And so we head happily into the corncupia of Autumnal plenty that is, well, the films that take this monster way beyond the original target, and into realms unknown.

This month:

Proper Films Seen: 28 (taking the year’s total to 185 – 200 looking very likely now) – I had a week off, which cranked the total up

Not Proper Films Seen: 2

Old Friends Revisited: 1 

In keeping with the laconic numbers update, I’ve tried to keep the reviews less rambling too. Excelsior!

 **STOP PRESS***WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR SO FAR SPOTTED***AND IT’S NOT “MEGASHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS”***

Ahem.  Onwards.  And although there are some gems, this has been a comparatively weak month, though British cinema has put in a surprisingly strong showing.  But we start with something that typifies the month’s mediocrity: 

Barefoot In The Park ***

Hmm.  Not sure that such middlebrow fluff – and you can end the review right there and you’d have it all, really – counts as a proper movie, but it has proper movie stars (Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Charles Boyer) and it’s old so I guess I’m allowing it.  I guess I’m the last person in the world to see it so you probably don’t need me to tell you it’s a comedy about newlyweds in mid-sixties New York: the social attitudes are prehistoric, but the screenplay, adapted from his own stage play by Neil Simon, has enough very funny lines to keep you watching.  Fonda achieves the rare honour of making Redford look like he has a sense of humour, and her character is a positive, up-for-anything, energetic yea-sayer who wants to grab the most from life – and, just like people like that in real life, is incredibly fucking annoying (though her thighs, which are on regular display, are spectacular).  Meanwhile, Boyer, the original for Pepe Le Pew, actually appears to be imitating said skunk.  Redford, who normally bores me to tears, is quite likeable here.  All told, approach with caution, but it’s a harmless enough waste of time. 

Cheyenne Autumn*** 

John Ford’s last Western, and his attempt to be Nice To The Indians after spending nearly 50 years in slaughtering them on-screen, is a tough call.  A lot of the typical problems in Ford movies are missing – the Victorian pictorialism is replaced by a much more modern visual style, and the script is tight, smart and largely devoid of the ghastly drunken humour and Oirish sentiment that Ford was so attached to – but it’s painfully slow, not something that Ford was usually guilty of.  Part of the problem may come from watching it on TV when it was clearly meant for the most enormous cinema screens: the sheer visual impact there would probably wipe out any concerns about pacing as you could bask in the spectacle and not notice how long each image was on screen.  There’s also a bizarre, rather painful would-be “comedic” interlude in the middle that lasts about twenty minutes and has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film in either plot or tone.  It comes across like the comedy bits you get with second-rate Western directors like Andrew McLaglen, let alone Ford, and leaves you in the unique position of thinking that the worst bit of the film is the bit with James Stewart in it.  Elsewhere, though, there’s good work from Richard Widmark, Karl Malden and Edward G. Robinson, to say nothing of Kahn from Star Trek II.  The optimistic ending is a cop-out, suggesting things were okay for Native Americans from the end of the 19^th century onwards, but the whole thing portrays the Cheyenne with dignity and feeling.  Overall, then, probably worth a look if you already like Ford or Westerns, but otherwise, there are better examples of the genre to investigate. 

City of God ***** 

The Brazilian Goodfellas turns out to be much better than Goodfellas by its steadfast refusal to set up gangsters as hero figures and is a very close second to The Pianist as Movie of the Month.  In case you’ve forgotten this is the one about kids with guns in the Rio slums and was quite controversial on release because it was predictably accused of glamourising crime.  It does anything but that: however, it does (in stark contrast to Hollywood and the contemptible outputs of Guy Ritchie and the British film industry) make it entirely clear why some people see crime as a way of getting out of dead-end poverty, and that the consequences of doing so are awful for everybody.  So you get a vibrant, hugely energetic and often frightening tale about the consequences of drug and gun crime over a period of about 15 years, a clear moral perspective that never moralises, and an insight into the visceral buzz that motivates young people to go down this route but which never sets them up as admirable or heroic.  In other words, it addresses a tricky subject area, where it would be so easy to stumble, and negotiates it with extraordinary skill and verve.  And hats off to the excellent soundtrack and uniformly superb non-professional cast.  A few critics, by the way, have said it falls down on characterisation, which is nonsense: it has exactly as much as it needs.  To ask for more would be like wanting light-sabre duels in Persona (though come to think of it...) 

