Brian Hannan

Smokescreen (1964) ***

Little gem with a terrific central performance. We tend to be condescending to these old British crime B-features. Occasionally one achieves cult status but mostly critics these days are as dismissive as back in the day. You might be surprised to learn that audiences treated them with a good deal more respect. In making up the support on a double bill, they represented value for money.

It’s also easy to forget that at this point the public were not inundated with television detectives and the true-crime genre had not been invented. Tales like this one, while lacking a big budget, proved very satisfactory viewing, especially if they were as clever as this. I could see the plot of Smokescreen being easily remade for a television one-off or as part of a series.

Main character, insurance agent rather than police detective, in his personal awkward demeanor, reminds me a great deal of the current BBC hit Ludwig.

Significant effort has gone into developing Roper (Peter Vaughan). For someone meant to be upholding the law, he skirts the rules in the matter of his personal expenses, ensuring he always finds the correct price for a taxi or a hotel meal before doing without and claiming it. So he doesn’t at all come across as an attractive character. He looks sly, sleekit, and he’s not smart enough to know how to butter up the office secretary Miss Breen (Barbara Hicks), who always wants minor attention, a postcard or similar.

Like Charles like Nothing but the Best (1964), he’s a sponger, without that character’s class or charm. Sent out on a case to Brighton on England’s south coast, hoping to find a missing man still alive and his wife making a false claim, he ensures that a professional colleague Carson (Trevor Bayliss) does all the driving, saving Roper on taxi fares which he can illicitly claim back. There’s an excuse for this unattractive behavior, but I preferred him less obviously redeemed.

Anyway, he’s a joy to watch, a real person with ordinary flaws rather than the usual ones afflicted contemporary detectives such as alcohol or drug abuse or failing marriage or an affair or requiring serious redemption for past major error.

All the characters have been well fleshed out. Carson nurtures secret feelings for supposed widow Janet (Yvonne Romaine). But she doesn’t at all come across as a femme fatale, which goes against the actress’s screen persona. There’s a great scene with a doctor (Derek Francis) whom his colleague upsets – Roper tiptoes away from the trouble – and who then demands a fee for being professionally consulted even if it’s only a few minutes in his garden.

Local cop Insp Wright (Glynn Edwards) is similarly offhand and down-to-earth, there’s a nice piece of comedy with a station master (Derek Guyler) and a great scene where Roper is way out of his element – and his league – trying to pump information out of a very attractive secretary (Penny Morrell) by getting her drunk, and wincing every time she puts an expensive cocktail on the bill.

Roper’s diligence pays off in the end, but there’s no grandstanding, as there is with Ludwig or any other cop, when he solves the case.

It’s a very clever story well told, enough interest to keep an audience feeling it has been entertained and if the main feature comes up to scratch back in the day would come out of the cinema very satisfied indeed. Roper manages proper detection, miffed when said colleague is correct in an assumption Roper dismissed, and the diligence that requires.

With little of a budget to speak of, these B-features had to make up for the lack of expensive location shots or camera tricks by ensuring the script not just ticked along nicely and provided an interesting resolution but that the characters appeared real, making up for lacking the cosmetic of attractiveness by reminding an audience of real people. Everyone would know a penny-pincher like Roper’s boss or a snippy secretary who can bring employees to heel or a sleekit colleague who’s doing a minor bit of ducking and diving.

This is a particularly significant turn by Peter Vaughan – who you might remember as the elderly Maester in Game of Thrones – because he made his name playing villains generally lacking any nuance. He was the titular evil criminal mastermind in Hammerhead (1968), a thug in Twist of Sand (1968), a nasty piece of work in Straw Dogs (1971). Although he found regular work as a character actor, he might find it somewhat disappointing that he was never again let near anything quite as finished as this piece. Yvonne Romain (Return to Sender, 1963) toys with her screen persona. Future British television dependables pop up everywhere, Gerald Flood and Sam Kydd in addition to Glynn Edwards and Deryck Guyler

Writer-director Jim O’Connolly (The Valley of Gwangi) writes some great stuff and is lucky to have the actors who can pull it off.

Great characters, solid detection and excellent twists.

