Possibly the sweetest and lightest gay BDSM biker film ever made, Pillion opens up conversations on power dynamics, consent and boundaries, and made Mike cry. Everything about it is so assured, particularly Harry Melling’s understated protagonist, meek and new to BDSM; Alexander Skarsgård’s commanding, mysterious lover; and Harry Lighton’s direction, the control of tone he exhibits a remarkable achievement for a first feature. We explore the film’s themes, offer different interpretations of events, and ask what’s good and bad about the relationship depicted.
Pillion is a wonderful film, with, given the subject matter, a surprisingly funny and wholesome spirit. An extraordinary achievement of tone. Highly recommended.
One of Iran’s most celebrated filmmakers, Jafar Panahi, has spent the last quarter of a century in conflict with the Iranian government, which objects to his films’ criticisms of their actions and the wider social conditions in the country, and has both arrested him several times and banned him from making films for twenty years – which hasn’t stopped him. His latest, It Was Just an Accident, won the 2025 Palme d’Or, and tells the story of former political prisoners who capture a man they suspect was their torturer.
It’s a brilliant thriller which, despite the gravity and darkness of its subject matter, is energetic and entertaining. It effortlessly raises both moral and practical questions – What’s the right thing to do with their captive? Have they become the torturers? If they let him live, won’t he just come after them again? – without entering morality play territory, neither pretending to have the answers nor admonishing its characters for their choices and emotional responses. It’s a vivid expression of the lasting effect the actions of the Iranian regime have had on its people, for whom merely the suggestion that they might be able to exact revenge on their torturer causes instant emotional outbursts.
We discuss all this and more, including the depiction of a lawless culture in which you’re constantly expected to give bribes to get by; the filmmaking, in which no filming permits were provided and Panahi had to once again violate his filmmaking ban; the question of how ambiguous the end might be and what that means; and a comparison with American cinema in Trump’s America and the question of what might be happening under ICE, the immigration enforcement agency that’s expanded into a neo-paramilitary force over the last year.
It Was Just an Accident is a magnificent film. See it.
A treat to talk to the marvellous Glyn Davis on his handsome new book, the ‘BFI Classic’ on Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). In the podcast we discuss how we were both surprised that the film hadn’t yet been covered in the series and why the book is the fulfilment of a long-standing wish of his. We discuss how the film established an iconic template for adolescent dissent and how James Dean became the embodiment of youthful American dissatisfaction and rebellion; Glyn compares Rebel to other films of the period such as The Wild One (Lázló Benedek, 1953) and Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955). We discuss the pros and cons of auteurist approaches; Glyn’s findings in the LA Archives, Ray’s concerns of filling the CinemaScope frame; his uses of colour (the film was originally designed for black and white); the film’s unusual structure, how the film became a template for the teen film that extends to television (Dawson’s Creek was named after the High School in Rebel); how Dean’s extraordinary performance helped popularise and disseminate ‘The Method’, how the figure of Plato has become central to subsequent queer cultures; and how Natalie Wood is often marginalised in discussions of the film…and much more. Glyn generously praises previous work on Ray and the film, particularly Bernard Eisenschitz’ monumental Nicholas Ray: An American Journey and the extraordinarily detailed Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without A Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel. A generous and articulate conversation on a book worth reading and discussing.
I wanted to talk to James Cullen on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues because of his untrammelled love for the film, his enthusiasm, and the wide array of references he brings to this very intelligent appreciation of the film: Tim Burton, Bergman, Araki, Godard, Tarantino, Erika Tremblay, New Queer Cinema, A24 films, Brokeback Mountain (2005), Indigenous Cinema, New French Extremity, and more, .
In the podcast below we discuss why James sees the film as part of an unofficial trilogy alongside Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991); how the film may be seen as a thesis on the queer American road movie; What does it mean to do a queer female-focused road movie? A queer Western? What are the problems of finding a visual grammar for beat novels, acknowledging that ‘beat’ itself is a very masculinist concept? James sees the film as laudably unserious, a story about finding freedom that destroys all sense of coherence; comedic, silly, with a touch of magical realism; a film that destroys all sense of heteronormative experience, throws it in Hollywood’s face, and might give you tonal whiplash in the process; a film in which Van Sant tries to reinvent himself and fails, yet in the process creates his new style.
