Jolson Story (1946)

RATING:	40%
FORMAT:	DVD

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Sentimental beyond belief, this refuses to analyze any complex issues, especially the essentially racist nature of minstrelsy when practiced by Whites. Unlike Sacher Cohen's Ali G & Borat creations, this is extremely politically simplistic. Yet Larry PARKS is very good in the central role that briefly made his name and the music is very enjoyable.

Al Jolson's gift was in acting out his songs and not just in singing them. He successfully undercuts the simpering sentimentality of much of his material with light humor and spontaneous wit. At his best when connecting with a live audience, his Freudian mammy fixation becomes a plausible entertainment where you stop asking the uncomfortable questions about a grown man seemingly unable to connect with a woman his own age.

(Image: http://www.divxclasico.com/)

This is a White American Dream type musical where success is achieved with little effort or struggle with the result that the characters are correspondingly thinly drawn. High octane acting only partly compensates for the lack of dramatic conflict that was no doubt motivated by the fact that Al Jolson was still alive when the film was made and contributed to its voice. This fear of defaming a living person also may have effected the film's pacing because it is all on a top note - with very little variation for nearly two hours. The downbeat ending is far too little; far too late in the verisimilitude stakes to compensate for the cloying nature of the proceedings.

(Image: http://www.divxclasico.com/)

Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

80%

A visually-impressive old-time sci-fi movie hampered by leaden direction and somewhat banal acting: More money was obviously spent on the SFX than the performers. The only exception here is Anne FRANCIS who really enjoys her role of both ingénue and virginal intriguer.

The story is an old one of the alleged subconscious having an effect in the actual world as an old man's daughter discovers her sexuality upon meeting fit young men from the space corps. His id wants to destroy them and tries to prevent them from taking his daughter away because his unconscious mind will not let her go. This leads to an explosive climax that can be beaten by only few modern movies of its kind.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Apartment (1960)

80%

A vigorous and satirical critique of the materialistic hypocrisy usually associated with sexual promiscuity and marital infidelity. Most of the married men here are completely incapable of keeping their hands off women half their age and most of the girls delude themselves into thinking that they will divorce their wives for them. Also a solid satire on the regimentation and routinisation of office life.

As you would expect from Billy WILDER, the humor is sharp and witty and the satire focuses on the choices we all must make between love and career. Much of the comedy centers around a neighbor's belief that Jack LEMMON is sleeping with all and sundry when his apartment is actually being used by five of his senior office colleagues for their amorous trysts. His meteoric rise to the executive suite is purely the result of this sexual sub letting not any relevant business acumen on his part and he finds himself in love with one of the kept women which could upset the whole cosy arrangement. Deep down this is one of the finest romantic comedies ever made because it is grounded in solid monochrome reality rather than fantasy.

LEMMON is his usual nebbish self; while Shirley MacLAINE steals the show with a performance of great subtlety as the depressive elevator girl with a heart of gold. Fred MacMURRAY plays against type as her amoral, married lover.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Salò (1975)

100%

A vivid depiction of the depravity attendant upon using others as means rather than ends as well of unthinkingly following orders. This movie does not shy away from the implications of its theme: Humanity volitionally cut off from a positive purpose. It skillfully skirts the border between accurately analyzing degeneracy and being degenerate itself; its sordid catalogue of sexual perversions making it a profoundly repellant experience. However, given the charnel house that was the twentieth century, it is not without exceptional cinematic brilliance in its execution in being a film great power to haunt the mind of anyone who sees it.

The extreme content demands to be seen as a serious indictment of the Western world. Its excesses depict a materialistic and wealth obsessed culture that both consumes rubbish while producing great piles of it. The politically powerful have no power over their own desire to evade genuine political issues in favor of the vapid (& issue evading) freedom to consume anything in ever greater quantities. The relationship between sexual promiscuity and consumerism is here made explicit as people metaphorically and literally consume each other's bodies – especially the waste products.

A deeply and profanely political work, it is a call to action for Communists like its director (Pier Paolo PASOLINI) to see what the West as it really is and to do something constructive about it. However, this is the movie's partial failing: It presents the world in all it unpleasantness but without offering a credible alternative. An obsession with attacking the allegedly sacred can often mar great works such as this, nevertheless, the satire on the modern Western bourgeoisie is a devastatingly accurate one.