Clash By Night * 

Well this promised a lot – Robert Ryan directed by Fritz Lang – but it’s absolute rubbish.  This is entirely due to the subject matter, an adaptation of a play by Clifford Odets which ran for a whole 42 performances on Broadway.  I knew nothing about Odets so did a bit of research and although he wrote the screenplay for The Sweet Smell Of Success, which is a fine piece of work, he mainly wrote terrible left-wing plays in which working class people speak “poetically” to remind us of their “dignity”, and, like his mate Elia Kazan, he squealed on his mates to HUAC during the nonsensical “Hollywood is over-run by Commies” panic in the early fifties.  So basically, it’s an adaptation of a play by a twat.  And it’s a dull play.  Woman comes back to her hometown.  Marries safe but dull chap.  Has affair with interesting but less safe man.  Is forgiven by husband, after a brief period of anger, as she leaves with her lover.  The end.  Quite how talent like Ryan and Lang got stuck making this bollocks is an utter mystery.   It’s quite staggeringly dull.  The only redeeming feature is a young Marilyn Monroe, acting.  You read that correctly.  Acting.  No cutesy-pie mannerisms, no little girl voice, no exaggeration.  Actually acting.  Behaving and talking like a real human being.  Extraordinary.  

Closely Observed Trains ***** 

This seems to have been largely forgotten in recent years though it won the 1967 Oscar for best foreign language film (not always a commendation, it must be said).  It’s a little gem from the Czech New Wave period, and concerns the attempts of a rather gormless young railwayman to lose his virginity during the Second World War, of which he seems largely oblivious.  A wry comedy with dark overtones and a surprising end, it has engaging performances, eccentric characters whose quirks never get out of hand, superb photography and the sexiest ever cinematic exegesis on the banality of totalitarianism (trust me on that).  A film which combines great charm with smart ideas, there’s much more to it than its apparently gentle, episodic surface initially suggests, and it’s very highly recommended.  If, of course, you can cope with difficult things like black and white, and subtitles. 

Distant Voices, Still Lives ***** 

In which we see some deeply miserable working class lives in Liverpool in the 1940s and 1950s, but with a visual style that owes more to Renaissance painting than any obvious filmic influences, and a use of pub singalongs as a Greek chorus.  Some people find the singing excessive but if you accept it as a structural device rather than an attempt at realism (and there’s no reason why you should see this as a realistic film, which thankfully sets it miles apart from so much British cinema), it works perfectly.  This is an extraordinary film – taking mundane subject matter and presenting it in such a unique style it becomes moving, and even uplifting, when all instinct and precedent says it should be filmed in a banal way and leave a depressing after-taste.  I didn’t expect to like this at all, but it’s easily one of the best films seen this month, and certainly the most pleasant surprise.  Mind you, director Terence Davies famously hates the Beatles, which always rubs me the wrong way.  What’s not to like?  You might as well say you don’t like chips, or breathing. 

Dreams aka Journey Into Autumn **** 

Another late-night Bergman from Film 4 (they also showed The Virgin Spring this month): they must have broadcast about eight or nine so far this year, the only art-house legend to get this treatment from them.  I still think it’s something to do with protecting their franchise (“Look how serious we are about cinema! All the Bergman you can eat!”).  This is an early and relatively obscure one about a model and her agent who spend a day in Gothenburg having problems with a potential and actual lover respectively.  Then they get on the train home to Stockholm and put the day behind them.  Described like that it sounds like absolute hell but everything actually works extremely well and I was engrossed from start to finish.  Who’d’a thunk it? 

The Exterminating Angel ** 

I likes me some Bunuel, but while this has its moments – check out the first sightings of the bear and the monkeys, and the woman with the dead bird in her handbag – I found it a very long, uneventful 90 minutes and was very glad when it was over.  I’m swimming against the tide here because most people In The Know think it’s a masterpiece, but it just didn’t click for me, mainly because, well, nothing much happens.  The theme – the awfulness of the upper-middle classes, as exposed by their rituals falling apart – is handled much better in The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie, and that’s recommended way in advance of this one. 