Poor Cow (1967) ****

Fifty years on, the title has an ironic ring as the main character may well be viewed as more feminist than victim, taking her men as and when she wants them, and not especially ground down by rejection and setbacks. Should be a favorite of Martin Scorsese for its reliance on interior monologue. However, that now comes across as unnecessary indulgence. Her abilities as a survivor are apparent without such declamation.

Indulgent, too, is the casual sweep over her surroundings in almost documentary style to make up for the lack of any driving narrative. As a slice-of-life kitchen-sink drama minus any of the acceptable angry young men of earlier in the decade, it’s superior to the male-dominated species in that at least they can rail against injustice from the perspective of one who, thanks to their gender, has a fair chance of rising above it, whereas here Joy (Carol White) is not so much a victim of circumstance as an ace manipulator.

If she’s occasionally dealt a bad hand it’s through her own bad choices. She likes the company of men – and, let’s face it, regular sex – too much to consider consequence. She’s as likely to take up with a thug like husband Tom (John Bindon) as the more caring Dave (Terence Stamp) as a baker or any other geezer she meets in a pub who gives her a “funny feeling” in her stomach.

Being a single mother doesn’t seem to prevent her taking up with a variety of men and it’s only when her child goes missing – though quickly found – that she faces up to her responsibilities. While she flirts with easier ways of making money – modelling for leering male amateur photographers – and readily accepts gifts from her admirers, which could as easily be fresh-baked bread as tiny amounts of cash, but wouldn’t stoop to prostitution as a way of easing her path.

It’s a male dominant world peopled by the kind of men who would slap you around the face for refusing to change the channel on the television (in the days before remote control, obviously, and fights over who holds the remote control) and take pleasure in exerting such power in small humiliating ways. You can stand up to a fellow as much as you like until he whacks you one, and then you realise how little defense you have against such brutality.

Luckily, Tom gets put away after a robbery goes wrong and she can pass the time more peacefully with Dave (Terence Stamp) who has a more romantic and gentle nature, although he, too, a thief, gets jailed. She’s unable to remain faithful to either of them while they’re inside, but it’s the more vulnerable Dave who requires assurance that she’s not playing around while he’s locked up. By now, of course, she’s a deft liar and able to put his mind at ease.

Tom doesn’t expect her to remain true, he has a harder view of life, doesn’t expect anything from anybody, not even his best pals, and should he find himself in an extreme situation, wouldn’t expect anyone to come to this aid.

So the narrative, such as it is, revolves around her going from one bloke to the other, taking her pleasures where she can, manipulating any susceptible male, without for a moment losing audience sympathy. Though for a time she occupies a nice house in a middle-class estate, most of the time she lives in less salubrious apartments, often next door to buildings that are being demolished.

Whether director Ken Loach has tossed bit parts to all and sundry or has simply shot footage in pubs and cafes documentary-style is unclear but it’s quite a different kind of Britain he presents, not the happy Cockney nor making a point about an underclass, but simply presenting a world that rarely merits screen time.

Given Loach’s later political stances, this is surprisingly free of a left-wing perspective, beyond the notion, recounted by a crook, that everyone is a crook.

What gives it its power are the naturalistic performances of Carol White (Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting, 1969) and, especially given his tendency to over-stylized performances, Terence Stamp (Modesty Blaise, 1966). Some sequences are more marked because, in contributing nothing whatsoever to the drama, they stand out as the kind of talking about nothing dialog with which Tarantino made his name. I’d also point out the titles of the various chapters would appeal to a contemporary audience since they turn the whole chapter-title notion on its head.

Joy stands out as a genuine character full of contradiction and possibly as the most freewheeling female character of the entire decade, and one who’s not remotely troubled by guilt.

Distinctive debut by Ken Loach (Kes, 1969) who co-wrote the screenplay with Nell Dunn from her novel of the same name. Soundtrack by Donovan.

Immensely appealing character.

The Scorpio Letters (1967) ***

Desultory spy thriller with over-complicated story that’s worth a look mostly for the performance of Alex Cord (Stiletto, 1969). I can’t say I was a big fan of Cord and I certainly didn’t shower him with praise for his role as a disillusioned Mafia hitman in that movie. But now I’m wondering if I have been guilty of under-rating him.

