admittedly it benefits from a world already built.

Yet the comedy is much better written. Smith and Jones get to actually be the splendid comedy double act that they are. There's a sense of peril. The plot is much more coherent, and links hilariously to a simulated 1970s documentary with retro special effects.

The concepts are delicious- a locker containing an entire culture. A CGI Venus flytrap princess. A post office in rural Massachusetts staffed entirely by aliens just to provide a sinecure... and yes, it is indeed joyous to see Kay get his memory back.

This film is so very underrated. It deserves so much more love. It's just that you have to watch the first film first.

Rear Window (1954)

 "We've become a race of Peeping Toms."

I last saw this film a scary number of years ago, and can't remember what I thought, although I seem to recall liking it. And yet... this is one of those films that is easy to admire but hard to love.

It's not that this isn't a masterpiece. The very concept is inspired- the claustrophobia and boredom of beng stuck in a two room apartment leads Jeff (a too old but neertheless excellent Jimmy Stewart) to spend his time spying on his neighbours, until he thinks he's witnessed a murder.

And there is such mastery in how the visuals are handled, from the design of the neighbourhood (deliberately complex, three-dimensional and amost Escher-like) to the moment where Thorwald eventually meets Jeff's gaze, and the tension that follows. The future Princes Grace of Monaco is superb, as is good old Hollywood stalwart Thelma Ritter. There's a rather nice theme running throughout of marital harmony or its absence.

And yet... it takes ages to get going and, clever though it is ad as charismatic as its stars may be, the film is just too slow for most of its length for the suspens to realy work: the concept ad execution don't really maage to fill the film's length.

Still, none of that takes away from the fact that this film is a super technical achievement.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 13- The Jedi

 "He's formed a strong attachment to you."

Yeah, this is a bit good. My mind is blown.

We know from the start that Mando is on Corvus to find a Jedi to train Baby Yoda- or Grogu, as we now learn his name is. And, excitingly, we see said Jedi- Ahsoka Tano, played by Rosario Dawson from the various Netflix Marvel series- in the first scene, as she heroically pits herself against an evil local dictator who twirls her, er, moustache rather nicely. It's an interesting choice not to hold back this moment, but it sets the scene nicely.

We then get an episode which is awesome for several reasons. Ahsoka is, of course, coolness itself with those awesome lightsabres. The basic plot of Ahsoka and Mando teaming up and defeating the Magistrate is awesome, as is the lightly humorous relationship between them as they both see the irony in a Mandalorian and a Jedi, ancient enemies, working together.

There's a mind-blowing moment, though, as it's revealed that the Magistrate's "master" is one Grand Admiral Thrawn. I'm not at all familiar with Star Wars media outside this, the films, the Kenner toys of my '80s childhood and those two '80s Ewoks TV films, but I did read a novel by Timothy Zahn back in the early '90s- wasn't Grand Admiral Thrawn the baddie? But surely this novel can't be canon now the recent trilogy at the pictures has contradicted it?

 There's more geekiness, too, as Ahsoka examines Grogu, confirms his past- a survivor of the massacre at the Jedi temple on Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith- and, fulfilling a Jedi trope, refuses to train him as he's too full of fear and anger. I'm sure we all saw this coming- but there's hope in the shape of a magic mountain on yet another world...

The script here (not Favreau) is perhaps a little less polished than usual, but there's just so much cool stuff going on. I'm loving this.

The Oresteia: The Eumenides (Peter Hall , 1983)

 "They're learning to bless, groping for goodness."

The final instalment of The Oresteia is, of course, what gives it its thematic power: the cycle of endless power can only be broken by justice, by the rational weighing of evidence rather than hot-headed revenge, an eye for an eye until everyone is blind. There's a lot of weight to a literary work so old as this which seems to articulate, and with such exquisite prose, such a fundamental tenet of civilisation- although, perhaps, we should try not to dwell too hard on the misogyny on display here, especially the belief that patricide trumps matricide because he father is "the only true parent"and mothers do not pass on anything, only acting as the vessel. This may have been widely believed, or so we're told, but presumably by those who happen never to have noticed the extremely common phenomenon of children who resemble their mother.

Still, this is a superlative translation, a superlative score, and a superlative production, for all the reasons previously mentioned. This time we get to dwell on Tony Harrison's depiction and descriptions of the main Greek gods, and it's amazing.

It's hard to see how any other production of this trilogy can match this one. The authentic style and Harrison's gloriously earthy translation combine to make something intoxicating.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 12- The Siege

"I lost everyone." 

The Mandalorian just keeps getting better. This episode has everything: action, humour, strong characters whom by now we've come to know well, and hints at even more stuff going on arc-wise.

At first it looks as though this is going to be another story of the week as Mando has to stay on Nevarro while his ship is repaired, so we can see how Cara Dune (now the sheriff of this frontier town) and Greef Karga (the mayor) are getting on and Mando has to join them in a mission to fill out the episode. I wouldn't have objected much- the mission is cool, to one remaining Imperial base left on the planet, with lots of action and lots of humour, including Baby Yoda using the Force to steal some sweets from another kid. Nevertheless, it seems at first as though all this is a story of the week in order to kill time entertainingly before we visit the Jedi mentioned last episode.

Except there's a lot more going on than that as the base is more than it seems. Mando discovers that rumours of Moff Gideon's death have been much exaggerated, and we uncover the fact that Baby Yoda's blood was being used in some bizarre blood transfusion experiments. These are big revelations, and there's also a subtle undercurrent of the New Republic trying to push their authority a little closer to the Outer Rim frontier- this Space Western is almost starting to echo Deadwood at times.

The final revelation, though, is that Cara is from Alderaan. Everything and everyone she knew is gone, which seems partly to explain how she has become what she is. Ouch. This is such good telly.

And yes, I blogged a Star Wars related post on May the 4th. Yay me.

The Oresteia: The Libation Bearers (Peter Hall, 1983)

 "Bloodshed for bloodshed, keeping the blades red..."