Fahrenheit 451 ** 

Not the worst Truffaut I’ve seen (that honour goes to A Gorgeous Girl Like Me) but pretty close to it.  Part of the problem is the source material, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian world where “firemen” are meant to burn books, not put fires out, so that people don’t get ideas that make them unhappy and cause unrest.  It’s quite a cute metaphor, but the minute you start to think about how this would work in practice, it makes no sense at all.  I read loads of SF in a relatively uncritical way when I was a dumbass teenager and even then I thought F451 was stupid: its flaws are even more evident when filmed.  There are other problems, too: specifically, the lead roles, played by Julie Christie and Oskar Werner. Christie, one of those charisma-free, talent-free actors who became inexplicably huge in the sixties (McQueen, Redford, Beatty), is wooden.  Werner, the annoying one (Jules) from Jules et Jim, just looks lost, and seems to have misjudged the character entirely, so that none of his actions make any sense at all.  And, as a number of people have pointed out, Truffaut, in his first and only English language film, has Van Gogh’s ear for our mother tongue. 

On the other hand: it looks great (clue: Nicholas Roeg, director of photography), the idea of filming the future by looking at the present day with a smart eye (also done, of course, in Alphaville, which I’m obliged to refer to every few blog posts) is very smart, Cyril Cusack is a great villain, and the last few scenes, once Werner leaves the town and heads off to join the “Book People”, are exquisite – pure visual poetry and some delightful eccentrics.  The fire engine is great, though it looks like such a kiddie toy you can’t tell if it’s meant to be funny or not, and there are some nice in-jokes, like copies of Cahiers du Cinema and Zazie Dans Le Metro being burnt in the fires and one of the Book People “being” The Martian Chronicles. 

My viewing experience wasn’t helped by the bald man in specs and a red cardy signing for the deaf in the lower right hand of the screen.  I used to know someone who worked in programming at ITV.  I’d love to ask her just how much demand they’d had from deaf viewers to broadcast a signed version of Fahrenheit 451 at quarter past midnight as Friday eases into Saturday. Man, that’s a precise demographic.

I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed *** 

Hmm.  Relatively recent French political thriller, based around true events in the sixties.  The final half-hour, which provides most of the context as well as most of the action, is gripping and exciting but the first hour proceeds at two speeds, Dead Slow and Stop.  Nice to see the now-ancient Jean-Pierre Leaud, though: collectors of pointless trivia are reminded that he was (way back in 1966) in another film inspired by the disappearance and presumed murder of Mehdi Ben Barka, Godard’s Made In USA, one of the great man’s more oblique and taxing efforts.  So if you must watch a Ben Barka themed movie featuring Leaud, this is probably a better place to start. 

In Bruges **** 

After much encouragement to see this, I was finally prompted to do so the DVD price in the HMV sale (three of our English pounds).  I’m very glad I did so – you could accurately call it a British gangster movie, but it’s so far from what that normally suggests as to be unrecognisable (it’s more like a “European” film than a “British” one), and well worth the approximate price of London pint.  All of which clearly makes this a good thing.  Apart from anything else, like The Thick Of It and Withnail And I, this is one of the truly great Swearing Comedies – something the Americans will never be able to do (I blame that on the USA being founded by the direct descendents of people who didn’t find 17^th century Europe religious enough, but I digress).  If you want a plot, it’s something to do with two hitmen in trouble after a job goes wrong, but it’s really about character, responsibility, the city of Bruges (which I’ve never visited, but now really want to), a racist midget or possibly dwarf, and the fucking swearing.  You will also find out that Colin Farrell can actually act (and I say this having seem both Daredevil and Alexander), even if his performance does draw a lot on the legendary Father Dougal Maguire.  And those of you who have toiled in the vineyards of pharmaceutical market research will enjoy the resemblance of Ralph Fiennes’ villainous Harry to a certain legendary foulmouthed Cockney marketing executive.  

