Lassie
Ok, I may be old but I am not old enough to remember the original
‘Lassie’. Though I do seem to recall childhood
memories of a dewy-eyed Elizabeth Taylor and a teary Roddy
McDowall spooning over a gorgeous border-collie in the 1942
‘Lassie Come Home’. Writer and director Charles
Sturridge sticks pretty close to Eric Knight’s classic
novel in his faithful re-make of the story, but, as the long-running
TV serial (1954-1971) shows, ‘Lassie’ is a timeless
tale that can be at home in any era. All-the-same, I do wonder
at the relevance of placing this re-make in the late 1930’s.
General strikes, closure of the coal-mines, and an approaching
World War seems like so much extra baggage to explain to a
young child of this day and age. Let’s face it, the
1930’s were not a particularly attractive period in
British modern history, but, the locale does allow Sturridge
plenty of scope to investigate the differences between the
noble working-class and the snotty upper-crust in the society
of the time. When the precocious grand-daughter of the local
aristocrat demands Lassie as a present, the dog is shipped-off
to the wilds of Northern Scotland where she consequently escapes,
and begins her arduous journey of some 1,000 miles back to
her home, and young former master, in Yorkshire. The film
is a ‘road-movie’ for dogs. It is all about Lassie’s
adventures along the way, and the interesting people, played
by familiar and much-loved English character-actors, who she
encounters in her journey. The movie is also about some vastly
spectacular scenery. The movie is extremely well-photographed,
well-directed and well-acted, by a cast that includes Peter
O’Toole, Samantha Morton and John Lynch. Plus, the very
talented collies who play ‘Lassie’. To his credit,
director Sturridge never stoops to cheap sentimentality and
the movie is quite a pleasant experience. Children of all
ages, and dog-lovers (I have three crazy Kintamanis of my
own), will go totally bonkers and they will bark and howl
all over the movie.
Happily Ever After
French writer, actor and director Yvan Attal, and his actress-wife
Charlotte Gainsbourg, seem determined to document their marriage
for our cinematic enjoyment. After the success of their 2001
‘My Wife is an Actress’, now comes a ‘sequel’
of sorts entitled ‘Happily Ever After’. This time
around Yvan and Charlotte are firmly entrenched in the bourgeoisie.
Yvan is a luxury-car salesman and Charlotte is a real-estate
agent. Some half-a-dozen years have passed. There is a child.
The marriage is happy, but awfully dull. They try to enliven
it with some sex-games and role-playing but their marriage
is becoming predictable. While Charlotte ponders on acting
on her sexual fantasies involving total strangers in shopping-malls,
Yvan indulges in that most French bourgeoisie institution
of ‘The Affair’. But, as their ‘secret’
lives come close to colliding something has to give. Yvan’s
script has an improvised air, and he and Charlotte’s
acting is very spontaneous. The movie conveys a voyeuristic
sensation that gives the impression that we are watching ‘reality’.
That this is what their marriage has become. It is hard to
decide what is ‘fact’ and what is ‘fiction’
in this presentation of their lives together. Yvan shoots
the film in a glossy and ‘commercial’ way, but,
there is no glamour to be found in their bourgeoisie existence.
The apartment, shopping-malls, and bistros they inhabit maybe
middle-class Parisian, but they are bland and featureless
and they could be trapped in a suburban hell, anywhere. Alright,
it is not the greatest movie ever made, but, as a comedy-of-manners,
it has its moments. It is an adult movie, dealing with adult
themes, for adults, and it comes as a refreshing change to
the sadistic bank-robbers, crazy psycho-killers and comic-strip
heroes currently on offer.
Last Holiday
After a string of really disastrous movies that followed Queen
Latifah’s Academy Award nominated performance in ‘Chicago’,
I vowed never to speak of her again. But, surprisingly, I
have to go back on my word as she ‘aint too bad in her
latest movie ‘Last Holiday’. Queen Latifah plays
a cookware salesclerk who discovers she has less than a month
to live, and decides to ‘go-out-in-style’ at a
wildly luxurious European resort, where she is mistaken by
the rest of the guests to be something she is not. Director
Wayne Wang’s script is based on an original screenplay
by J.B. Priestley, and though it has an antiquated fairytale
quality, Wayne is an old hand at turning this sort of sentimental
stuff into glossy and highly successful fluff. Wang also treats
his leading-lady rather well. He gives Queen Latifah an up
tempo gospel number, lots of fabulous haute-couture costumes
to parade around in, and plenty of opportunities to deliver
her homespun, world-weary wisecracks that we have come to
know so well. Queen Latifah doesn’t disappoint her director
either. She performs these simple tasks with much competence,
turning what could have been a rather dull movie into something
that has a certain amount of appealing charm. This is a movie
that has been devised to showcase the talents of Queen Latifah,
and though it is not the outrageous success everyone was obviously
hoping for, it does demonstrate that the elusive super-mega-hit
Queen Latifah so desperately needs at this stage of her career,
might just possibly be around the corner.
Firewall
Harrison Ford is a computer security-expert roped into helping
a gang of thieves rob a bank, when they kidnap his wife and
children. It is hard to say what is the worst aspect of Richard
Loncraine’s movie ‘Firewall’. The script
is abysmal, the direction woeful, and Harrison Ford’s
acting is nothing more than a cardboard cut-out of similar
characters we have seen him do so many times in the past.
Harrison Ford Incorporation must be losing the plot if they
think his dwindling legion of fans are going to be interested
in this drivel.
V for Vendetta
I must admit that I never understood Andy and Larry Wachowski’s
‘Matrix Trilogy’. It is a style of cinema that
owes much to MTV and music-videos, and it leaves me cold.
It is just cut-cut-cut at 100 edits per-second, and I found
the films hard to follow. I guess you have to be young and
‘hip’ to get them. I am not and I didn’t.
I have the same problem with their latest effort ‘V
for Vendetta’. I couldn’t follow it, and after
45 minutes I gave up trying.