And so Peter Hall's version of Tony Harrison's translation of the Oresteia trilogy continues, in similar vein, with masked actors who would have been bloody terrifying to any children watching. It is, of course, no less sublime than the first part.

The Libation Bearers is quite simple plot-wise: Orestes returns to plot with Electra, and gets into the palace by deceit where he promptly offs Aegisthus and then his mother, and the Furies are a bit miffed. That's it. It's basically Hamlet with added matricide and much less faffing about although, of course, in the case of Hamlet the whole point is the faffing about.Yet as ever it's not so much the plot as the philosophical and imagery-strewn verse that is the point, again translated by Harrison in a way that evokes, to me, nothing so much as Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.

Once again the use of masks anonymises the actors, erasing their role and drawing our attention to the verse alone. Birtwistle's score, too, underlines the rhythm of much of the metre, to magnificent effect but utterly unlike any theatre I've ever experienced before. It's a profounly rich experience in so many ways.

I'm excited for the last play but I'll return to The Mandalorian tomorrow.

The Oresteia: Agamemnon (Peter Hall, 1983)

 "I'm no more a breaker of bed-bond than, as a woman, I wield a man's weapon..."

I did The Oresteia at University... some twenty years ago. Watching this first instalment of the trilogy- Peter Hall, for the National Theatre, in 1983, now happily available with subtitles on YouTube- I'm reminded how little I remember of the details, alhough this is a very different translation from what we used in the module I studied, covering ancient Greek drama in translations for we English students as offered by the Classics Department.

This production is the first in a trilogy that I will be alternating with The Mandalorian before returning to Sapphire & Steel. It's an extraordinary production. For a start, it's made by a supergroup of culture as it existed in 1983. Aeschylus' words are translated by the superlative poet Tony Harrison, a working class lad from Leeds who managed to get the Classical education he needed to insulge his natural poetic talent as possibly the finest poet this country produced in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It's directed by Peter Hall. And the soundscape is by Harrison Birtwistle, the greatest British composer of the twentieth century and a man whose delightfully atonal compositions never trouble the Daily Mail reading acolytes of Classical FM.

The result of this is a fusion of the very ancient and very modern which fuses magnificently. On the one hand it's a brutally authentic production of Aescyhlus' play, from the very alien culture that is the Athens of the 4th century BC. The all-male actors- John Normington excels as Cassandra- and the masks worn by all players transport us back to Athens in its Golden Age and how theatre was done in those distant and murky days, by people we cannot understand. The masks, in particular, make me glad for the subtitles.

Yet the words are poetry you can get drunk on. I know little of poetic style in ancient Greece, but Tony Harrison's translation, with its kennings and alliteration, calls to mind the warlike muscularity of Old English poetry, and mixes cultural allusions with the demotic and, indeed, the earthy.

The masks, and the rigidity of the metre, are perfectly ec hoed by Birtwistle's unremittingly atonal score which, alongside Harrison's words, fuse ancient and modern with profound effect.

It's striking, perhaps, how much of this play is taken up with philosophical and actually quite rich philosophical discourse about Troy and about the costs, and pointlessness, of war, before stuff actually happens and Clytemnestra- offstage- does the bloody deed and avenges poor Iphygenia. As a father of a perfect daughter, I side with her.

This is exquisite. And more is to come...

 

Twins of Evil (1971)

 "They have crosses? And stakes? And axes?"

I've seen a fair few Hammer horrors in my time, and some of them are very good indeed, while others are less so. This one is easily the best I've seen thus far, and by some distance.

On the surface it's an obvious crowd pleaser. There are the two rather attractive twins themselves to offer a bit of soft porn with titties briefly on display. Both actresses are decent, but mainly there for their sexiness, which is considerable. Mmm. But it's also a bloody well made and splendidly scripted horror film, gripping throughout, and with possibly Peter Cushing's best and most nuanced performance.

And yet, while pushing all the buttons to appeal as a bit of top notch early '70s vaguely titillating horror fun, it's acrually a lot cleverer than that under the surface. The twins Maria and Frieda are good and evil  respectively, yet the society they live in is less clear cut. There are two equally evil villains. The first, Count Karnstein, is an obvious baddie, a bored and decadent aristocrat who becomes a vampire (from a fanous ancestor we recognise from the prequel!) for fun. Damien Thomas, an actor so often underused, makes a superb villain.

Yet no less evil is Gustav Veil, a man who leads a gang of witch hunters who persecute any woman who shows and degree of independence and burns her alive without due process and the maximum of cant. They perform at being religious, and no doubt believe themselves to be so, but their religiosity is shallow, authoritarian and  no less evil in its murderous fanaticism. This is made clear in the opening scene, and the fact that the opening titles run over the sight of a woman being burned alive. Yet Cushing plays him superbly, as a villain driven to evl by his fanatcism and reaising to his horror that he is not the good man he believes himself to be but an unwitting servant of Satan.

It is therefore appropriate that Veil should die fighting the Count and that the baddie should die instead at the hands of Anton, a decent, questioning sceptic who is not blinded by fanaticism- a moderate, a liberal, a centrist dad. Good man. 

Karnstein and Veil would probably vote Tory this coming Thursday if they happened to live in Leicestershire. I'm sure Anton would vote Lib Dem. Be like Anton.

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

"Their laws are simple: the strong take everything."

Tonight I have learned a valuable lesson. A film may have great special effects, by no less a creator than the great Ray Harryhausen himself, showing his usual genius even within the consraints of what is clearly a lower budget than he's used to... and still be a terrible film. If you want Ray Harryhausen, watch The Valley of Gwangi. It's a much better film, and has cowboys in it to boot.

There are some awesome monsters in here- a family of pterosaurs; a giant tortoise, a saurapod, a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops being the highlights.They all interact with humans, so... yes, let's gloss over the histotical accuracy and move on to briefy praise the location filming. I suppose there's also amusement value at the start as we see Robert Brown, a future M to Roger Moore's James Bond, as a Palaeolithic chieftain. But that's literally all the positives.