Amongst many other reasons, James loves the film because it is ‘Against all the heteronormative expectations we have from cinema as a medium. None of these A24 Neon filmmakers could make anything like this. There’s an audience for this film, it’s going to come from somewhere, sometime; and I want to be part of that audience’
And I want to be in the audience listening to James speak about it.
Russell Crowe shines in Nuremberg as Hermann Göring, who became the face of the Nazi Party following Hitler’s suicide and the end of the war, as he’s held in custody and probed by a psychiatrist as the titular trials approach. Indeed, while a mediocre film, its actors performances are a pleasure – with the exception of Rami Malek, whose psychiatrist is twitchy, busy, and a failure. A shame that he’s the protagonist, then.
We discuss the film’s structure and intentions: José contends that Malek’s character is not just badly played but an irrelevance, and the drama would be much better served by focusing on Michael Shannon’s prosecutor; Mike criticises what he claims is a stupid person’s idea of clever writing.
And there’s more to think about: how Nuremberg compares to Bridge of Spies, which similarly depicted a novel trial that had obvious implications beyond the courtroom, and Judgment at Nuremberg, the other major dramatisation of the trials; the film’s tone, which is able to handle moments of humour but sometimes veers into the overly glib and kitsch; the present-day rise of fascism and the genocide in Gaza to which it speaks; the use of real footage of Holocaust victims and the purpose to which it’s put; and whether we think that its critique of the Catholic Church for its support of the Nazis, and suggestion that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was an unjustifiable atrocity, are surprising and bold things for a mainstream American film to do… or not particularly impressive, and shouldn’t people just know this stuff anyway?
Jennifer Lawrence gives a career-best performance as a new mother struggling with depression and a rocky relationship in Die My Love, directed by Lynne Ramsay, whose remarkable instinct for tone and atmosphere shouldn’t be taken for granted. It’s a character study whose artistry is all in the filmmaking and performances, which bring out great richness of feeling in material that, on the page, might seem to lack complexity. One could suggest that those who’ve experienced similar struggles to the film’s characters hold the key to unlocking its depths, but that’s a temptation to avoid – one of the film’s achievements is the ease with which it gets you to feel what its characters are feeling. See it at the cinema, where you’ll be able to properly submit yourself to it.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ fourth collaboration with Emma Stone yields a darkly comedic thriller about two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a CEO, determined to reveal the truth that she’s an alien from Andromeda. We’ve all at least considered it.
While funny and absurd, Bugonia is also tragic and misanthropic, and we’re unconvinced that its ending is either earned or fitting, despite Mike’s insistence that he’s seen it coming for weeks. We consider the film’s messaging, aesthetics, and tone; what its stars bring to it and how they differ; what the title might mean; and how a comparison with Alex Garland’s Ex Machina reveals the lacks in the storytelling here. We pick at Bugonia left, right and centre, but despite our complaints, it showed us a very entertaining time, and there’s a lot about it to recommend.
Another classic Gothic horror is remade for the modern age: first we saw Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, and now Guillermo del Toro brings us his adaptation of Frankenstein. Like Nosferatu, Frankenstein is astonishing to look at, and, like Nosferatu, also written by its director, it probably would have benefitted from the attention of a professional screenwriter. Still, it’s a pleasure to spend time in the word del Toro envisions, and we talk wide angle lenses, the range of performances – Oscar Isaac’s busy, Jacob Elordi’s brooding, Mia Goth’s underwhelming – the difficulty of understanding dialogue in screen two at the Mockingbird, and what this Frankenstein thematically shares with One Battle After Another.