If ever there were proof that the Marquis de Sade and his followers were fools, madmen and the morally bankrupt, then this is it. It understands the insatiable–because never satisfied nature of those who find no pleasure in human warmth; hence, the emotionally distant shooting style that matches the depraved emotionally distancing themselves from others. They busily conflate pain with pleasure to vainly abolish the difference: 'When I see others degraded I rejoice' – yet they want to be both 'executioner and victim'. They cling to existence because they can achieve worldly success by blackmailing others to betray one another in exchange for preferential (or, at the very least, less harsh) treatment. Here "Rational" means "Unempathetic" in this masterpiece on the essential depravity of social engineering.

The work stands as a heartfelt plea from a man who personally experienced some of the events portrayed in the dying days of Mussolini's Italy. A strangely poetic drama – part self loathing; partly an expression of rage at a world that does not meet ones high ideals – that even the most jaded viewer will find shocking.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Chungking Express (1994)

40%

A great sprawling mess of a film that starts badly and goes nowhere from there.

Two lovelorn police officers are on the lookout for love but are unable to find it for looking in the wrong places. Their various girlfriends are hard to pin down, as they tend to leave at a moment's notice or without giving any notice at all; reflecting the general fecklessness of the central characters, themselves.

The travel metaphor of one of the policeman's two girlfriends being air stewardesses - who search for fulfilment but only find it at home - is well done, but little else is. The drug smuggling scenes are poorly integrated with the overall design and we appear to be watching two completely different films.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Jolson Sings Again (1949)

40%

This sequel to The Jolson Story deals no more realistically with the price of fame that, again, is a very great pity because Parks is an impressive actor who impersonates Jolson brilliantly.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Comrades (1986)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

An impressive achievement on a low budget, this is ultimately a human and humane drama about the human face. They loom large throughout and offer us glimpses into character - and great character acting. They determine our own emotional allegiances and those of the characters surveyed; while forming the basis for the entire plot and story. Moreover, the landscape itself is a character in its own right that supports the human figures in this deeply rural context via the expressive photography.

Unsurprisingly, the Anglican Church is collaborating with the rich to keep the poor subservient and landless; while sermonizing on each man keeping his place that appointed him of god. This is, of course, a film about boat rockers from whom the dramatic conflicts shown spring. This film is a hymn to strong leadership and communal values: A theme of which it never loses sight despite its length. It is also a hymn of praise to the expressive possibilities of cinema itself.

The narrative progression is both parallel and chronological in its poetically non linear way. This is a slow moving and beautiful experience – both in an ethical and in an aesthetic sense. The film is shot as a silent movie with emotions conveyed largely by bodily movement and facial expression. Plus, the different acting styles convey different moods in a movie part of whose brilliance lies in the extremely deft casting choices, particularly Robin SOANS as the rebel leader.

The cheerful anachronisms of the single finger, the poor characters' good teeth, breaking the fourth wall and the modern dialogue are all experimental ways of helping the director (Bill DOUGLAS) make these people real to us now. Furthermore, the movie comments on its own illusionism with the Brechtian leitmotif of an itinerant magic lantern show using the same actor (the brilliantly versatile Alex NORTON) for the characters that comment on the action - and sometimes take part in it. By appearing in various guises, NORTON enables this entire bag of cinematic tricks to cohere into a political masterpiece – all the more effective because it does not ram its various points down our throats.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Heat and Dust (1982)

80%

An interesting and quiet film about a romantic White Englishwoman abroad in British India who finds the sexual, social and racial snobbery stifling. Her affair with a nawab causes a scandal for others but happiness to herself; vindicating her decision to spend the rest of her days with the Indian governor.

The playing and writing are all subtle and tick all the right boxes even if the film is a little overlong. The underrated Greta SCACCHI, in particular, is excellent as the pretty young thing in love with all things Indian who is seen as vile by those who believe English women should be seen and not heard. The racism depicted borders on treating the Whites as stereotypes yet this manages to convey the strict self repression necessary when one considers oneself better (without evidence) than others. Any such chink in this self imposed emotional armor will always be noticed by someone; leading to immediately being labeled as a non pukka memsahib by revealing that you are just as human as anyone else. The emotional retardation caused by such an attitude is well presented in comic form as an obvious social falseness - especially well portrayed by Susan FLEETWOOD at her Joyce GRENFELL best.

Ultimately a movie about Whites being seduced by the apparent mystery of India - both literally and metaphorically - that implicitly evokes and explicitly critiques the superficial materialism of the Western world.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Meet the Parents (2000)

60%

An interesting ethnic-, social-class clash comedy that draws clear distinctions between Jewish warmth & spontaneity and WASP aloofness & emotional retardation.

The premise of an untrusting father and his would-be son-in-law is a universal theme that is not, however, fully explored in favor of intricate and amusing slapstick. The so-called circle-of-trust of the WASP family is really an incentive to create a circle-of-deceit as his children lie to him because of his emotionally possessive paranoia - which they hope telling him lies will help them escape.