Because this is an awful film. Other than some cringeworthy narration at the start there's no dialogue. The plot consist of M's son beng banished, encountering various monsters, joining another tribe where Raquel Welch's character likes him for some reason, being banished again, fighting more monsters at the end, and finishing off with a bit of natural disaster action. There's a lot of visual spectacle. The film looks good.

And yet... it's just dull. Without dialogue, it simply isn't possible for any of the characters to be interesting, or for us to care about them. And without charactesr to care about we have nothing to watch but empty spectacle.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Cardboard Box

 "Pushing women's work at me? You keep that to yourself!"

So this is it. The final episode, complete with a final philisophical and setimental coda about all the violence in the world as a parting gesture from Jeremy Brett's undoubtedly definitive Sherlock Holmes, much as health problems clearly led to much less physicality in his later years.

And the final episode is a good one, if not exactly standing comparison with the excellence that was routinely reached in earlier, better seasons. An adaptation of a fairly obscure Conan Doyle short story, it still suffers from the overly foregrounded attempts at narrative cleverness that have been too prominent of late: non-linear storytelling certainly has its place, but not here.

Nevertheless, this is a decent send off with a decent cast and a solid story, anchored by the conceit of two severed ears given as a birthday present. It is ulimately a tale of passion, social class, adultery and murder which is told well, much as the trope of the temptress who corrupts a simple man into ruin is worryingly present. This is also, however, a warning against the killjoy busybodies of the temperance movement, who could certainly all do with a drink.

So this is the end. No more Granada Sherlock Holmes. It's now clear that, despite high spots, the once superlative quality has not been so apparent as late, but the series- and the late, lamented Jeremy Brett- will be much missed.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 11- The Heiress

 "No, I have enough pets..."

Right, the Granada Sherlock Holmes has nearly finished, with one episode left (tomorrow), so it's time to alternate Sapphire & Steel with some other unfinished business and finish the promising second season of The Mandalorian. It's an impressive episode to return to, ad a reminder of how Jon Favreau has created an impressive piece of television, and quite conceivably a better space opera Western than Firefly.

Compared to last episode, which was essentially about getting from A to B with some excitement on the way, this episode is quite evantful. Yet the bare bones of the plot- Mando arrives on Trask (home of the Quarrens and Mon Calamari- it's great to finally see the planet, with its AT-AT cranes, dodgy mechanics, piracy and living squid soups) in search of other Mandalorians in order to get directions to a Jedi so he can take babby Yoda where it belongs- barely scratches the surface of what is going on here.

Those three other Mandalorians, led by the enigmatic and dangerous Bo-Katan are not as expected. It;s shocking to see them remove their helmets- but we now learn that most do; it's only the extreme "Chid of the Watch" faction, to which Mando belongs, that hold on to "the Way". This is quite a revelation and a superby done twist. Moreover, while Bo-Katan happens to be broadly aligned with the goodies, she is ambitious and power-hungry, and prepared to twist her promises. I wouldn't be surprised if she were to turn up one day as an antagonist. However, Mando now has a place to head for in order to meet a Jedi.

There's also plenty of action, plenty of humour and plenty of action, plus of course plenty of the usual Imperial dastardliness. I've really missed The Mandalorian and it's time to catch up completely.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Mazarin Stone

 "You know my methods...

What a very odd episode, which I uppose we could dub "Holmes-lite", given that Jeremy Brett hardly appears in his penultimate episode- was this perhaps forced upon the prosuction team by Brett's health?

It's also odd that this is a mash-up of two diparate Conan Doyle short stories- the less than classic The Mazarin Stone and the far more intriguing The Three Garridebs- with one allocated to Watson and the other allocated to a Mycroft Holmes who is drifting further and further from his Diogenes Club personality. It's good to see Charles Gray again, of course, but this simply doesn't work, especially as both stories are tied together at the end. This sort of thing is a far cry from the original mission statement of adapting all the stories.

There's also that syndrome again of directorial touches that are in practice meaningless and simply don't fit into an ITV detective show. This is an episode which simply fails. Without Brett, they should simply have made one less episode.

I really hope the final episode is a good one.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

 “Please don't despise me!"

This is not the film I was expecting to see.

Around the time of the film's release I recall the critics were mildly disparaging of what they saw as a film about titillation and in which Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman exhibited suspiciously little chemistry for a married couple.

...All of which is utter bollocks, and a quick glance shows me the ritcal consensus has thankdully shifted somewhat. This is perhaps the pinnacle of Stanley Kubrick's career, a film dense with subtext far beyond what is apparent to me on a first viewing, and a film which actually treats sex as a serious part of life as opposed to something to giggle at.

The first half of the film is a meditation on monogamy vs polygamy, as the naive Dr Bill is tempted by various opportunities for extra-marital action while Alice confesses to her own sexual fantasies. The pivotal scene, a stoned bedroom argument, sees them both being somewhat naive and unwittingly purotanical as they skirt around the old gendered ideas that sex is something men, being active, do to women, who are passive. This is, of course, nonsense: even if we look at heterosexual coupling only, desire is no different between the sexes, just society's expectations. 

And then Dr Bill, constantly awkward with women, moves into the world of the elite, into what looks like a cross between a ritualistic sacrifice, a BDSM club, a religious ceremony and a dodgy secret society. There is much coupling, but Dr Bill is excluded. He, a medical doctor, is successful and well-off- yet he exists on a different plane from the decadence of the elite. And the scene where he is found out by men in truly terrifying masks is truly terrifying, as is the sense of tension that follows. So is the implication that a girl whose life he saved dies so that he may live- although he is offered a comforting fiction to believe.

The cinematography and direction is sublime, with wonderful use of colours to contrast the world of the mundane with the dark ways of the elite, and much in the way of disorienting use of the camera at appropriate momnts. The score, and that repetitive piece in particular, is not only very good indeed but perfectly integrated with the visuals.

There's so much going on here- musings on monogamy; the objectification of women; the intersection of sex with money and power; so much more. This is cinema of the very first rank.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 6

 "We have no use for them..."

