Jackie.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Lorrain has made some very good movies including Tony Manero in 2008, Post Mortem in 2010 and No in 2012 but his latest movie, his first in the English language, is certainly not up to the standard of these three and to my mind nowhere near as good as the hype would have you believe. Jackie (2016) has been nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Costume Design, Best Original Score and a Best Actress Nomination for Natalie Portman, if this years BAFTA's is anything to go by, will probably manage to win Best Costume Design and certainly not Best Actress for Portman who mumbled her way through the talky role making it very difficult to understand what she was saying.

This biographical drama, originally conceived as a HBO miniseries, basically deals with the week between John F Kennedy assassination on the 22^nd November 1963, his burial and when his wife and two children Caroline and John Jnr, who died in a plane crash in 1999 at the age of 38, leave the White House for the last time. Noah Oppenheim's lack lustre screenplay is partly based on Theodore H White's Life magazine interview with Jackie Kennedy a week after her husband’s death. It was during this interview that inappropriately the delusional ex First Lady compared the Kennedy years with King Arthur's mythical Camelot - the first American president to encompass the celebrity culture and to spend $2 million on the restoration of the White House, not quite the Knights of the Round Table.

 

The fatal last journey.

Larrain's movie is a rather hollow look at the period and at times minds numbingly boring not helped by the Journalist (Billy Crudup) interview that adds nothing to the film and would have been better without it. The drama is non-existent only the scene in Dallas when JFK gets shot during the motorcade shows any pretence of the story coming to life.

 

The infamous blood stained pink suit.

The film also stars Peter Sarsgaard as Robert F Kennedy with whom Jackie seems to have a rather intimate relationship, although who can blame her when her husband spent a minimal amount of time sharing her marital bed and John Hurt as Jackie's father confessor, this was his final film release before his death in January 2017and shows why he will be missed and to be quite honest the only actor in this charade to earn his salary.

Rob Roy.

By all accounts Robert Roy MacGregor was quite a character, born in 1671 and dying in 1734 at the grand old age of 63. During his lifetime he was seen as an outlaw, a folk hero and a Jacobite.  At the age of eighteen Rob Roy joined with his father in support of the Stuart King, James the Second of England and fifth of Scotland. But as history has taught us the Stuart Kings and their supporters were not successful loosing out to the German House of Hanover. This led to Rob Roy’s father serving two years for treason and his mother who was in bad health not surviving to see her husband released. 

 

Portrait of Rob Roy MacGregor.

Even before his death Rob Roy became a legend in his own lifetime due to the publication in 1723 of a fictionalised account of his life called The Highland Rogue. In 1817 the great Scottish author Sir Walter Scott published his novel Rob Roy, although the ‘outlaw’ was not the main subject of Scoots historical novel the book formed the loose adaptation for the 1995 movie of the same title. The film stars Liam Neeson as Robert Roy MacGregor, Jessica Lange as his wife Mary, Tim Roth as the evil Englishman Archibald Cunningham and John Hurt as Montrose. Helming the movie was the Scottish born director of Scandal (1989), Michael Caton-Jones.

Our story starts in 1713 and we are in the Highlands of Scotland. When we first meet Rob Roy he is a well-known and respected cattleman and works for the Duke of Montrose chasing down rustlers of his lordship cattle.  With ambitions to be an entrepreneur and to this end he arranges a loan of £1000 to buy cattle and hopefully selling them at a good profit in the market at Carlisle. Sending a trusted friend Alan MacDonald (Eric Stoltz) to collect the coinage but unbeknown to both Roy and MacDonald, Montrose’s houseguest Archibald Cunningham and his Lordships Factor Killearn (Brian Cox) have hatched a plot to steel the money on route to Roy and make all and sundry believe that MacDonald has absconded to America with his newfound wealth. As a result of all this and because Rob Roy has no chance in paying back his loan he is branded an outlaw with burnings, violent death and rape the order of the day.   

 

John Hurt and Tim Roth.

Liam Neeson as the man himself. 

Once you get the lovey dovey nonsense out of the way the movie settles down into a great swashbuckling tale of violence and intrigue, the climactic sword scene is well worth waiting for and certainly stirs the blood.  Tim Roth stands head and shoulders above all the other fine acting won a BAFTA for his role as Archibald Cunningham.  One of the main supporting stars is the Highland landscape that includes Glen Coe, Glen Nevis and the Loch’s Morar and Leven and not forgetting the rain and the midges.  The main music was composed by Carter Burwell best known for his work with the Coen Brothers. We also not only get the hear her singing but we also have the pleasure of seeing Karen Matheson whose group Capercaille I have enjoyed in concert.

They even named a cocktail after him!

 

The Wild and the Willing.

At the end of the period which became known as the British New Wave 1959 – 1963 the Rank Organisation attempted to enter the genre with its own brand of realism with a movie produced by Betty E Box and directed by Ralph Thomas called The Wild and the Willing (1962), which on viewing turns out to be a very misleading title. It’s neither wild nor willing! The only hint of ‘wild’ is the character of Harry Brown who is from a poor working class background and has won a scholarship to the Kilminster University and thinks of himself as a bit of a rebel. The posh students Harry mixes with, including the desperate self conscious black student Reggie, are ‘willing’ to make complete arses of themselves getting drunk, upsetting the local residents and singing stupid songs. One gets the impression that it’s these types of people that are now helping to run the country, punishing ordinary folk and supporting the rich – you know very well whom I am referring too!

 

Harry Brown and friends.