The Innocents *** 

A curate’s egg, this.  An adaptation of the Henry James ghost story The Turn of the Screw (which James himself considered a bit of a potboiler), it’s about a Victorian governess whose two charges may or may not be possessed by the ghosts of her predecessor and her depraved lover.  There are certainly good things to say about it: the black and white photography, by Freddie Francis, is stunning, and the performances by the two kids are chilling, there are one or two genuinely scary moments (it certainly scared me more than The Blair Witch Project) and the first half hour or so is gripping.  But there are big flaws: Deborah Kerr, as the governess, is entirely too old for the part, and, as an actress, entirely too gifted with psychological health and robustness to be totally convincing as a neurotic.  After all, she’d already bullied the King of Siam and a drunken Robert Mitchum into submission by this point in her career.  More fundamentally, the direction doesn’t handle the ambiguity in the story particularly well, and it lacks any kind of perspective on the issue.  Just imagine what a rigorous director with a clear moral view could have done with this.  In the credit sequence, you see Kerr’s tortured face and hands in stark relief against a pure black background: it reminds you of Bergman, and at the end, you wonder what he could have done with it.  

NB features Peter Wyngarde as the ghost of an evil pervert. 

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye ** 

Crime thriller from 1950, featuring a 51-year-old James Cagney playing a “young man”.  Age-related anomaly apart, Cagney is great as the ex-con who rises to the top of a corrupt heap in a small town by virtue of being by far the smartest man around.  He knows it, though, and in his vanity lie the seeds of his downfall.  Cagney’s performance, as usual, has intensity, energy, intelligence and his weird dancer’s grace.  The trouble is the rest of the cast, with just one or two exceptions, are flaccid in comparison, the pace is leaden, and the plot is all a bit ho-hum.  Still, watch it for Cagney making a woman fall in love with him by slapping her around with a wet towel, and making another woman fall in love with him by discussing cosmic consciousness and his rejection of the concept of the fourth dimension.  I’m not making this up. 

Leave Her To Heaven **** 

Preposterous, lurid Technicolor melodrama from the mid-forties, starring the outrageously lovely Gene Tierney as the woman you really wouldn’t want to marry, especially not if you have a wheelchair-bound younger brother who likes to go swimming.  Other splendid moments from Tierney include her riding around a New Mexico mountainside on horseback, flamboyantly distributing her father’s ashes, and throwing herself down a flight of stairs to bring about a miscarriage, just to annoy everyone else.  Essentially, this is a daft story about a woman who’s completely nuts, and it makes no sense at all, but it’s great fun, the Technicolor verges on the psychotropic, and watch out for Vincent Price as the DA, getting a medal from the Danish government for services to ham export. 

A Letter To Three Wives **** 

No, I’d never heard of it either, but it won the Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscars (not necessarily a guarantee of quality, to be fair) in 1950 for Joseph Mankiewicz, whose next film was the much more famous All About Eve.  I prefer this one, partly because the overall picture of women is more positive (though, like AAE, some of the social attitudes are a bit Neanderthal).  Plotwise, not a lot happens (three women receive the same letter from the town slapper, informing them one of their husbands has run off with her: we then get a lot of backstory and a decent resolution), but the dialogue is smart and witty (too much so to be realistic), the acting is sharp as a tack and there are some astute comments on relationships that ring true even to a klutz like the present author.  I spent the first five minutes thinking “Oh God, it’s just another weepy” but it gets cleverer, more gripping and notably tougher as it proceeds.  Like a lot of the best of Old Hollywood, it assumes its audience to consist of grown-ups, so it probably wouldn’t get made at all these days.  Plus watch out for Kirk Douglas as J. R. “Bob” Dobbs.  

Lola *** 

In which Fassbinder tells us what he thinks of the 1950s German economic miracle (in essence he thinks everyone is a whore), with a wry, cynical remake of The Blue Angel where everyone is on the make and the only “honest” people are the titular hooker and the corrupt builder who are both so confident in their venality they don’t care either way.  It’s very stylishly done, with brilliant colours and quality acting, but the jaunty cynicism prevents too much real engagement with the story so a star gets docked because of that.  That Barbara Sukowa is one fine-looking woman, mind though but. 