So that's it. Only in this final episode are the threads finally drawn together, with Rothwyn and Eldred finally interacting with Sapphire, Steel and Silver... and it's all over quickly. It's an anti-climax. And it turns out thos is all the result of cruel experiments on animals. I'm all for political subtext but this is bit crudely blatant didacticism.

There's a bit of fun with the fact time has been reversed and the unfortunateness of the last episode has been erased, and a bit of fun with how rude Steel is to the future couple versus Sapphire being at her most aloof and Silver blatantly flirting with Rothwyn. There's also horror, with that horrible brief glimpse of the doll baby, and the revelation that both other future households- children included- died by suicide in order to protect others. Brr.

Yet the conclusion is quick, anticlimctic, overly didactic and leaves us with a six parter which is oddly paced and, while it has some good ideas, just doesn't draw them together well enough to hang together by the time we reach the conclusion.

I shall plough on, but I'm not too impressed with Sapphire & Steel right now.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

 "They were all evil, and remain evil after death."

I've seen and blogged a previous adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in the form of Crypt of the Vampire but this, Hammer's version, is fascinatingly different, and not only in the fact that it stars, sort of, Peter Cushing as opposed to Christopher Lee. 

This film, like its predecessor, is a fairly faithful adaptation. yet it is fascinatingly different, and not only because of the greater emphasis on the lesbian attraction between Carmilla and Emma which looms large over the entire film. To begin with, there is no red herring, or at least not for the audience; the characters may suspect Kate O'Mara's governess, but we know Carnilla is a vampire from an early stage as we are made aware of an earlier victim. This is far less of a straight character drama and far more of a sensationalist horror grand guignol with sex and violence as the selling points... and it works. This is a significantly better film.

It helps that the cast is so superb. Ingrid Pitt and Cushing excel as ever, but they are ably supported by a very young Kate O'Mara ad an almost unrecognisable George Cole. The direction and production similarly recreate the familiar Mittel-European setting (this time rural Austra in the 1780s) with real aplomb.And yes, of course there's a tavern full of suspicious locals.

Yes, this is the start of '70s Hammer horror, using sex and sensation to sell in a way they'd never so explicitly done before. It has to be said, though, that it bloody well works.

Westworld (1973)

" Doesn't anything work around here?"#

This surprisingly short film is rather good, unsurprisingly for a film with its reputation. It is, however, both predictable and unpredictable, in a way that works extremely well. This may not be quite up there with the greates, but it's bubbling under.

Michael Crichton writes and directs, and the strength of thefilm lies in his strong premise- realistic robots, "designed by computers", areused to create three realistic theme parks- Westworld, Medievalworld and Romanworld, the latter of which seems to be based on decadence and is therefore barely seen.

Interestingly, the plot needs no great twists as the premise is explored and the threat- the robots going wrong and killing people, is simply allowed to happen wthout too much focus either on why this is happening or the backstory behind it.

The whole thing is pretty much just played out straight. The premise is the premise, and that's that. Even though the technology level is implicitly futuristic the fashions, attitudes and even computers are completely and utterly 1973. Exposition may be obvious- we begin with a TV advert for the resort and we have a room of backroom technicians to act as chorus- but it works. Even our two protagonists are used to do plenty of obvious exposition, with John being a veteran and Peter new. Again, though, this works.

This is an example of a film which works by virtue of a superb premise, and has the confidence to simply let it be itself and play out. There's a certain amount of playing it safe here, but there's no doubt that the premise is bloody brilliant, and the film is very good indeed.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 5

 "I have impeccable origins."

This episode is no less full of padding- in essence it consists of Sapphire, with Steel, faffing around as they wonder what tricks in their armoury they can use to bring back Silver, who is their only ticket out of the capsule. This time, though, it's entertaining padding.

Partly it's that the ideas get some development- the mysterious creature behind all this seems close to omnipotent, and can prevent Sapphire reversing time a few minutes as she usually does. This sequence subtly allows our protagonists to review the story so far including the bits with Rothwyn and Eldred that they were not previously privy to. We also have an odd description of the creepy, nameless grown baby as the "Changeling" complete with a description of the folklore around the concept, which seems to have no bearing whatsoever.

It's weird but cool, too, to hear that Silver has been taken back to the "beginning". That's the thing about Sapphire & Steel; it doesn't half drag on a bit, but the concepts are frequently awesome. And we end on a high, even if again there's no real cliffhanger, as our protagonists finally meet a rather composed Rothwyn and a hilariously freaking out Eldred. It's nice how they used the baby as a loophole.

Let's hope the finale is good...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Red Circle

 "Please vanish, both of you!"

Two superb episodes in a row: that's more like it. It looks as though there's hope for this final series after all.

I fear I recall little of the short story, but this is a nice little stiry about a very thinly veiled Mafia which manages to handle the tension well and to generate real fear. Never has the Granada Sherlock Holmes felt so much like The Godfather, but this is well written, and extremely well shot too.

Not only that, though- the cast is extraordinary. John Hallam makes an excellent villain, but it's truly delightful to see the lovely and talented Betty Marsden, as well as Kenneth Connor, both in straight roles- although sadly, for Connor, a posthumous one.

Yes, I know I've been critical in the past of adaptations of stories which are not really whodunits, or end up as something else following the adaptation. Yet The Red Circle, while abandoning all pretence of being a whodunit halfway through, still contains a gnuine mystery, and the shift to more of a suspenseful action thriller is, for once, handled well.

It's a nicely subtle ending, too: for once Holmes can't override the law and prevent a man ho acted in self-defence from being arressted for murder, even if we know damn well he will be acquitted.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 4

 "There are no others..."

Here we have... a rather uneventful episode. There's some fascinatingy touchy-feely stuff between Sapphire and Silver hinting at a present or former romantic relationship, much to Steel's jealous annoyance. There's a bit of a revelation that Silver is "just a technician" whose forte is transportation and machines. Aside from this there's just a lot of vague exploration to fill the time in which our now reunited proagonists learn various things about the capsule(s) that the viewer already knows or has probably inferred.

