The Illusion of Depth

 Last week we saw a film about the Cold War as seen by a director who experienced it as a young teenager. The International situation may have been apocalyptic and grim, but none of that mattered as much as the newest monster movie. This week is going to be another film about the Cold War, but viewed through the very different lens of a director in his mid-fifties who had lived through the eras of World War Two and The Holocaust. Billy Wilder may be (quite rightly) remembered for films like Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Some Like it Hot etc. but One, Two, Three is one of his most cynical, savage and unforgiving comedies. Berlin in 1961 was a divided city. The East and West were controlled by the Russians and Americans respectively, but travel between the two regions was still possible. It was in fact during the making of this film that the infamous wall went up, sealing East Berlin off from the West for almost thirty years. I'm not going to attempt to expl...

 When is a Scary Monster Movie not Scary? We have reached that time of year when tradition demands the scary and the spooky. While there is certainly no shortage of horror films to consider for a Halloween film evening, I have decided to go for a slightly different option this year. Matinee (1993) is director Joe Dante's love letter to his own childhood, and specifically the monster movies of the 1950s and 60s that made such an impression on him during his formative years. John Goodman plays (fictional) film-maker Laurence Woolsey, a director of extremely schlocky and gimmick-laden "scary" movies, who has arrived in Key West Florida to promote his latest opus; an exploitational B-picture about a half-man-half-ant (called-inevitably- Mant ). As fate would have it, the premiere of his new film coincides with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; a moment in 20th Century history when the world came as close as it ever came to actual, full-scale Nuclear War. Matinee cheerfully co...

  A little morsel for everyone who saw Rio Bravo last night. Who says John Wayne didn't have a sense of humour? And, for anyone who couldn't make it, here is the clip of Groucho Marx with Señor Gonzalez-Gonzalez. Enjoy!

  Howard Hawks and the Art of the Stress-Free Western In the mid 1950s the career of Howard Hawks hit a bit of a bump. After directing some of the defining films of the 30s and 40s ( The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Bringing Up Baby, Red River etc) Hawks found himself slightly out of place in a changing Hollywood landscape.  Films of the 50s tended to be bigger, noisier and more spectacular (in glorious Technicolor, breath-taking CinemaScope, and Stereophonic Sound, as Cole Porter put it) while Hawks was more comfortable directing character-based stories that placed emphasis on the screenplay and the actors.  After attempting his one and only "sword-and-sandal" epic (the disastrous Land of the Pharaohs in 1955) Hawks took a break from Hollywood and film-making. He spent some time travelling in Europe and it actually started to look as if his career as a film-maker might be over. That changed in 1958, when Hawks and John Wayne decided to team up to make another Weste...

 James Bond has been in the news quite a bit recently, following the much-delayed release of No Time to Die , the most recent offering in this (almost) 60-year-old film franchise. No time to die, indeed. Like all self-respecting zombies, the James Bond character is steadfastly refusing to lie down and stop breathing, despite (or perhaps because of) six decades of sexism, racism, casual violence, jingoism and sexism (sexism is a very big thing in the Bond franchise). It should really have been called  Enough Already. Still, the Bond Movie has become an important cultural icon, and each offering follows an instantly recognisable style and pattern: a suave hero in a tailored suit, a smooth-talking but quietly menacing villain with a dangerous and (devotedly) faithful henchman, a beautiful, sexually available girl, a wide variety of exotic and photogenic locations and an endless parade of increasingly complicated and implausible assassination attempts. What's not to love? With all...

 We are continuing with the "stage comedy" theme next Thursday, after last week's screening of The Importance of Being Earnest. Noises Off began life as a stage comedy which premiered in London's West End in 1982. It is a farce about a farce, which presumably makes it a meta-farce.  This meta-farcical comedy(!) centres around a company of actors rehearsing (and then performing) a play (entitled Nothing On ) which becomes increasingly incoherent as the story progresses.  The original stage version is a merciless (and painfully funny) analysis of just how a farce works - or doesn't work, as the case may be. The film adaptation cranks things up a notch by attempting to film the staging of... the staging of a farce (a meta-meta-farce?) and in the process shows just how difficult it can be to translate a stage play to the screen.  While the film may not be 100% successful, it does manage to be one of the funniest things you will ever see (the first time I saw it, I la...