The story involves the shenanigans of this bunch of obnoxious young academics male and female and their relationships, particularly concentrating on how Brown fits in with both his fellow students and the lecturers. There are two people he seems close too, one being his rather sensitive roommate Phil Corbett, and the other a young female student called Josie Stevens (Samantha Eggar) who thinks Harry is in love with her, that is until she discovers he has entered into a sexual relationship with a women (Virginia Maskell) from a higher social class, the rather sophisticated but promiscuous wife of one of his Professors (Paul Rogers). Obviously the whole thing ends in tears, as you would expect?

 

Harry and the promiscuous upper classes.

The screenplay, by Nicholas Philips and Morecai Richler adapted from The Tinker an unsuccessful West End play by Laurence Dobie and Robert Sloman, attempts, not too successfully in my opinion, to deal with class structure with ridiculous dialogue like “to step over others not as far up the social ladder”, racial prejudice, a one way gay relationship and the treatment of women. The best thing about this film is the stand out performances from two well-known actors who both made their debuts in this movie. The first is Ian McShane complete with a broad Manchester accent and straight from drama school who has the leading role of Harry Brown and the second is John Hurt who plays Phil Corbett. I’m afraid that Thomas’s direction does nothing to further the cause of realism within the British cinema. Made at Pinewood and on location in the City of Lincoln. 

   

10 Rillington Place. A tribute to Richard Attenborough.

Director:	Richard Fleischer
Country:	UK
Year:	1971
Running Time:	111 mins
Principle Cast:	Richard Attenborough	John Reginald Christie
	Judy Geeson	Beryl Evens
	John Hurt	Timothy John Evens
	Pat Heywood	Mrs Ethel Christie
	Andre Morell	Judge Lewis

I reproduce this ramble as a tribute to to a great British actor and director who passed away on Sunday (24th August 2014) aged 90,  Richard Attenborough.

Richard Fleischer made only a handful of British films, by far the best was 10 Rillington Place shown at 2013's EIFF as part of the retrospective, Fantastic Voyages: The Films of Richard Fleischer.  The story begins in 1947. We witness ‘Reg’ Christie murder a women in a drab ground floor kitchen in a run down 3-story house in Rillington Place Ladbroke Grove West London. He renders her unconscious with a homemade gassing device, struggles her and buries her in the garden of the house where we can’t help but notice the remains of a previous murder. We move on 5 years to 1949 and a family has moved into the top floor of the house, the illiterate lorry driver Timothy Evans, and his wife Beryl and their infant daughter Geraldine. When Beryl discovers she is pregnant again she asked Christie, who tells her he assisted a Doctor and knows how to perform abortions, for help with a termination. Based on the book, Ten Rillington Place by Ludovic Kennedy and adapted for the screen by Clive Exton it tells the true story of a grave miscarriage of justice involving Timothy Evans.

John Reginald Christie.

During the introduction to the film we were informed that the print we were about to watch was direct from the Sony vaults in California in the USA and had not been seen for many years. We were also told that in 1954 Rillington Place was renamed Ruston Place because of the notoriety that the court case had brought to the street. The house was still occupied in 1970 and the three families that were living there at this time refused to allow the filming to take place, so an empty property, number 7, was used instead. The houses and the street were eventually demolished and the area has changed completely.

Timothy Evans.

In an interview with the Times newspaper in 1970 Richard Attenborough spoke about the role of Christie and was quoted as saying ‘I do not like playing the part, but I accepted it at once without seeing the script. I have never felt so totally involved in any part as this. It is a most devastating statement on capital punishment’ His role in this film is probably one of the best in a long and distinguished career. The fresh-faced John Hurt, who plays Evans, was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The movie has lost none of its creepy atmospherics and 1940 period detail is spot on, you can almost smell the pealing wallpaper and the rotten plasterwork. This is, I must admit, the first time I had seen the film and most confess it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Only Lovers Left Alive.

I sit here in my darkened room listening to the soundtrack recording of the film that I’m just about to write about. I not sure whether it’s the hypnotic vibes from this collaboration by SQURL and the Dutch lute player Jozef van Wissem or perhaps it was the fact that ‘breakfast’ was not delivered today but I can’t get Jim Jarmusch latest movie out of my head?

 

Adam and Eve....

A darkly comic tale of a long-term relationship between husband and wife is the main theme of Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)[1]. The average marriage today is said to be only 7 years (barely worth the expense!) so very few marriages last for hundreds of years, with the exception of the aptly named Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) a vampire couple whose relationship could conceivably last for ever if they can continue to obtain a supply of good quality blood. Adam lives in the run down backwaters of Detroit while Eve lives in the romantic confines of Tangiers.

 

Christopher Marlowe.

Similar to Thomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2008) this is not a tale about vampires but a love story between two people who happen to be vampires albeit with heightened perceptions from having lived for such a long period of time. A character study that Jarmusch claimed is a metaphor for the decline of 21^st century America. Note the bankrupt and run down city of Detroit and compare it to the vibrant and mystical Moroccan city of Tangiers.  

 

Sister Ava and Ian.

The biosphere of our two lovers varies. Whereas Eve accepts the present with her mobile phone and modern cultural attitude, Adam seems to be stuck in the culture of the 1960’s and 70’s producing his music on vintage equipment, collecting guitars from that period and driving a vintage Jaguar. He dislikes what he calls ‘zombies’; his only human friend is Ian (Anton Yelchin) who, along with the musical instruments and recording equipment, provides him with a wooden bullet! His only other contact with the zombie world is Doctor Watson who works in a hospital and who provides the clean blood that guarantees Adams survival. Eve, who has come back to join her lover in America, has previously got her ‘supply’ from the English Elizabethan dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), the man who allegedly influenced William Shakespeare and died at the age of 29 in 1593, little do the historians know? She also has a younger sister Ava (Mia Waslkowska) whose actions are not appreciated by Adam.

The Taste of Blood is playing again and I’m feeling a little faint……….

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[1] Shown as part of the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club and hosted by Julie and Connor McMorran.