The former baby is creepy though. And there's a fascinating debate about whether it's a baby or just a machine. But that's literally it.

At least we get a cliffhanger next time. But can some stuff actually happen next time, please?

Upstart Crow: The Play's the Thing

"Or must I pluck another from the chicken's arse?"

This second episode is every bit as good, and every bit as Blackadderish, as the first- and just as unashamedly geeky about Shakespeare lore. This is a sitcom which has the likes of Henry Condell and Robert Greene (the truly excellent Mark Heap) as characters and where the plot turns on factors such as the Stuart James VI of Scotand being the likely next king of England and how he is the son of Mary Queen of Scots.

Exhibit A for both of these points is the use of Christopher Marlowe here. On the one hand, by saying Shakespeare wrote all Kit's plays, the script is taking the mickey out of those nutters who for some reason think the Earl of Oxford (who died in 1604, before many of the most famous plays) wrote the whole Shakespeare canon. On the other hand they cheerfully show Kit as being a laddish "roisterer" who seems to love neither tobacco nor boys, and bears an uncanny and certainly deliberate resemblance to Lord Flashheart.

There are so many little in-jokes, too, which make this series particularly enjoyable for the Shakespeare geek. Roll on the next one... but first, several days of other stuff.

Upstart Crow: Star Crossed Lovers

 "But Kate, you know very well that ot's illegal for girls to do anything interesting."

Ok, now this isn't me making a habit of blogging sitcoms- there are all sorts of reasons why they don't lend themselves as well to a proper episodic blog post, at least for me. So this is just a few brief witterings per episode, rather less content than usual, but we'll see how it goes.

Essentially, this is bloody brilliant. Yes, it's basically the world of Shakespeare in the style of Black Adder II, with the lines very Blackadderish indeed and with Will Shakespeare (a perfectly cast David Mitchell) performing the same narrative function as good old Edmund. But this is by Ben Elton, someone who has every right to do this. There's something to be said for getting a writer to do what he's good at. Sometimes it's good to be in one's comfort zone.

The cast is superb, and the assortment of regular characters introduced here are at once redolent of Blackadder (aspiring actress Kate is quite deliberately based on "Bob") and based on Shakespeare's real family and regular actors- I love how Will Kemp is used to take the piss out of Ricky Gervais. This is roughly based on the young-ish Shakespeare of the 1590s, but let's not be too fixated on historical accuracy. Let's just say that, as someone who sees Romeo and Juliet being, in large part, the still young-ish Shakespeare, whose earlier work consisted of such violent crowd pleasers as Titus Andronicus and the Henry VI trilogy, taking the piss out of Italian romances by having a deliberately bathetic ending, I enjoyed this immensely.

Macbeth (2015)

"What's done cannot be undone..."

I consider myself a Shakespeare geek. I know all but a handful of his plays. I've read the sublime Macbeth several times, but have only ever seen it performed once: at Leicester in 1990 when I was far too young to appreciate what I was seeing. I was surprised, watching this film, that I know the play much better than I thought. Certainly enough to realise ths film is, well... underwhelming.

On paper it has a lot to recommend it. It's a fairly faithful adaptaton of one of Shakespeare's finest plays. It's a realistic evocation of 11th century Scotland (look, no kilts!) with authentic accents, a shockingly rare virtue which adds a lot and hides many faults elsewhere. It stars Michael Fassbender, a very good actor. The cinematography is bleakly artistic, with subdued colours and severely bleak locations.

And yet... this bleakness doesn't serve the play. Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are excellent but their performances seem to lack charisma here in ways they don't elsewhere- perhaps Justin Kurzel is not an actors' director? The gloriously poetical lines seem to be cancelled out at every turn by a crushing dullness that pervades everything.

The locations are haunting. The performances good and often excellent. The film beautifully shot almost if not wholly on location... yet I find myself yearning for a stagey old BBC 1970s style production with multiple cameras.This fim seems to please the critics, but it disappointed me.

La Jetee (1962)

 "The victors stood guard over a kingdom of rats..."

I watched this film tonight because I watched Twelve Monkeys a few days ago, as this film is cited as a strong influence- and, of course, it's one of the most admired short films ever made, with good reason..

The word "inspiration" is a considerable understatement, I think: I'm in two minds myself over whether or not Twelve Monkeys ought to be considered a remake. Yet the film is a masterpiece in its own rights regardless. The still photographs, and the masterful ways they bleed into one another, perfectly encapsulate the theme of both the emotions and subjectivity of memory, dependent as it is on still, lingering images.

The narration is extraordinary, too. I'll confess to being less than quite fluent in French, although I can speak the language up to a point, but the prose was beautiful in translation and even more poetic in the original French.

This is, I suppose, at once very French and very Atomic Age science fiction, with its mushroom cloud and post-apocalyptic dystopia, yet both the time travel romance (the couple's relationship reminds me of The Time Traveller's Wife) and the future weirdness are brilliant. And the twist at the denoument is done with such admirable elegance.

If you haven't seen it, it's less than half an hour long, and easy to find.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Golden Pince-Nez

 "May I shake your hand, Sir?"

"What? If you must."

Now that's more like it. This is the first solid episode in ages from the once-dependable Granada Sherlock Holmes. After a few episodes that were, essentially, not whodunits, at last we get an adaptation of a solid Conan Doyle murder mystery with a genuinely surprising and unpredictable twist. This may not be a highlight of the series, but it's an enormous relief to encounter an episode like this. Let's hope it represents an overdue return to form for the final stretch.

This is a broadly faithful adaptation, with the changes making sense with the casting- and the cast is truly excellent. The episode is notably missing Edward Hardwicke as Watson, of course, but it just about works having the superb but noticeably older Charles Gray return as Mycroft. The interplay between the two brothers is fascinating- Holmes archly notes that it os "ironic" that their late father left his magnifying glass to the sedentary Mycroft, although there's just about enough sleight of hand to excuse his not being so sedentary here.

