Category Archive: FILM
Agincourt
"These wounds I had on Crispin's Day" (Image from Chroniques d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet)
(Fought 25 October 1415) (Play by William Shakespeare, 1599) (Dir. Laurence Olivier, 1944) (Dir. Kenneth Branagh, 1989) On St Crispin’s Day, King Henry V of England gained a brilliant, against-all-odds and in ultimate strategic terms, futile victory. Henry and his army were pinned near the castle Agincourt, far from the coast and outnumbered at least 3 to 1. Henry made offers of concessions, but the enemy insisted he renounce the French Crown and get out of town. A combination of weather, topography and the English long-bow turned the tide in what proved to be a very nasty battle, a fight to the finish…
Continue Reading →Mel Gibson’s Bum
(photo of Mel by Alan Light)
The actress Arletty, when chastised over her wartime liaison with a German officer during the Nazi occupation of Paris, pointed out that “My heart is French but my arse is international.” For some reason, that mad old snarler Mel Gibson, wants us to look at his backside. He displays it for no apparent narrative reason in these films :- Bird on a Wire Tequila Sunrise Gallipoli Forever Young, and Several entries in the Lethal Weapon franchise. He managed to find a doubtful historical pretext in Braveheart, but TVC wonders if possibly he chose to do the film because it allowed him to…
Continue Reading →Black Mass
(Dir. Scott Cooper) (2015) Johnny Depp is good when he is serious (“Dead Man“, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”, “Finding Neverland”, “Donnie Brasco”) and terrible when he is being silly (“Mortdecai”). TVC suspects that he is good in this very serious would-be “Goodfellas“. But it’s hard to say because the pale contact lenses and the weird comb-over skullcap which have been inflicted on him are too silly to allow the viewer to be sure of anything. Similarly, Joel Edgerton’s brow keeps disappearing under his off-centre werewolf widow’s peak and Jesse Plemons (a plumped-up Todd from “Breaking Bad”) is hidden underneath a wild-man clown…
Continue Reading →A Passage to India
(E. M. Forster) (1924) (Dir. David Lean) (1984) “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat” Thus Kipling’s famous ballad, which Forster, with a surgical pen, turns into a captivating novel that somehow fails to entirely succeed in nailing perfidious Albion, and which David Lean, with cameras, cement mixer and trowel, utterly fails to achieve much of anything.
Continue Reading →Of Human Bondage
(By W. Somerset Maugham) (Dir. John Cromwell) (1934) Philip is a club-footed dill and Mildred is a troll. This book is a remarkably honest confession by Maugham (although he steadfastly denied it was autobiography). The teaming of Leslie Howard and Bette Davis in the film is apt but Bette’s role is overripe and unfortunately it shows. Then again, maybe that’s why WSM started batting for the other team.
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