Snobbery is well represented by the daughter being enjoined not to marry someone who earns less than they think he should to keep her in the style to which she was raised. And Ben STILLER is comical as he tries to compete on equal terms with those who earn far more than he does. Yet the more he lies, the bigger a hole he digs for himself.

Ultimately, the charm of this movie springs from the simple fact that his love for his fiancée is genuine. If only that emotional commitment had been better foregrounded, this could have been a comedy classic instead of a mediocre attempt at a comedy of manners.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1970)

60%

AS LONG AS THEIR FLESH REMAINS FIRM…

Somewhat incoherent plotting but the girls are fetching and the thin drug smuggling plot allows for a lot of bloody gunplay amidst the playful carnality.

Where Russ MEYER gets so much right about human sexuality lies in his Carry On understanding of the essentially libidinous nature of women. And the difficulty men have in keeping up with their insatiable demands. Without this full appreciation, his films would fall as flat as a pancake. And for sheer fleshy exuberance, these girls cannot be beaten.

The film also begins with a political tract against the dangers of both censorship and of trying to control the lives of others through invidious resentment at their lack of anhedonia. It also begins (& ends) with a moral homily about the dangers the young are exposed to through the morally empty and, thus, thrill seeking nature of the capitalist West. MEYER's surreal flair for incongruous – yet somehow fitting – images is well to the fore here as well.

Common Law Cabin (aka How Much Loving Does A Normal Couple Need?) is a mess made by an apparent Russ MEYER impersonator who lacks the wit, style and imagination of the better artist he is pastiching. The usual preoccupations with the desert, sexism, racism, phallic & vulval objects and rapacious women are in evidence but never form a coherent whole that one can fully appreciate or relish.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Ghosts of the Abyss

(2003)

40%

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There are too many superlatives uttered by those appearing here to adequately compensate for the simple fact that a sea grave, in itself, is not that interesting a subject for documentary. That this is the Titanic makes little difference since the story is very well known and has been thoroughly trawled for angles before.

To completely save this film from being one about nothing more than a famous ship corroding three kilometers down at the bottom of the Atlantic, CGI superimposes actors as ghosts on the exterior and interior shots of this elegant vessel. This is fun but does not really make up for the fact that the well worn cliches about the titanic are still being replayed: Man's hubris, social snobbery, alleged Edwardian elegance.

(Image: http://imagesfrom.co.cc/)

If only the filmmakers had had – moreover - the courage to let the images speak for themselves without the relentless barrage of "oh, wows" and "my Gods" this would have actually been an informative piece. The scientists masquerade as big children with expensive scientific toys; conveying little useful factual data save their narcissistic desire for foregrounding their rather trite emotions. Yet the images of the Titanic's interior are spooky enough to convey a sense of a technological marvel laid waste and the sense that, at any moment, a rotted corpse is going to float past the camera. That this never (& could never) happen does not detract in the least from the suspense conjured up by the very thought that it might.

(Image: http://imagesfrom.co.cc/)

That a film director of James Cameron's stature should associate himself with this dreck is difficult to fathom since he knows pictures speak louder than words. Yet here the old truism is reversed; revealing what a pointless documentary this really is.

(Image: http://imagesfrom.co.cc/)

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Barefoot Gen (1973)

80%

Apart from the repetition, this is high quality stuff indeed.

The characters are amply formed and the politics fully explained – even for the non Japanese; making the social milieu convincing and believable.

The hardships of living in a rapidly declining totalitarian and conformist state are detailed to build up a solid picture of why Japan began the Pacific War and why it – and all militaristic empires – ultimately failed.

Being told through the eyes of a child brilliantly highlights the emotional affect of the story of the atom bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Eighteen (2005)

40%

An interesting and stylish calling card film that should get the director more work in Hollywood, but not a great movie in itself. The writer lacks insight into human nature leaving the audience with a string of arbitrary plot movements that do not illuminate character while simply presenting rather superficial and wishful thinking ideas about human communication. He is also unable to write idiomatic English such that English characters use Americanisms and swearing comes out of their mouths no matter what the characters' emotional states.

The acting here is variable with only Clarence SPONAGLE and Paul ANTHONY out against the general grayness and sheer naiveté of the plot, themes and basic premise. They are likely well known actor names of the future. The sleaziness is no more than a pose since we are offered no rationale for it; not to mention ideas and dialogue stolen from other, better movies. There is a strong sense that this is not a story that results from any lived truth: A rehearsal for a better drama.

Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.