Weston-Super-Mare is the perfect setting for a film festival on noir; gorgeous views of the sea, a seedy centre full of nail bars and affordable pubs; a fantastic cinema – the Merlin Plaza, with two screens devoted to the festival and a staff that welcomes you right onto the on-screen low-lifes, skewed desires and dead ends that brought a weekend of viewing bliss. Film Noir Fest began last year, is already developing an increasing, and increasingly loyal audience, and it’s already guaranteed to return for at least two more years. A success. James Harrison and his team deserved all the applause they got. What follows is some notes and observations on a wonderful weekend in the dark.
Stanley Kubrick Double Bill:
Killer’s Kiss, 1955. I’d never seen it; and what a surprise! It’s made on minimal means. The sound is overdubbed and sometimes not quite in sync But an explosion of extraordinary images; Vinnie looking through the fishbowl, the fight in the factory surrounded by mannequins, the first shot of the ballerina, ballet drenched in noir. The story is the height of pulp noir wit. A defeated deflated boxer with a bit of a crush on his neighbour in the tenement next door, watches her being strangled. He rushes over to her, nurses her, and they fall in love. They plan to runaway to Seattle but the underworld won’t let them go. The Times Square scenes seem vibrantly shot on the fly, the energy and alienation one is so often told is the essence of mid-century New York but so rarely visualised as vividly or expressed as beautifully as here. The neon, the bustle, the people, the seamyness and glitz. These scenes are beautifully inversely rhymed with the hero on the run through the rooftops of New York, betrayed, fighting for his life, a lone figure across a vast expanse of tenements with hidden doors, iron fire-escapes. Superb.
This was on a double-bill with The Killing (1956), which is as great as I remembered.
Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. It remains energetic and funny thirty-odd years later. And a reminder of how cinema and time play tricks on your mind. One is now so used to seeing them aged, that It’s a surprise to see the actors so young: Steve Buscemi looking so pretty with his light eyes and smooth face, Tarantino himself almost handsome, Masden with the cat eyes and the low voice, so deadly and appealing; it’s also surprising to see Lawrence Tierney, fixed in my mind from his 40s work, looking so much older, white eyebrows wild, probably with rage at having aged so. The use of the n word, the racism, misogyny and homophobia upset me more now than it did then, when I barely noticed it; the excuse that it’s what these characters might voice ‘in real life’ less convincing. If verisimilitude is the excuse, then what’s with these white bros walking around LA in skinny ties and black suits? It’s a world empty of women except as verbalised by men whose views seem skewed by recurrent rejection. The soundtrack is as energising as ever; and is to me now the best part of the film. It still works, but now as a more muddied pleasure.
Du Rififi chez les hommes (Jules Dassin, 1955)
Interesting to revisit films after several years, now accompanied by greater knowledge, perhaps also hampered by it. In this viewing, the heist remains extraordinary, but what I’d forgotten was the nightclub number with Magali Noël, immortal for her ‘fais moi mal Johnny’ duet with Boris Vian, a compendium of noir images and feeling, visually extraordinary; as is the killing of the Italian, and the exciting end, end with Jean Servais driving the boy, who’s playing with guns, gleeful at the ride and totally oblivious that Tony le Stèphanois is dying, racing against time to get him home, a travelogue of Paris a backdrop to the death and rescue. A pleasure also to see Robert Hossein, young and broody, as the junky killer. One of the greatest of heist films. Director Jules Dassin, exiled by McArthyism and transferring all his artfulness here to Paris. Melina Mercouri and an international career would follow.