Normally, critics line up to acclaim actors if they deliver widely differing performances – Daniel Day-Lewis considered the touchstone in this department after Room with a View and My Beautiful Launderette opened in New York on the same day in 1985. But usually screen persona rarely changes, a heightened or amalgamated version of the actor’s character or features. Once Charles Bronson, for example, started wearing his drooping mustache, for example, he was never seen without. Actors may grow old, but never bald.

The macho mustachioed Cord of Stiletto is nowhere in sight. In fact, in The Scorpio Letters minus moustache and resisting attempts to reveal his musculature, he is almost unrecognizable. In this picture Joe Christopher (Alex Cord) is flip, resentful, thoughtful, occasionally pedantic, more natural than many of the current crop of Hollywood new stars, and for once in a movie that has transplanted an American in London rather scornful of British traditions.

There’s a realistic flourish here, too, he is so poorly paid – and on a temporary contract – that he has to take the bus. And although he is an ex-cop fired for brutality, that level of violence ain’t on show here. Virtually the opposite of the character Cord created for Stiletto, I’m sure you’ll agree. So full marks for versatility and talent.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is not up to much, at the very bottom of the three-star review, almost toppling into two-star territory. Christopher is investigating the death of a British agent who was the subject of a blackmail attempt. By coincidence – or perhaps not – another part of British Intelligence is investigating the same death, and this brings Christopher into contact with Phoebe Stewart (Shirley Eaton) and eventually they work together to unravel a list of codenames and uncover the conspiracy with a bit of risk to life and limb.

But the pay-off doesn’t work despite all the exposition attempting to build it up and you’re left with a kind of drawing-room drama rather than exciting spy adventure. It’s determinedly London-centric with red buses, red postboxes, Big Ben, Horse Guards Parade all putting in an appearance. The scene shifts to Paris and Nice without much increase in tension. There’s also an irate German chef. Despite a couple of neat scenes – a chase held up behind a wedding party, an interrogation in a wine cellar – it’s much too formulaic.

Cord apart, Shirley Eaton (Goldfinger, 1964) adds some glamour, but her rounded portrait depicts a character with warmth rather than oozing sex. This is the kind of film that should be awash with character actors and up-and-comers, but I recognized few names except for Danielle De Metz (The Karate Killers, 1967), Oscar Beregi (Morituri, 1965) and Laurence Naismith (The Persuaders tv series, 1971).

One-time top MGM megger Richard Thorpe (The Truth about Spring, 1965) was coming to the end of a distinguished career which had included Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). This was his penultimate film. The appropriately named Adrian Spies (Dark of the Sun, 1968) wrote the screenplay based on the Victor Canning thriller. Making his movie debut was composer Dave Grusin (Divorce American Style, 1967)

Albeit with a limited budget of $900,000, MGM intended the picture for theatrical release but with a short cinema window to make it available for a speedy showing on ABC TV. It was originally scheduled for a May 1967 theatrical release but MGM decided to cut out the American release and so it made its debut in the “Sunday Night at the Movies” slot on February 19, 1967, and was shown in cinemas abroad. Nor was it shown first on U.S. television because the studio believed it a disaster. Variety (February 22, 1967, page 42) called it “very hip.”

The Red One (2024) ***

Santa Claus meets Die Hard might have worked well enough if it hadn’t been padded out with all sorts of other festive characters from the dark side of Xmas and a sludge of sentiment about an absent father reconnecting with his son. Can’t quite decide if it’s family-friendly or aiming for a queasier relationship with a Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice audience. And I suspect if Amazon had the courage of its theatrical convictions, it would made this a Xmas cinema release rather than chucking it into picture houses now and lining it up for a small-screen Xmas special.

Attempts to merge James Bond-style big budget thriller with underworld shenanigans conjuring up the kind of misfits who’d have been slung out of a Star Wars cantina while at the same time as making up the rules as it goes along. There’s a mix-and-match feel to the characters – we get Gryla, a mythical Icelandic monster, Krampus, a hairy devil of Germanic extraction who has his fun the night before Xmas, but is repurposed here as a Santa’s big bad brother, as well as a bunch of gargoyles who are way too easily distracted by a hen who they, mysteriously, can’t manage to catch, and then like a throwback to Transformers we get tiny Lego style figures who turn gigantic when let loose. You can stop snowmen in their tracks by whipping off their carrot noses.