There's a nice little red herring with Suffragettes too, and some wry social commentary on Edwardian attitudes to female suffrage, which Mycrofy is very much seen to share. The opening and concluding scenes with nihilists in Russia in the 1880s are well done, too- shades of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

Please let this not be the last good episode...

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 3

 "They wouldn't have gone back without us, would they?"

There's  not really anything like plausible deniability to the charge that this episode is blatant padding. Sapphire and Silver seem about to get entry to the capsule at the very end- fully halfway through the story as a whole. And the neat-total absence of Sapphire, after last episode's arresting cliffhanger, feels as though it may be influenced by non-diegetic factors.

Obviously, Sapphire being absent, we get to meet Steel, a charismatic, mysterious and rather camp individual. He and Sapphire flirt outrageously, amusingly causing annoyance to a jealous Steel, but he also supplies some exposition, confirming to Steel that the members of the other two expeditions from the future are dead.

The main event is, of course, where Rothwyn recognises the rather creepy young man walking towards her as "the Child", in a rathef effectively creepy scene. This is the suff of nightmares as the "Child" reaches out to Rothwyn, only for a terrifying voice to insist he use the other hand.. and something happens. Brr.

This one scene od pretty much worth the padding. But the padding really is outrageous.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Dying Detective

 "Mr Holmes, you are the very worst tenant in London!"

Sigh. This second episode is better than the first. Jeremy Brett is, of course, superb as the strangely indifferent and, eventually, ill Holmes- or seemingly so. The cast is unusually strong, even if a very young Hugh Bonneville is going by "Richard" here. Roy Hudd is delightful as a ne'er-do-well. It all looks very good. And yet... it's all fundamentally misconceived.

The Dying Detective works well as a short story, but the short stoty works only because it essentially consists of what we see as the final scenes here, as Holmes pretends to be dying so the gullible Culverton Smith can, like a Bond villain, confess. To fit a fifty minute episode we need to have a long, awkward, preambe to establish the context. This is unfortunate, and not only because the denoument becomes rather obvious if we understand what has led up to it. Holmes behaviour, too, in refusing to suspect Culverton Smith (until he does) feels awkward and too blatantly plot driven. It's odd, too, that he would take up the case of yet another opium addict husband; the apparent encouragement of hs cousin would not make the case sufficiently interesting.

As a result, the episode may be well-made but fundamentally doesn't work. The short story needs to be a short vignette in order to work. Expanding it to a full fifty minute episode simply doesn't work.

Still, I'm glad they kept in Homes' apparent fear of oysters...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Three Gables

 "Is murder a woman’s secret...?”

Oh dear. After the mainly not very good overlong specials I was hoping for a return to the good stuff now that we're back to the proper length episodes. Alas, on the evidence of this episode, I have every reason to be concerned about what the rest of the series may bring. This really is the most appallingly muddled and messy script I've ever seen from the Granada Sherlock Holmes. 

There's only really one plus point- the splendid performance of the then ninety-six year old Mary Ellis in her final acting role before her death... aged 105. Otherwise, this is dross. Admittedly the original Conan Doyle short story was hardly one of the best (this is one of those stories described as "drivel" by Nicholas Meyer in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Yet the changes made here, and the padding out to include a wasted Peter Wyngarde as a pointless gossip-monger, are pointless, yet the treatment of the character of Steve Dixie faithfully translates the casual racism of the original, reminding us that Conan Doyle, while progressive on racial matters in The Yellow Face, was nevertheless a man of his time. I'm less inclined to excuse the use of the character here, though, in 1994, with no thought seemingly given to the issue.

Essentially, this episode is a mess, incoherent and giving very little for Brett to do. Please let the rest of the series not be like this.

The Brood (1979)

 "It has no teeth, but you'd get a pretty nasty bite from these beak-like gums..."

Nasty divorces and unpleasant custody battles happen, sadly, even to auteur film directors. And, if said auteur happens to be David Cronenberg, this will naturally lead to a film all about how evil his ex is and why he should have custody of his daughter, all through the medium of extreme body horror.

Thing is, though, it may well be blatant that this is what he's doing, but none of that stops this film being a masterfully helmed wotk of genius. This film really ought to feel self-indulgent, but it's just too good for that.

It helps that we have a just-sober-enough Oliver Reed as a gloriously weird red herring of a creepily unorthodox psychiatrist (his book looks like a kind of very '70s yet also very Cronenberg tome: Erich Von Daniken with body horror) who is there as a very prominent piece of misdirection, but the real killers are, it seems, a gang of homonculuses (none of this Latinate "homonculi" nonsense; loan words don't get to bring their own syntax with them even if they are from swanky old Latin) which are birthed by, let's face it, a character representing Cronenberg's ex, in gloriously horrific ways as seen in the extraordinarily long and wonderfully effective final scene.

As ever with Cronenberg we have exquisite direction with the most banal of locations made to look creepily beautiful. We have eccentric minor characters and his usual themes of memory, family, bodily squelchiness and medical madness. This film is superb.

Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

 "I don't care how you do it. You MUST sink the Bismarck."

This is not the kind of war film I was expected, with a surprising amount of focus on strategic planning and reactions in the Admiralty as opposed to action. Yet, while this is perhaps not one of the very best war films, its focus on the backroom planning aspects is certainly a strength. This is a nicely structured- and, within reason, historically accurate-account of both the damage done by the Bismarck and the pursuit of it by the Royal Navy in that anxious spring of 1941.

Admittedly, my own experience of the stock footage, opening the film, of Hitler launching the Bismarck was shaped by some rather hilarious automatic English subtitles of the German dialogue, but this was the only laughable moment. Every other moment was gripping and tension-filled as the full might of the Royal Navy- including the Home Fleet- wrestled with the difficult gambles and ten dimensional chess-playing that was necessary to sink the premier asset of the German navy.