El expreso de Andalucía (Francisco Rovira Beleta, 1956)
Spanish films of the 1950’s illustrate the opposite of what Thomas Schatz described as the ‘Genius of the System’, where the set-up of the studios ensure that even b films looked great. In Spain, even expensive co-productions (Italy on this one) with a big star (Jorge Mistral), always have something off – the costumes, the hair, bit players that are not quite right….This film has all of those faults; and it doesn’t matter. It’s an absorbing noir about a former sportsman who’s injured, loses his income and his status, and is so bent on restoring it he’s willing to pull a jewel heist and kill whoever stands in his way. There are exciting train sequences, a great noir finale, backstage plottings, a thrilling murder set on the same viaduct Almodóvar used in Matador’. It also has Vicente Parra, young, charismatic and on the verge of stardom, as the young bourgeois torn with guilt about having facilitated the heist. Much of it is shot on location, and one sees Correos when it was still a postal service, the calle Alcala at the height of Francoism, the Rastro when people were still buying porcelain chamber pots, the old Corralas, tenements built around a courtyard where working people lived. It’ a document of a Madrid full of repression and murder.
IDA LUPINO:
In the Forties, Ida Lupino was a star at Warners but ranked pretty low in the totem pole. Bette Davis got all the top parts, Olivia de Havilland was there, Barbara Stanwyck had a non-exclusive; and I’m sure Lupino even competed with Anne Sheridan (though it’s hard to imagine them being up for the same roles). Lupino described herself as a ‘poor man’s Bette Davis’. She’s certainly a quintessential noir figure, a combination of intelligence, pragmatism, a cool acceptance of the cards life deals, with extraordinarily beautiful eyes in a face that, in the movies at least, could pass for merely pretty, which together evoked a touching vulnerability. At the festival I met a fan who told me Lupino was his favourite star of all time.
Film Noir Fest provided a great opportunity to revisit some Ida Lupino films in the wonderful strand programmed by Sergio Angelini for the festival. I was not able to see HIGH SIERRA (Raoul Walsh, 1941) or ROAD HOUSE (Jean Negulesco, 1948) this time around. My favourite of those I did see was Nicholas Ray’s ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951), about a lonely, alienated cop, constantly on the verge of violence, who ends up coming into contact with a lonely and brave Ida Lupino, residing in a remote snowy area, living to protect a brother constantly pushing the boundaries of the socially acceptable. Robert Ryan is tremendous here, small shifts in eyes or posture communicating ….sadness? A life made meaningful only by violence? Lupino as a blind woman is every bit Ryan’s match. Sad, alienated, complex, internal lives expressively exteriorised. Beautiful work.
WOMAN IN HIDING (1949) is a so-so melodrama about a woman faking her own death to escape the husband who want to murder her in order to inherit her factory. It’s gorgeously lit by the great William Daniels, and it made me think how the big screen affects our viewing because I found it totally absorbing in spite of a derivative plot (Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD, Sturges THE PALM BEACH STORY, etc ) and unspectacular direction (by Michael Gordon) which prevented it from being quite good. Ida Lupino is skilled and beautiful, constantly on the verge of being offed, but resiliently overcoming each new attack. I love Wikipedia’s comment:’ some observers regard the picture as a film noir, a view not universally embraced’. I nonetheless very much enjoyed seeing it, and it is a definite addition to the ‘Gaslit Women’ cycle.
BEWARE MY LOVELY (1952):
An early home invasion film. A re-teaming of Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan (who are always great together and should have made more). It’s 1918 and he’s suffering from PSTD. He does awful things and forgets, like strangling a woman and leaving her in the mop closet. She’s a widow looking for a handyman. The film’s all about Ida keeping her cool whilst Robert loses his mind. There’s a wonderful shot of a renewed threat by Ryan being conveyed by his face reflected on the Christmas Tree decorations as he descends the stairs (Harry Horner, the director, is most famous for art directing, which partly explains, the combination of clunky direction and superb imagery one often finds here) . The script and direction are pedestrian, the stars superb, the great print on a big screen, absorbing.
I also saw the 1s part of the TALKING PICTURES TV double bill, THE GHOST CAMERA (Bernard Vonhaus). I wanted to see a very young Ida, and once I did, well…she’s great, and so very young! – but the film was painful and I left.
An informative and absorbing programme, a great opportunity to revisit these films in beautiful prints on a big screen.