Face-slapping is reinvented, shapeshifting is the game, and as if nobody had watched how badly Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire failed we’re back to a villain with icy superpowers. The giant polar bear featured – cousin to the armored bear in The Golden Compass (2007) – in the poster is underused. Not to mention that Xmas staple, the kids threatened with losing out on presents if they are naughty. None of this should work at all, but it does fairly well.

On the eve of said Mr Claus’s big night, he gets kidnapped. Bodyguard Callum (Dwayne Johnson), who turns out to be more than 500 years old, is on the trail and tracks down hacker Jack (Chris Evans) who’s sold Santa’s secret location to villain Gryla (Kieman Shipka), the ex- of Krampus’s (Kristofer Hivju), who wants to trap every night child in the world inside the kind of glass snow globe that was a traditional Xmas present. She’s manufactured these in the gazillions.

Callum and Jack team up though the latter’s not much use, his contribution to the double act consisting mainly of double takes and it’s only when he doesn’t take the opportunity to escape Krampus’s lair that he becomes one of the team. Mostly, it’s one bizarre situation after another and although at just over two hours it’s already outstaying its welcome it could have done with spending some more time on outlining the background and developing the fiendish characters. It’s a world that seems surprisingly undercooked given the mega budget. On the plus side – or perhaps the minus depending on your perspective – there’s a cuteness bypass. There’s a little too much time spent on – unsuccessfully – showing how Santa manages to get himself down every single chimney in the world in the space of a night including time to gobble down some treats. Would have done better to stick to the Santa hijack than include a technologically-improved Xmas.

*Xmas spirit missing in this previous red one.*

This didn’t need the presence of Dwayne Johnson (Black Adam, 2022) and certainly Chris Evans (The Gray Man, 2022) is wasted but with the MCU world closing its doors on both actors, perhaps this is an attempt to set up a new series. As Mr Claus, J.K. Simmons (Juror #2, 2024) isn’t in it long enough. Jake Kasdan (Jumanji, The Next Level, 2019) directed from a script by Chris Morgan (Shazam! Fury of the Gods, 2023) and Hiram Garcia (Jumaji, The Next Level).

Not as bad as I expected.

Once a Thief (1965) ****

Film noir gem with terrific cast filmed in black-and-white and often at night that crams into a taut storyline different slants of the themes of the con-going-straight, the vendetta and the double-cross. While Hollywood at this point had imported platoons of foreign beauties in the Sophia Loren-Elke Sommer vein, there had been less interest in the male of the species with the exception of a small British contingent and possibly Omar Sharif, on whom the jury was still out.

MGM was gambling on Frenchman Alain Delon (Farewell Friend / Adieu L’Ami, 1968) to alter industry perspective at the same time as pushing new contract star Ann-Margret (The Swinger, 1966) along more dramatic lines away from the glossy puffery that had made her name and which relied more upon her physical assets than acting potential. Had she continued in this vein, her career would certainly have taken a different turn.

Eddie Pedak (Alain Delon), former minor hood turned San Francisco truck driver, is happily married to Kristine (Ann-Margret) with a young daughter they both adore. But tough cop Mike Vido (Van Heflin), with a reputation for brutality, is determined to pin a murder on him in revenge for purportedly being shot by him early in Eddie’s previous career. Eddie manages for a time to resist the overtures of brother Walter (Jack Palance) to participate in a million-dollar diamond heist. But when he loses his job, that changes.

While the robbery naturally takes center stage, that’s not actually the dramatic highlight. Instead, it is the Eddie-Kristine relationship. Instead of Eddie being the usual down-on-his-luck ex-con, he has clearly turned his life around, so much so he can afford a $500 down payment on a small boat. A loving father, he accepts without rancor when his daughter interrupts a night-time lovemaking session. And he’s stylish, too, wearing an iconic sheepskin jacket and driving a snazzy 1931 Ford Model A roadster. Kristine just wants a normal home life, desiring domesticity above all else, but swallowing her pride when she needs to go out to work in a night club to make ends meet, for a time rendering the unemployed Eddie a house husband.