Loulou *** 

Much rated but rather so-what French drama about a middle-class woman (Isabelle Huppert) who leaves her affluent husband for a feckless bit of rough (inevitably, Gerard Depardieu).  They drink a lot, shag a lot, the husband is a bit miffed, Gerard gets her up the duff, she has an abortion, and that’s about it.  It’s very well-acted and apparently terribly influential, but the devastating emotional oomph and biting social comment that a lot of reviewers mention missed me completely.  I found it all a bit so-what, though it’s always nice to see La Huppert, one of my leading “Eyes say no, nuts say go” actresses, as nature intended.  Loulou, confusingly, is the name of Depardieu’s character, and is nothing to do with the permanently irritating Scottish shriekstress. 

Meet Me In St Louis ***** 

Yet another “Not seen this either, how come?” revelation.  Not being a huge fan of musicals, Judy Garland or Old Hollywood’s often painful affection for the turn of the (last) century, expectations were low but it won me over, partly because it doesn’t overdo the period kitsch, and partly because I’ve started to see what people like about Garland.  She was a very modern, and thus very intimate, singer. Apart from Sinatra, any other mainstream singer from 1944 sounds pinched, artificial and unemotional by comparison: Garland is astonishingly direct (I still don’t like Over The Rainbow though).  What I liked best, though, was Margaret O’Brien as the weird younger sister obsessed with death and horror, both funny and sublime, especially in the Halloween sequence (which is the oddest thing you’ll see in a Hollywood musical this side of Jane Russell pretending to be Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and destroying the snowmen after Garland has destroyed the audience’s emotional stability with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.  You have to wonder how audiences coped with this, and its underlying theme of unwanted change to the family, when it came out during the Second World War. 

Natural Born Killers 

That’s right: no stars.  Certainly the worst film I’ve seen so far this year, and unlikely to be beaten in the remaining period.  I don’t quite know where to start in criticising it, because everything about it is terrible: it’s so bad, even Tarantino washed his hands of it.  The underlying problem seems to be the gulf between what it thinks it is (an unspeakably clever comment on media portrayals of violence) and what it actually is (an unspeakably stupid attempt to be hip made by people who are old enough to know much, much better).  The much-vaunted “moral” controversy is a red herring: what we actually get, as always with Oliver Stone (like his predecessors, John Ford and Cecil B. De Mille), is a man trying to have it both ways by absolutely wallowing in what he’s ostensibly criticising.  That said, it’s done in such a ridiculous manner it doesn’t matter either way.  The only thing you can say in its favour is that it’s never boring.  Just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, something even more jaw-droppingly idiotic comes along (though even that gets wearying after a while).  Hard to pick the stupidest thing in it, but Tommy Lee Jones’ performance as the prison governor is certainly in the running.  Incidentally, I watched this the same day as Distant Voices, Still Lives and Meet Me In St Louis – now there’s an odd triple-bill for you. 

The Notorious Bettie Page ***

Critical consensus says this (surprisingly but thoroughly unsexy) biopic of the legendary fifties bondage pin-up queen is well-made and highly enjoyable, with a luminously engaging lead performance from Gretchen Mol, but doesn’t have much depth.  I am entirely aligned with critical consensus here, though I don’t think there’s an awful lot to be deep about.  Belated kudos to director Mary Harron for her 1981 NME interview with the Velvet Underground’s Sterling Morrison, though, one of the best bits of rock journalism ever. 

Offside **** 

Without doubt, the best Iranian feminist football comedy I’ve ever seen.  I’m tempted to leave it at that, but let’s expand it just a bit and say that this highly entertaining tale of six women who get caught trying to illegally enter a football match, and the conscript soldiers who have to guard them, has a lot to say about relations between the sexes, and between the people and the authorities, everywhere, not just in Iran.  Highly entertaining, uplifting and full of food for thought. 

The Pianist ***** 

To my great surprise, my favourite film of the month.  Given that it’s the tale of a young Jewish piano player from Warsaw who somehow survives the Holocaust, and it’s nearly three hours long, my expectations were of the worthy but earnest, and an early sighting of Maureen Lipman as his mum didn’t help (visions of Beatty Goes To Buchenwald popped into my head), but it’s totally absorbing from the outset and manages to walk through difficult areas without succumbing to the usual Holocaust drama temptations of manipulative sentiment, gratuitous violence or self-conscious “art”.  Maybe that’s because it’s directed by Roman Polanski, who, whatever his faults (and wherever you stand on the recent hoo-hah, you have to admit he’s had a rum old life), certainly knows how to make a movie, and the fact he escaped the Holocaust himself, and had to somehow survive in and around Warsaw like the central character here, probably adds some veritas.  The classic Polanski theme of claustrophobia (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby) is certainly evident here.  The visual style is solid, classical and reserved, though there are some breathtaking moments, and the measured pace and tone convey the horrors of the events clearly and simply without any need to over-elaborate.  The last half-hour or so, from the point the German officer turns up, had me going through the emotional wringer.  This is a magnificent achievement.  The film, that is.  Not putting me through the wringer. 