Using Ed Morrow as a kind of chorus was clever; he's an identification figure for any Americans watching as well as being a handy means of exposition. It's also a solid decision to base the film around two fictionalised figures- the cold Captain Shepard who is secretly covering up emotional vulnerability and the coolly competent yet emotionally inteligent Anne Davies- as well as a more cartoonish Nazi in Lutyens than was perhaps the case historically. Those who served as officers for Nazi Germany were enemies of humanity, and attempts to protect Jewish people under their command do not change this. He and those like him thught to defend evil. 

This may not be a great film, but is an impressive one, and both Kenneth More and Dana Winter deserve a great deal of credit.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

 "All I see are dead people."

I've seen this film before, but in another century. I remembered nothing of it, and this second viewing brought back no memories of this strange beast- a '90s sci-fi action film, starring A list Hollywood action stars, directed by Terry Gilliam of all people. That's somewhat disappointing, as unreliable and vague memories are a huge theme here, but never mind.

The film is not, perhaps, quite in the very first rank or as good as Gilliam's own Brazil (of which the style of the future scenes, with its panel of eccentric scientists). Yet it is, nevertheless, a superb little meditation on time travel, circulat time travel paradoxes, and the subjectivity of memory. It is also, inevitably for a plot based on time paradoxes, a meditation on fate and the idea that, as we do not have much agency in our lives, we may as well enjoy the ride. The influence of La Jetee was, I'm told, important: I must see that film some time.

It's also a triumpant performance from Bruce Willis, who always has been a much better actor than his usual action film roles may imply. But there's also a solid performance from Madeleine Stowe, and a gloriously unhinged one from Brad Pitt. It's also good to see a prominent part for an older Frank Gorshin, the Riddler himself.

More than anything, though, this is anothef splendid film from the unique mind and aesthetic of Terry Gilliam, establishing himself firmly as a proper Hollywood auteur. The old Monty Python animator done good.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 2

 "We might just lose this one."

This, unexpectedly, turns out to be a superb episode, fizzling with big ideas, and utterly gripping. Despite the fact that Sapphire and Steel are still not inside the capsule by the end of the episode there's plenty to stimulate the viewer.

It's interestng to ponder what a daring piece of television this is from a modern perspective: absolutely none of the four key characters are at all fit to be audience identification figures, none of them hailing from anything close to twentieth century Earth. All of them, too, are somewhat alienating personalities. Sapphire is at her most otherwordly here; Rothwyn is positively scary; Eldred is entitled arrogance personified; and Steel is... well, Steel. That wouldn't get past the script editors these days. Plus it's most odd to see something so cool and conceptual being directed so flatly with multiple cameras.

And yet it's riveting television, and it's riveting television because of the ideas. Steel's reaction at the start shows how much we should fear these alienating "invaders" and the ineffable power of time itself. The pillow is also a swan. Rothwyn is suddenly much weirder. There's some glowing thing in the wall- possibly the "crystal" of time that bought the couple back fifteen hundred years... and the baby grows to adulthood within mere minutes.

After all this weirdness we turn to a fairly normal ending, as Steel again urges Sapphire to poke a stick at the threat and see what happens- and it isn't good, as Sapphire promptly vanishes while talking of eternal pain. Lovely.

This is bloody good, and utterly of its time.

The Eligible Bachelor (1993 TV Film)

 "Dull, dull, dull!

Well, at least this isn't as bad as The Last Vampyre. But it's pretty bad, nevertheless. I'm well and truly glad to have put these three long, pretentious specials behind me.

There are some redeeming features, I suppose. I'm not sure departures from Conan Doyle are quite the thing for a series originally predicated on doing no such thing, and the plot twsts don't exactly arrive through deduction, but the departures from Conan Doyle's The Noble Bachelor (with a pinch of The Veiled Lodger) are clever and well thought-out, Simon Williams is excellent as Lord St Simon and it works well to have the character ultimately revealed to be a bounder and a cad, who had his first (rich) wife killed and his second declared insane. It's a shocking revelation, and his confrontational scenes with Hetty cleverly reveal him as an abuser, charming but frighteningly good at gaslighting, asking "What have you made me do?" as he tries to throttle her.

Yet that isn't enough. This film is interminably long, with Lord St Simon not even engaging Holmes on the case until we're forty minutes in. And the direction, while arty and well done, is meaningless and pointless as the artistry isn't really saying anything. It's good to see Holmes in one of his depressive, drug-addled phases (bipolar?), but it's dwelt on far too long, with the trippiness just a retread of the far less pretentious The Devil's Foot and the nonsense about precognitive dreams being utterly unsuitable for both the character and the series.

I really hope the final six, proper length, episodes are better than this.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment Three- The Creature's Revenge, Part 1

 "The attack has started!"

It's the second season and the third Assignment- and you can certainly tell that it's the very early '80s with that charmingly period baby monitor, the suddenly very different cut of Steel's suit (Sapphire is very... strikingly dressed) and of the pastel shades in which all the walls are painted.

It's also an intriguing premise- a couple with a baby from fifteen centuries in the future have been living in the twentieth century for twenty-seven days as some kind of experiment, although it's amusing to note that, future or not, it's still the female of the two, Rothwyn, who is in charge of all the domestic stuff while Eldred seems to spend his time having lie-ins and mansplaining.

All is not well, though- they've lst contact with their own time, and some kind of mind-affecting polergeit thingy is in there that does worrying things with pillows. Sapphire and Steel are kept separate from them in order to make this a predictably exploratory first episode, which works reasonably well as we realise the couple live in an invisible and apparently impregnable apartment on the roof. We can also get a bit of useful exposition about how meddling with time (unless it's them doing it!) is bad and wrong.

It's an intriguing premise and holds my attention. For a moment, though, it looks as though the poltergeist thing is about to smother the baby, which seems a rather disturbing thing to show. But the pillow then moves to attack Steel which is, er, fine...

The Last Vampyre (1993 TV Film)

 "Are we to give serious attention to such things? It's pure lunacy."

This is the second of the three Granada TV films based on short stories before we return to six proper episodes for the final stretch. It was... challenging to watch.