But Eddie is not all he initially seems. His tough streak has not been smothered by the good life. In a brilliant Catch-22 situation he gets violent when an employment benefits clerk refuses to accept that Eddie was fired from his job, instead believing his employer’s claim that he resigned – the former triggering relief payment, the latter zilch. But that’s nothing to the beating he administers to Kristine when, pride injured that he is not the breadwinner, he discovers the skimpy costume she wears for her job.

Adding to the unusual mix are Vido and Walter, the former’s brooding presence somewhat undercut by the fact that in middle age he still lives with his mother, the latter while a big-time gangster letting nothing get in the way of strong fraternal feeling for Eddie.

You won’t be surprised to learn double cross is in the air, not when Walter employs a creepy sunglass-wearing henchman Sargantanas (John Davis Chandler) who appears to have more than a passing interest in little girls. The climax, which contains both emotional and dramatic twist, involves redemption and sacrifice.

Delon has played the cold-eyed ruthless but romantic character before, but here adds depth from his paternal commitment and as a man turned inside out by the system.

Ann-Margret is the revelation, truly believable as mother first, sexy wife second, and her anguish in the later parts of the picture showcase a different level of acting skill to anything she previously essayed. This role immediately preceded her man-eater in The Cincinnati Kid (1965) which attracted far more attention and considerably bigger box office and it would been interesting to see how her career might have panned out had Once a Thief been the critical and commercial triumph. She probably did not attain such acting heights again until Carnal Knowledge (1971). And I did wonder, as with Daliah Lavi (The Demon, 1963) before her, whether her acting skills were too often overshadowed in the Hollywood mindset by her physical attributes.

Van Heflin (Cry of Battle, 1963) is excellent as the cop tormented by the idea that a villain is walking free, Jack Palance (The Professionals, 1966) is good as always and character actor Jeff Corey (The Cincinnati Kid) puts in an appearance as Vido’s whip-cracking boss and this marks the debut of Tony Musante (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1970). Watch for a cameo by screenwriter Zekial Marko (Any Number Can Win, 1963) , who wrote the original book.

This represented another change of pace for director Ralph Nelson, Oscar-nominated for the Lilies of the Field (1963) and also known for box office comedy hit Father Goose (1964). His use of an experimental, more light-sensitive, camera eliminated the bulky lighting commensurate with filming at night, bringing freshness and greater freedom to those scenes. His natural gift for drama ensured that the emotional was given as much prominence as the action. Racial awareness was demonstrated by the opening scene in a jazz club where African Americans were clearly welcome, hardly the norm at that time.

Mention again of a terrific score by Lalo Schifrin, especially the bold drum solo that played out over the credit sequence.

Top-notch.

Anora (2024) *

This poses two questions. Am I so out of touch with modern film-making that I consider this a terrible film? Or are the jurors at the Cannes Film Festival and a whole raft of critics so out of touch with modern film-making that they think it’s a great film.

One of the problems for proper critics – that is the people who see every single film that comes out as part of their job and are hired to offer their opinions in eminent media as opposed to the self-styled critics who have podcasts and blogs but pick and choose what they watch – is the sheer volume of product.

From speaking over the years (over the decades) I know that one of the perennial problems facing the critic is boredom. They see so much dreck and are equally turned off by earnest movies or by seeing the same old same old that they tend to get extremely excited when they come upon something that’s new, refreshing, different. Added to that they want to champion new invigorating film-makers rather than poke holes in the latest Hollywood disaster.

So there’s a tendency to over-champion and to patronise, pumping up films which critics feel audiences should see. And over the years there’s been no shortage of forgettable movies that enjoyed a moment in the sun, picked out by a critic as the next best thing in a very dull week, and over-praised, or by a critic who simply wanted to get behind home-grown product or a particular favored director or star.

There’s a sense that critics feel they are needed more than ever in order to steer audiences in the right direction, forgetting that moviegoers are perfectly capable of making up their own minds. The Cannes Film Festival hasn’t usually had an iffy reputation. Sure, for every game changer like Easy Rider (1969), Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) or Pulp Fiction (1994) and solid successes like The Piano (1993) or The White Ribbon (2009) or Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) there are king-sized stumbles. Let’s not hear it for the likes of Elephant (2003) or Tree of Life (2011) – efforts to buff up fading reputations – and Triangle of Sadness (2022) which took a long time going nowhere. But poor choices are a relatively minor phenomenon.