FORGOTTEN FACES (Victor Schertzinger, 1928)
‘Have you seen Forgotten Faces?’ friends whispered, ‘you musn’t miss FORGOTTEN FACES’. ‘FORGOTTEN FACES was the hit of last year’s Pordenone.’ ‘It was chosen as the closing film of this year’s Hippodrome Silent Film Festival. Be sure not to miss it.’
I can see why friends were excited, and this Film Noir Fest screening, on a double bill with THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (Edwin S. Porter, 1903), with live accompaniment by the wonderful Neil Brand, was particularly memorable. It was visually inventive with some dazzling shots, from below, of people gathered around a roulette table. The Raffles-esque, debonair thief opening scenes, witty and elegant. The surprise of seeing a young William Powell as the thief’s sidekick…All wonderful. But why did no one warn me of the film’s relentless misogyny? Oh it’s a given for the time say some. But I don’t agree.
A man catches his wife with a lover, shoots him, steals their baby, gives it up for adoption so it won’t be polluted by the mother; and then the whole film is about preventing any contact by the mother that would ruin the child and socially stunt her upbringing. How many ways can a mother be punished? The film is gleeful in showing you. This is the inverse of the female-centred melodramas were a woman will do anything for a child. But in those films, fathers aren’t treated with the contempt and disdain the mother is here. A fascinating film, a wonderful experience seeing it with live accompaniment. But also an experience that might have been enhanced with a brief introduction.
HEIST FILMS
Alongside the Ida Lupino strand, Film Noir Fest UK 2025 also had a strand of heist films, some classics (ASPHALT JUNGLE, THE KILLING, CRISS CROSS, RESERVOIR DOGS), some foreign films I’ve mentioned previously (DU RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES, EL EXPRESO DE ANDALUCÍA), some I was unfortunately unable to see (PLUNDER ROAD). A new discovery for me was Bruce Beresford MONEY MOVERS (Australia, 1976) a heist-gone-wrong film , programmed by Stephen Morgan, with a young and handsome Bryan Brown, clearly on his way to stardom, though here cast as a sidekick. It’s a smart and funny film, with the excitement of on-location shooting, some dazzlingly inventive filmmaking (the rolling money trucks, rambling onwards, and slightly out of focus, like in a dream about to become a nightmare) and a reminder of how awful amateur Farrah Fawcett haircuts could be. What’s underneath the sunshine and tans, lurking in garages, and ready to pop. I understand it was very difficult to get the DCP and all the efforts were worth it. Wonderful to see.
FINALE:
Screenshot
Film Fest UK ended with two stone-cold noir classics, DETOUR (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) and GUN CRAZY (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950). The former a much-viewed favourite, with dialogue that still sparks: What you do? Kiss him with a wrench? I love tough-guy hard-boiled talk, especially when spoken by a woman. DETOUR overspills with it, spewingly, through the sneery mouth of Anne Savage’s Vera. I’d not seen GUN CRAZY before, and I’m an instant fan. Baby-voiced Peggy Cummings loves and kills, and she’s got Jon Dall wrapped around her finger. Both are crack shots and they go from bank to bank robbing and …eventually killing, something he can’t bring himself to do…until he does. The film is full of wonderful scenes, the running through the abbatoir, the close-ups shot from below in the car, the steaminess of their hiding in the wild, again in close-up, a picture of love and death. It’s a brilliant movie and a wonderful way to end the festival.
Oh and did I mention that on top of an amazing selection of films, the organisers also produced a catalogue of original essays to accompany the program? An extraordinary accomplishment, a wonderful way to see films, easy to meet other devotees after screenings, have a pint, chat about what you’ve seen, and all in the best possible setting, in the mist and rainbows of Weston-Super-Mare, by the seaside. I can’t wait for next year.
Far from an outstanding film, but amazing to look at and too much fun not to recommend, we had a great time in Tron: Ares, which reverses the reality-computer interface that brought humans into the digital world in the previous two films; it’s now the virtual that becomes real. An evil company searches for the code that will give its 3D printed computer assets longevity in the real world – so far, they crumble into dust after about twenty minutes – but the AI tasked with doing so goes rogue, hoping to use the code to bring itself to life. It’s Pinocchio and Frankenstein with neon-oozing motorbikes, and as entertaining as that sounds. (We think that sounds entertaining.)