What is going on at ITV though?  Time was the only films they would show were Bond movies, second-rate ‘60s comedy westerns and recent big-budget box-office flops.  But lately we’ve had Ford, Truffaut and Polanski – none of whom have shown up on any other channels in living memory.  Strange days, Archie.

 Radio On ***

 Like Distant Voices, Still Lives, a British film that’s long on mood and low on plot, visually distinctive, filled with music and, praise Crom, nothing at all like most British films.  This one, in fact, had a lot of German input (specifically, Wim Wenders is a co-producer) and the stunning black and white photography makes it look very European.  In terms of story, very little occurs – man drives from London to Bristol to investigate his brother’s mysterious death, and on arrival has a bit of an existential crisis – but it looks fantastic.  Best of all, it captures its era (1979) superbly, conjuring up the suppressed madness of Britain at the time as well as the now-ancient seeming look and feel of the place (slightly shabby, everything closing at ten-thirty, and a whole “pre-consumer” vibe that on the one hand gave us appalling customer service and a slightly Soviet feel but on the other allowed eccentricity, individuality and creativity to bloom).  For me, this is the cinematic equivalent of the best British music of 1979 (and 1979 was the best year ever for British music).  Its oblique, angsty, allusive style makes it the absolute visual counterpart to Unknown Pleasures, Entertainment, Metal Box, Mix-Up, Cut, Dragnet and such, and I absolutely loved it (it is full of music from the era, though it’s more Bowie, Kraftwerk and the better end of Stiff Records than bracing post-punk per se).  Only gets three stars, though, because the last half-hour gets a bit self-indulgent, and I’m not sure my unabashed love for the era would mean a lot to those who weren’t around at the time, or remember different things about it.

Raising Arizona ****

Yet another “How come I’d not seen this before?” classic.  The Coen Brothers in antic mode, as ex-con Nicolas Cage and his ex-cop wife Holly Hunter kidnap one of a rich man’s five quintuplet sons to complete their marriage with the child nature won’t give them.  Zips along frantically and funnily, but misses out on a five-star rating by being a bit too self-consciously wacky and having some very eighties moments that I’m not entirely convinced are deliberate parodies.  Let’s put it this way: probably more fun to watch than anything else on this month’s list, but I couldn’t remember I’d watched it at all the following morning.

The Straight Story ****

It’s not very often you get the opening credit “Walt Disney Pictures Presents A David Lynch Film”, but it does sum up what’s going on here, which is to say a tribute to small-town decency filtered through a skewed perspective.  Lynch fans apparently hate this because there’s no violence or perversity in it: to which one can only respond by remembering the NME Cure interview which started with Monty Smith asking a fully made-up Robert Smith “How old are you?”

In case you’re wondering, this is the one based on a true story about an old geezer who drives from Iowa to Minnesota on a lawn-mower to visit his dying brother.  Singing ladies behind the radiator and Dennis Hopper with a gas mask are indeed conspicuous by their absence.  Anyway, I liked it a lot.  It’s beautifully acted, handles eccentricity without getting too cute about it, the music’s totally appropriate for the film and, above all, the photography (by Freddie Francis, in his second top dollar performance this month) is absolutely stunning.  Unreservedly recommended and quietly moving. 

PS made in 1999, apparently, which freaked me out, because I seemed to be under the impression it came out the week before last.