This is worse than any of them. The worst of the worst. It’s not even redeemable like yesterday’s Doctors Wives (1971) which is one of the best so-bad-it’s-good pictures you’ll come across. Some clever dick tagged this as a contemporary Pretty Woman (1990) but it bears as much resemblance to that picture as Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

If you’re aiming for a Cinderella story involving a sex worker you’re going to need the oodles of narrative charm and screen charisma that proved Pretty Woman’s major selling point or you disguise the commercial instincts of the female lead beneath a sheen of “presents” as in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

Even better, you just learn how to tell a story. And that doesn’t mean repeating the same scene with minor variations for nearly half an hour. Stripper Ani (Mikey Madison) is hired for a week of sex by juvenile Russian playboy Vanya (Mark Eidelstein). When they’re not having sex in every possible position and she’s subtly trying to make him last longer, he’s off his head with drink and drugs and playing computer games. That’s basically it for a full hour. Initial lap dances, off to his amazing mansion, then sex, drugs, computer game, sex, drugs, computer game, sex, drugs, computer game. Am I boring you yet?

Yes, there is some mild backstage bickering at the strip club and partying with his friends but that’s just minor interruption to sex, drugs, computer games, sex, drugs, computer games, sex, drugs, computer games. Vanya is so out of it he asks Ani to marry him, which she does, in Vegas, possibly with the ulterior motive of him getting a green card. But he doesn’t seem to have a single thought in his head beyond sex, drugs, computer games, and that kind of conniving would require a more competent brain.

Anyway, of course, mom and pop back in Russia get wind of their son marrying a sex worker and send Toros, a Russian Orthodox priest, to sort out the mess. Best scene in the film is Toros, carrying out a baptism in a crowded church, taking a text message in the middle of the ceremony and dumping the unbaptized baby in the arms of the astonished parents and rushing off. If the rest of the film were up to the originality of that scene, we might be onto something.

Maybe there were great scenes to come. I couldn’t tell you. And maybe I shouldn’t be reviewing this at all because I walked out just after the baptism.

Nobody comes out of this well, least of writer-director Sean Baker whose last effort Red Rocket (2021) was similarly concerned with sexual low-lifes. Mikey Madison (Scream, 2022) and Mark Eidelstein get their kits off to no avail.

A mess.

Conclave (2024) ****

No great surprise that the political thriller has made a return – all subgenres resurface after a while. The surprise here is the context. The Catholic Church hardly seems a fitting setting, given it’s been wracked for decades by accusations of child molestation, Oscar-winning Spotlight (2015) taking it down over historic malfeasance in Boston, though that was more in the line of another subgenre, the fearless journalistic expose.

Nor would you expect the drama of the election by all the Cardinals of a new Pope to turn into a riveting thriller, with a stunner of a twist at the end which carries considerable contemporary heft. The last time the goings-on in the Catholic Church attracted the attention of Hollywood was in Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal (1963) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), which were cut from a more traditional cloth. Except for some interesting procedural background and some argument about the future direction of the Church, the bulk of this picture concerns the horse-trading and corruption that threatens to envelop the election.

Our guide through the shenanigans is Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the dead Pope’s righthand man, who, although filled with his own doubts, is in charge of managing the actual election. He’s so self-effacing that it comes as something of a shock to him to discover that he’s one of the candidates. It’s a blind-voting system and continues until one person has secured 72 votes. As you might expect there’s wheeling-and-dealing with the liberal elements set against the more entrenched right-wing groups.

The main contenders are: Bellini (Stanley Tucci), favored by Lawrence, Tremblay (John Lithgow), Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a black African who would be a popular winner except for his stringent views on homosexuality, Tedesco (Sergio Castellito) who wants to cancel all the liberal developments of the Church in the last half century, and surprise packet Benitez (Carlos Diehz) from Afghanistan who represents the downtrodden that the rest of the high-living Cardinals appear to have forgotten.

You’re going to remember the twists more than any moral message. But it does allow time for debate of the major moral questions, mostly handled with subtlety. The Cardinals are all sequestered away from the outside world for the duration of the election. Turns out the deceased Pope was trying to rig the election to suit his own ends, conspiring against those Cardinals he felt were too ambitious, self-obsessed or had unsightly, but secret, stains on their characters.