We’re joined by our resident Paul Thomas Anderson expert (and Mike’s brother), Stephen Glass, to whom we’ve previously spoken about Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, for another discussion of One Battle After Another. Stephen’s seen it in both VistaVision and IMAX 70mm, and can offer a sense of the experience Mike and José missed seeing it in IMAX Digital, and so begins a wide-ranging conversation about the film’s aesthetics, tone, politics, influences and more.
Mike isn’t impressed with The Rock’s attempt to take on a dramatic role in an intimate biopic after decades of popcorn blockbusters, seeing it as Oscar bait. José doesn’t share his cynicism and likes the lead performance. We discuss what The Smashing Machine depicts – disagreeing, in particular, about whether the protagonist shares any blame for the issues in his relationship – as well as whether its look and storytelling are problems, and just how shoddy things are getting at Cineworld. Yet we keep going back.
What does a Film Programmer do? I talk to James McEvoy to find out what programming the Warwick Arts Centre cinema, a three-screen cinema, based on a university campus but also serving a local and regional audience, involves. Who is the audience and how to build new ones is part of the conversation. We touch on Flatpack, the MAC, the Mockingbird, Square-Eye TV, Lock Studios, Steven Knight, the Forward Film Festival. James tells me about licenses and knowing who holds the rights to a film, which is sometimes confusing while underlining he is uninterested in gate-keeping, actively seeking collaborations and stressing the importance of getting the word out.
We spend a considerable time discussing the exciting new programme: there will be live opera and theatre projections; BFI funded seasons; the opportunity of seeing films financed by Netflix on a big screen. Programmes to look out for are the Silent Cinema screenings with live accompaniment, the melodrama season, Richard Dyer speaking on Brief Encounter, and more.
Each year there’s an over-arching theme across the whole of the Arts Centre. This year the focus is on care. The film programme component is called is ‘Handle with Car,’ with a substrand on ‘Cozy Classics’, which will involve screening a classic film once a month. There will be tea and biscuits – feel free to BYOB (Blanket not Booze) — an opportunity for people to get together and see movies on a big screen. The Arts Centre will also be bringing its 35mm projector back into action for the November screening of Cinema Paradiso. Part of another strand of the Care programme is ‘Care Behind the Scenes,’ co-programmed with Dr. Alice Pember and Dr. Polina Zelmanova, which will also have workshops as well as screenings (e.g. intimacy co-ordination’).
The Programme will include Accessible and Inclusive screenings as well as Audio-Description (for first time at the Art Centre) and there will be some workshops attached to this strand as well.
James stresses that the programming also takes on board an exploration of the local and the national with focus on independent and locally made cinema and with filmmakers holding Q&A’s when possible.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, directed by former video essayist Kogonada, is beautiful to look at and very likeable, but derivative and ultimately unsatisfying. We discuss its lighting, its attitude towards people’s histories and the memories that live with them, and why a rubbish script Mike once wrote makes him particularly keen to sneer at it.
Cheap, simple, high-concept and reasonably graphic, The Long Walk is a throwback to the days of the B-movie. In its dystopian, totalitarian version of the USA, an annual event, the Long Walk, is designed to inspire work ethic and national pride in the citizenry, and in so doing restore the country to that self-defined global number one status it craves; to make America great again. The televised competition sets fifty young men, one from each state, against each other in a test of endurance: they must walk for as long as they can, maintaining a speed of over 3mph at all times, with success rewarded with unimaginable riches and the fulfilment of a personal wish, and repeated failure to keep up punished with on-the-spot execution. There is one winner.
