Category Archive: FILM
Hud
'Let's dip our bread in that gravy while it's still warm."
(Dir. Martin Ritt) (1963) Larry (Lonesome Dove) McMurtry’s novel Horseman, Pass By becomes Paul Newman’s best role, as cattleman Hud Bannon, all ‘barbed-wire soul’ who just can’t feel or do good, lusting after housekeeper Alma, rejecting noble father Homer and corrupting nephew Lonnie. A relentless tale of the harshness of life on the land, with a bitter foot-and-mouth twist, Ritt’s brilliant and stark production makes his version of Spy Who Came in from the Cold look like The Sound of Music. Great work by all, especially Newman, Patricia Neal incomparable as Alma, and Melvyn Douglas monolithic as the old man. “You’re an…
Continue Reading →Sporting Supporters
'Nothing unwholesome about baseball...'
Spring in Australia merges with sporting finals in a series of codes, but if your team has missed out, you can always fall back on uplifting or downbeat sporting films to fill (or at least, line) that emotional void. 1. The Underdogs Triumph Rocky A most unlikely hit, this film meanders around the back streets of Philly for what seems like years, and then down-an-almost-outer Rocky Balboa gets pummelled for 15 rounds but stays on his feet. Total schlock, but try to resist. Year of the Dogs …
Continue Reading →Mr Turner
Mr Turner embraces the culture of varnish (by Thomas Fearnley, 1837)
(Dir. Mike Leigh) (2014) “Grrrrr.” Stoically holding back the memories of Dali’s opinion of J M W Turner (1775-1851) which we largely share, and of many of Mr Leigh’s previous films (a herd of head-in-oven slices of domestic life), The Varnished Culture settled down to see this handsome period piece on the famous British proto-impressionist. To our disadvantage, we had failed to recall the usual outcome of painterly biographies – more agony than ecstasy. It doesn’t look bad – lots of lovely brown and gold set pieces, a la Peter Greenaway, and a terrific re-creation of the Fighting Temeraire tugged to its last berth…
Continue Reading →Macbeth
"Out, damned spot!" (Polanski version)
(by William Shakespeare) (1606) (Dir. Justin Kurzel) (2015) (Advance screening, Adelaide 29/9/15) [Films noted in passing: (Dir. Roman Polanski) (1971), (Dir. Orson Welles) (1948)] The Scottish Play is the Bard’s tightest, tautest, most nightmarish work, It contains his best poetry – in fact, almost every line is superb and has no waste. It’s personae encapsulate all of Freud and his successors, but says it better. Macbeth lays bare for us the fatal links whereby valour and honour, under the strains of chance, imagination and “vaulting ambition”, lead to evil acts, and ultimately, overweening psychopathy – a manual showing us how one good, or bad, step downwards leads to the next, and…
Continue Reading →Robert De Niro’s Waiting
"You talkin' to me?"
Yes, he’s waiting…for a decent script or at least a decent role. Unfortunately, however, he is not lazy, which means that De Niro has made almost 100 films (and we must admit to not having seen all of them). Great film stars manage to accumulate half a dozen classics in their careers and on this scale, Bob is right up there…but what a waste of talent most of the time, and particularly lately. Actors apparently have to eat and have a nervous imperative to keep working while the luck holds, but there is something a bit sad about the number of…
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