For a holy fellow the dead Pope set some remarkable traps which leave Lawrence reeling. And as the election proceeds, Lawrence is revealed, on the one hand, to be quite a tough egg, like a good journalist determined to uncover the truth, but on the other hand given to bouts of crying as the weight of duty and expectation and, I guess, shock at the findings get to him.

This is quite an adult movie. Not in the sense that we’re dealing with a particularly controversial subject matter, but it’s a kind of courtroom drama in all but name, and except for the sprinkling of revelations, and the inherent tension of an election, apt to be slow moving, allowing characters time to breathe and to put various points across. The structure makes no concessions to the MCU generation. Nor to the traditional Hollywood approach which would have allocated a certain amount of time to tourist Rome. A couple of cheats – hidden documents, access to a computer when access to anything was denied – don’t get in the way.

I’m always worried when trailers concentrate on the number of Oscar winners or nominees involved because generally that suggests to me a weak narrative. But, in fact, two-time nominees Ralph Fiennes (No Time to Die, 2021) and John Lithgow (Interstellar, 2014), and one-time nominee Stanley Tucci (The Hunger Games, 2012) deliver terrific, largely understated performances, while director, also a nominee, Gerard Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) brings it together with a stately majesty.

He’s allowed himself a certain amount of self-indulgence. The overhead shot of the lines of Cardinals moving through the rain and carrying white umbrellas bears no narrative weight but is visually splendid. As if escaping from a more offbeat movie, turtles appear from time to time. The rigmarole of ritual is compelling.

Some scenes are conducted in Latin, with subtitles of course. Thank goodness, I know now what “in secula seculorum” now means. But you didn;t need to know back in the day. That was the point. It was like joining a secret society. The Catholic Church once had an unique ID that it threw away – the fact that all Masses were spoken in Latin, and therefore universally appreciated, and you could go to a Church in any country and understand what was going on, whereas now you’d need Google translate.

Screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 2011) is on something of a roll at the moment, his teleplay for Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light just out. Robert Harris, who’s not had much luck at the box office with the various movie interpretations of his bestsellers Enigma (2001), The Ghost Writer (2010), and An Officer and a Spy (2019) – banned pretty much everywhere because of Roman Polanski’s involvement – gets his just reward here for laying down such a superb template. The music by Volker Bertelmann was particularly striking. Oddly enough his Oscar win for All Quiet on the Western Front didn’t warrant a mention in the trailer.

Thoroughly absorbing.

Doctors Wives (1971) ***

Five-star so-bad-it’s-good. Every now and then, especially approaching the annual touting of earnest films for Oscar consideration, we need reminded of just how good Hollywood is at producing hugely enjoyable baloney. Excepting the proliferation of recent MCU disasters, cinematic train wrecks don’t come along nearly often enough. Such botched jobs are always better if they are stuffed full of the worthy – Oscar recipients or nominees. Gene Hackman, Dyan Cannon, Rachel Roberts, Ralph Bellamy and screenwriter Daniel Taradash fulfil that requirement here.

A cross between Sex and the City and ER, with a third act that takes off like a rabbit desperately seizing on any convenient narrative hole. And a first act that pulls the old Psycho number of killing off the star before the picture really gets going. That old murder MacGuffin works every time.

“I’m horny” is about the third line in the movie, announced by sex-mad Lorrie (Dyan Cannon) to a tableful of over-refreshed doctors wives playing sedate poker in a country club at one table while at another table where you would expect the doctor husbands to be telling dirty jokes and whispering inuendoes they are boring each other with shop talk.

Unable to get the others to engage in revealing snippets about their sex lives, Lorrie rounds off the evening by informing the ladies that she plans to have sex with all their husbands to tell them where they are all going wrong, meanwhile gaily proclaiming she’s halfway there already. Which, of course, sets off a round of suspicion and accusations from wives to husbands.

Just to keep you straight on the who’s who: Lorrie is married to Dr Mort Dellman (John Colicos), Dr Peter Brennan (Richard Crenna) to Amy (Janice Rule), Dr Dave Randolph (Gene Hackman) to Della (Rachel Roberts), and Dr Paul McGill (George Gaymes) to Elaine (Marian McCargo) while Dr Joe Gray (Carroll O’Connor) and his ex- Maggie (Cara Williams) still hang around with the group.