What promises to be quite dumb is not quite as dumb as Mike anticipates. The worldbuilding is fairly thin, and the premise of the competition an immediate hurdle for the audience to clear, but The Long Walk is able to develop thematically in surprising depth through the interactions and conversations between its competitors, who share their thoughts on the event, the personal histories that draw them to it, and their intentions if they win. With a number of reservations – we find its visual direction lacking and differ on how good the performances and screenplay are – it’s easy to recommend The Long Walk, which shows us an America in need of revolution, and asks its characters what it might take to achieve it.
By far Paul Thomas Anderson’s most expensive film, with a budget some four or five times what he’s used to, and probably his most accessible, One Battle After Another entertains us enormously and effortlessly without sacrificing the complexity and nuance for which his work is known. Set in an alternate America oppressed by Christofascism, the alternate part is that there’s a very active militant revolutionary group, the French 75, setting bombs off and freeing detained minorities. Leonardo DiCaprio is part of it, and sixteen years after the conclusion of his group’s activities, their work has entered countercultural legend, but he’s become a drug-addicted, paranoid burnout, trying to raise a teenage daughter. When the powers that be come looking for them, they’re separated, all hell breaks loose, and he has to step up.
José finds One Battle After Another to be the film of the moment, the state of the nation film that Eddington could only dream of being, a powerful, invigorating expression of what ails America and what it means to resist. Mike is more cynical, seeing an element of mockery in the revolution that has no apparent intention to end and is carried out over generations. We love the easygoing style of filmmaking that Anderson seems to have grown into, comparing it to the rigid formality of his early work, and finding that he has a talent for action cinema that’s never quite come out before. We also discuss the film’s themes of youth and ageing, parenting, the Christian right and more.
One Battle After Another is an unmissable film, the kind that fifty years ago would have defined America’s national conversation. Cinema no longer holds that level of cultural cachet, sadly, but One Battle After Another is a powerful, energetic, and very funny reminder of what film can do at its best.
I woke this morning still thinking about DOG DAY AFTERNOON. A man who has loved no other woman more than his wife, who loves his two children, and his mother, yet who robs a bank so that –to use the film’s own language — his other wife, a man named Leon, a man he’s loved like no man has ever loved another, can have a sex-change operation, is constantly crushed by all the obligations he feels towards those he loves ‘I’m dying here!’…and fails. That is the premise of the film, a courageous one. That man, Sonny (AlPacino) is not only the protagonist of the film, but its hero. The film’s achievement is to get the audience to empathise with that man, which it succeeded in doing then — the film was a big hit – and it still works today. It’s a New York film. To much of America, probably a story that could only take place in New York. But I see New York itself as a protagonist in the film. The helicopter shots that begin it, the buildings, the people, the talk, the attitude, the energy, the humour, the grit. There are actors that I still can’t name but recognise from TV as New York actors (Carol Kane, in a small early role, is one I can). The performances of John Cazale and Chris Sarandon are justly praised. But I’d forgotten that Charles Durning, James Broderick, and Lance Hernriksen are also in the cast and excellent. Lumet is justly celebrated for his work with actors and each of the kidnapped secretaries is rendered an individuals, often with bits of business. But here Lumet also uses a mobile camera to bring energy and urgency to the heist. He uses the inside and outside symbolically, bringing in the crowds as commentary on America and the media. People remember ‘Attica’ and the gay rights moment. I at least had forgotten the can-throwing and the bile directed at Sonny. It’s a truly great film, and Pacino as the man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, doing wrong so that he can do right by everyone is tender, sweet, brave, angry, violent, caring, funny and ultimately very moving. The whole gamut. One of the greatest performances in American film history and a truly great film.