Straight Time***

Odd, overlooked Dustin Hoffman film from 1978, based on a novel by Eddie Bunker (Mr Blue from Reservoir Dogs), who wrote the screenplay and has a cameo role.  Hoffman plays an ex-con trying to go straight, until the petty bureaucracy of probation gets too much for him and it’s recidivism ahoy.  And therein lies the problem – there are two good films in here, but they don’t fit together very well.  The first half-hour or so, the going straight bit, is fascinating, and like nothing else you’ve seen, but the tone changes completely for the rest, when Hoffman’s character goes back to robbing banks (this second half, though perfectly watchable, is much less interesting, because it’s much more conventional).  The whole thing is, however, refreshingly downbeat and unglamorous, and has a very good cast of sleazeballs (Harry Dean Stanton, Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, M. Emmett Walsh), and it’s efficiently if unspectacularly directed.  What’s particularly good is Hoffman’s far from likable character, as this comes from the tail end of that golden ‘70s era where leading men in Hollywood were anxious to play unsympathetic characters.  Star Wars fucked that up, of course, as it did so much else.

Taxidermia ***

Crikey.  Hungarian film involving bestiality, speed eating and, like the title suggests, taxidermy (first of a parent, and then of oneself), for which the phrase “extremely black comedy” doesn’t seem anywhere near enough.  It’s not actually any good, but it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.  Think of what League of Gentlemen would be like if it let itself go…

The Testament of Dr Mabuse **** 

The last bit of Sky Arts’ short Fritz Lang season (and much as I hate Rupert Murdoch, you have to love Sky Arts – their idea of a Halloween movie is The Draughtsman’s Contract).  Made in Germany in 1933, this suggests that a madman spreading fear and violence could take over the country. I wonder what the subtext there was?

Err, it’s a weird piece of work, this, part crime thriller, part social commentary, part action movie and part supernatural horror.  It’s been plausibly suggested as an ancestor to both Hitchcock and the Bond franchise and that does make a degree of sense.  Lang orchestrates his actually rather daft material with remarkable flair and it’s surprisingly modern throughout.  The use of sound is particularly deft, the pacing is superb, and there are, for 1933, some remarkably tense and exciting action sequences.  Sui generis, then, and odd, but very good.
 

Meanwhile, October’s tally for Not Proper Films is as follows:

Megashark Versus Giant Octopus */****** (depending on which end of the telescope you’re looking through)

This is what you get to see when you’re visiting friends who have a 14 year-old son with a reasonable sense of humour.  As a terrible B-movie monster pic, it’s pretty much definitive.  Watch out for a 747 passenger shouting “Holy shit!” as he looks from his window to see the shark leaping several thousand feet out of the ocean to eat the plane.  Later on, the shark (which in classic monster movie tradition keeps changing size) gets peckish again and eats the Golden Gate Bridge.  The octopus, by contrast, is a much less exuberant, rather more melancholy beast.  Also features a touching inter-racial romance between oceanographers, and a man with a ponytail. 

Telstar**** 

I thoroughly enjoyed the Joe Meek biopic – it’s well-paced, well-written, brilliantly performed, decently photographed and choreographs its mood change from broad comedy to horrific breakdown very well – but it’s Not a Proper Film because (a) it’s a biopic (b) it’s British in a way that the British films in the main section above aren’t and, above all, (c) I can’t see it really being of interest to anyone but Rock Nerds (mea culpa).  Biopic, British, maybe even British biopic we could get away with, but that rock nerd bit seals its fate.  Even though, and this is just bizarre, Kevin Spacey is in it.  Spacey’s fine, but Con O’Neill as Meek is absolutely magnificent – as good as any performance in any film, Proper or not, I’ve seen all year.
 

And finally, I went back to an old-ish favourite that I first saw as long ago as 2008…or maybe even 2007.

Buchanan Rides Alone **** 

Randolph Scott directed by Budd Boetticher is inevitably a fine combination if you’re heading out west, and this is no exception.  Scott is a bit more playful than usual, and the mostly-in-town setting is also atypical, but then again the story is as much a complicated crime drama as it is a Western, with corrupt officials (who all happen to be brothers) double- and triple-crossing each other as much as you’d see in any noir classic.  The story is completely gripping, the pace relentless (it’s all over in about 75 minutes) and there’s a smart undertone of fatalism that’s implicit throughout but which never gets in the way.  The supporting cast is a bit colourless, but as it’s essentially about Scott versus a mob, that makes a degree of sense.