I found The Master Blackmailer, while by no means great, not to be as bad as its reputation. I can make no such claim for this turgid nonsense.

It's instructive, however, to take a look at why. There is, indeed, a bit of allusion to the supernatural here but there's a more or less rational explanation for everything; this episode is essentially no more supernatural than The Hound of the Baskervilles. Also, while I would have preferred a shorter and more faithful adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Sussex Vampire, the changes work well enough on their own terms and could have worked. This isn't bad because it's overlong: it's just bad television.The introduction of the character of Stockton as a red herring and extra sub-plot could have worked, but fails to do so through sheer dullness, and the scenes in the ruined house are just silly..

Fundamentally this is style over substance, except the directorial fanciness isn't actually as good as it thinks it is. Also, despite the rather good location filming, the guest cast, Maurice Denham aside, is just rubbish and dull- Keith Barron, in particular, is terrible. And the script is just formulaic. Yes, it's good that we get the "Giant Rat of Sumatra" line from the original short story for Sherlockian fanboys, and even a reference to the Gloria Scott. But this is a sad and limp piece of television that is no better now than when I saw it aged fifteen on its original broadcast.

Rabid (1977)

 “I don't want to become the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery..."

Well. I've always said until now that I've seen an awful lot of David Cronenberg films (I may do an index for the blog after this if I remember. Maybe David Lynch too.), but I've somehow contrived to focus on the ones with the least emphasis on his signatute body horror- although his later films are indeed very good.

This one goes a long way towards redressing the balance, in being the Canadian auteur's second film- low budget, and a  glimpse at a talented young man rather than an established director- and having body horror coming out of its armpit, by means of a suspiciously phallic-looking bloodsucking proboscis, which makes it interesting that the affected protagonist, Rosie, is a woman. Perhaps this film is inspired by sex during a period, but... moving swiftly on.

Basically, this is a low budget film with no stars and few extras that nevertheless achieves brilliance necause it's directed by an enfant terrible. Cronenberg's pacing, signature camerawork and visual style are already present and correct as a B movie plot- a girl has a motorbike crash and has to have emergency surgery by an unconventional plastic surgeon (called Dr Keloid!), leading to said body horror and a rabies-type plague on a suspiciously Anglophone Montreal where only a random exposition-spouting cop happens to be from the French-speaking majority- is raised to something much greater by sheer style. The locations, the lighting, even the mid-twentieth century architecture are made to look stunning.

It can be a fascinating experience to see a cinematic genius at work in their early, unheralded, years, where the creativity relies not on Hollywood visual tricks but on making something wonderful out of nothing. This is one of them.

 

 

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.

Hands of the Ripper (1971)

 "It's the Ripper!"

I love Hammer Horror. Not all of the films are good, although most are, but most at least provide some cheesy fun. This one, however, does not really do even that. It's a rare dud.

I suppose there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept- the daughter of Jack the Ripper (a married, unnamed aristocrat who murders his wife after escaping a torch-wielding mob) grows up to have blackouts triggered by a certain thing that cause her to kill, much as her father. This is centred around a very Henry Higgins relationship between Dr Pritchard (Eric Potrter, still very good here even while obviously phoning it in) and Anna herself (an excellent Angharad Rees.

There's some good subtext here- one example of which is the debate between Pritchard and Dysart about judicial killing, rightfully reminding us of the barbarity of the practice: after all, how many killers have had abusive childhoods, even if not necessarily watching one's father stab one's mother to death? There also an amusing equivalence, intended or not, between seances, mediums and all that and Freudian psychoanalysis- both kinds of quackery are, of course, nonsense.

There are also enjoyable appearances from both the great Dora Bryan and the always wonderful Lynda Baron, both having enrmous fun with their roles. However, the film never really catches fire and, despite the charasma of the two leads, is rather formulaic without being silly enough to be quite enough fun, isolated scenes aside.

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The Master Blackmailer (1992 TV Film)

 "Give us a kiss."

"I don't know how..."

It is hardly novel to make the assertion that is an overly padded out version of Charles Augustus Milverton, a rather anonymous Doyle short story. Nor is is original to point out that it is directed in a pointlessly and pretentiously artistic manner, something wich has occasionally threaened to happen before but it is here that the line is crossed. Indeed, the film seems to break the fourth wall to concede both of these points in a scene where Holmes and Watson visit some snakes at a zoo or some such place for the sole seeming purpose of comparing them to Milverton as an overly laboured and clumsy metaphor. Even Watson asks Holmes whether they really have nothing better to do.

And yet, if only one film-length episode is to be made in 1992, this story is as good a choice as any. There are two full novels by Conan Doyle yet to be adapted, yes, but both A Study in Scarlet (assuming we ignore the fact it is the story where Holmes and Watson meet, something made impossible by the ages of the actors) and The Valley of Fear feature extended flashbacks in the United States, which would be problematic for many reasons.

Indeed, if we acccept that The Master Blackmailer has its obvious flaws, there are good things to be found here. This is a broadly faithful, albeit embellished, adaptation, and the excellence we typically expect from both Brett and Hardwicke is joined by a deliciously slimy performance from the great Robert Hardy as Milverton. The film also delves more deeply into Holmes' morally dodgy behaviour in becoming engaged to Milverton's maid, who genuinely likes him, while posing as a plumber. This is bastardly behaviour, and the film makes this clear in a way the short story does not.

On the other hand, the fact that Milverton's chief victims are two aristocratic engaged coulples is shown near the beginning by an absurd scene of them all cavorting in the garden of a stately home which reminded me of the late Monty Python "anyone for tennis" sketch.

In short, this is a flawed piece of work, and the criticisms often made of it are fair. And yet there are good things ro find in here too, and it could likely have been edited into a decent sixty minute drama. I wonder if the two films to follow will fare as well. I shall do them as quickly as I can but ther length will restrict when I can blog them.

Oh, and it seems this episode, and not the last one, is Lestrade's last. Oops.