I mourn the death of Claudia Cardinale. I’ve seen a lot of her lesser-known work this year (LA RAGAZZA DI BUBE/ THE GIRL WITH THE SUITCASE, IL GIORNO DELLA CIVETTA/ THE DAY OF THE OWL, IL PREFETTO DI FERRO/ I AM THE LAW) and only learned to love her more. She was one of those rare performers whose smile lit up a screen and sparked some kind of opening or expansion in the hearts of spectators (Goldie Hawn, Audrey Hepburn, and Julia Roberts are others). Like Carmen Sevilla, who was dubbed ‘The Girlfriend of Spain’ Cardinale was publicised as ‘The girlfriend of Italy’, which I found interesting because they’re both very beautiful, and very sexy but in a non-threatening way (think of Ava Garden or Linda Fiorentino as opposites.); they both radiate positivity instead of danger. Like with Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, the other Italian superstars of her era, she could move from playing rural peasants to aristocrats with ease. She was a great actress, with a calm demeanour and a liveliness behind the eyes that audiences worldwide found easy to identify with. I learned from the Spanish obituaries that LES PÉTROLEUSES/ THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING (Christian Jacques, 1972), a gunslinging Western in which she starred with Brigitte Bardot, a contemporary whose evocation of freedom had been an inspiration, played for years in Spain, an enormous hit, and was advertised as ‘BB contra CC’. A great star and a great actress whose filmography is a legacy that extends beyond the obvious works from Fellini, Visconti, Monicelli, Leone, Herzog, etc: it’s interesting to see the different works obits from diff countries highlight, depending on what traces they left on those particular cultures.
I couldn’t afford the vintage pulp novels that I wanted but saw that there were new equivalents in the same vein, so I tried one: MULHOLLAND MEAT. It’s about a young sexually abused boy who leaves home and is picked up at the bus station by an agent based on Henry Wilson (Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue), also the subject of Michael McKeever’s play, THE CODE, currently on in London. It’s the evening of the premiere of THE ROBE in 1953 and by the end of the year the young man will find love and become a star, but not before having to put out to all kinds of creeps, famous and not, up and down Mulholland Drive. It’s badly written soft-core porn with Golden Age Hollywood lore as context. It’s heavily based on Scotty Bowers’ FULL SERVICE: MY ADVENTURES IN HOLLYWOOD AND THE SECRET SEX LIVES OF THE STARS (which was also the case with Ryan Murphy’s HOLLYWOOD TV series). What bothered me most was seeing all the internet gossip being offered up as fact, so representative of this age of digital disinformation. And worst of all to me was the representation of Katharine Hepburn as a sexually rapacious lesbian. And I began to ask why did it bother me? Is it some form of internalised homophobia? After all it’s quite likely that Hepburn did have some same-sex experiences, particularly with her close friend Laura Harding. We’ll never know. What we do have is concrete evidence of marriage and several important affairs with men, heavily documented in all kinds of ways including testimony from all her friends. But be that as it may, I suppose what upset me is that what I suspect drives the re-iteration of this account of her nicked from Scotty Bowers is misogyny, an attempt to reduce one of the great figures of 20th century cinema, all that she meant to people then and now, all that she accomplished and created, to a nasty stereotype: closety, repressed but rapacious, something gay men of today could look down on sneer at, knowingly (but knowing nothing). And this goes for the rest of the real life figures mentioned in the book (Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, Richard Burton etc). And perhaps all of this may be more excusable in a pulp novel than in London play or a tony Netflix mini-series. Perhaps.
Commitment is scary. It’s especially scary when you drink water from a cursed puddle that wants to make a hybrid of you and your partner. Together tells the story of a couple moving to a new home during a questionable period in their relationship: she has a new job and is responsible for the move away; he’s emotionally distant since the death of his parents and relies on her for transportation and financial security. They love each other, but will they last?
First-time director Michael Shanks demonstrates a good instinct for tone, effectively combining comedy and horror – that Alison Brie and Dave Franco (married in real life) are both experienced comic actors helps the film draw out the absurdity of the events it depicts. What quibbles we might have with details of its supernatural basis are easily ignored because its focus always remains on the central couple. It doesn’t matter that some specific detail might not be explained to our satisfaction: the question is always, how do the couple respond to their predicament? Together never loses sight of what’s most important, and that makes it one of the best horrors – maybe one of the best films full stop – that we’ve seen in a while.