As you might expect, every marriage is already in trouble, except, apparently, Lorrie’s because her husband, equally sex-mad Mort, appears to indulge his wife’s whims. Except, he’s not so easy-going, given he puts a bullet in her back when he discovers her making love to one of his colleagues.

Exactly which one remains a mystery for just long enough for the wives to rack up the suspicion level, and all the audience has to go on is the naked arm waving limply trapped under the naked dead weight of the corpse.

You might think, what with Dyan Cannon’s name being top-billed and she quite the rising star after an Oscar nomination for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), that we’re going to flip into a series of flashbacks to accord her more screen time. But, no, all we get is that opening risqué scene and her naked corpse.

Before ER’s creator Michael Crichton came calling a couple of decades later, the surgical profession was mostly represented in formulaic soap opera of the Dr Kildare small screen or The Interns (1962) big screen variety. But author Frank G. Slaughter, himself a practising physician, had made his name with a series of bestsellers that went into the intricacies of surgery and involved genuine medical jargon. So, before the identity of the illicit lover can be revealed, his life has got to be saved – after all he’s got a bullet in his heart. Cue even bloodier surgical shenanigans than kept fans of Mash (1970) hooked.

By the time we discover the victim was Dr McGill any chance of his wife stomping around in a huff at his infidelity is already off the menu because she’s been dallying with an intern.

I won’t go into all the all-round marital strife – triggered by alcoholism, drug addiction, infertility, ambition – that allows Oscar winners and nominees to try and act their way out of trouble because this picture has another absolute zinger to throw at you.

The murderer blackmails all four doctor pals for having a fling with his wife. To that cool $100,000 he adds quarter of a million from Lorrie’s wealthy dad Jake (Ralph Bellamy) for agreeing to make no claim on his wife’s estate. You kind of wonder what the heck use is all this dosh going to be in the slammer or Death Row. But that’s before you consider the zinger.

Mort’s a specialist and there happens to be a young patient desperate for his surgical skills. Young lad is son to head operating nurse Helen (Diana Sands) who is having an affair with Dr Brennan. So, a deal is done – you can’t wait for this humdinger, can you – wherein the D.A. is agreeable to release Mort from custody so he can perform this emergency operation while Dr Brennan and Jake – wait for it – agree to help him escape abroad.

As everyone knows you can’t tell one masked surgeon from another, so the first part of the plans works and while the cops keep a close eye on the fake Mort as he emerges from the operating theater the real Mort escapes in a parked car with the keys in the ignition. Except Jake isn’t quite a dumb or gullible as Dr Brennan and removes the keys so the killer can’t escape. Which was a shame because this picture could have gone on for another bonkers 20 minutes or so watching Mort outwit the cops.

As it is, there’s more than enough to fill in the time. Amy, something of a clothes horse with an extraordinary array of clothes and especially hats, goes all slinky in what looks like day-glo leggings to perform a bizarre seduction on her husband. Which elicits the movie’s best line, Nurse Helen complaining, “I don’t appreciate you sleeping with your wife.”

Unbeknownst to her, Lorrie has a female disciple who seduces every male in sight for research purposes, tape-recording every moment of the activity, so her victims are pretty much always in the coitus interruptus position.

And I can’t let you go without mentioning that Lorrie was also bisexual and counted among her conquests Della.

Except for the unlikely success of The French Connection later in the year which offered a different route in top-billing, Gene Hackman, had he continued taking on roles like this, might have ended up a perennial third potato. Bear in mind he already had two best supporting actor nominations in the bank when, third-billed, he took this on. Maybe he never read the whole script. Maybe this was the best offer going.

He’s not even the best thing in it. Too earnest for a start. Husband-and-wife murderer-victim tag team John Colicos (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969) and Dyan Cannon take the honors. Directed by George Schaefer (Pendulum, 1969) and scripted by Daniel Taradash (Castle Keep, 1969). .

An absolute hoot.

Juror # 2 (2024) ****

Last hurrahs are rarely as sweet. But I’m beginning to wonder if the Warner Brothers very restricted U.S. domestic release isn’t a clever publicity ploy. You know the kind, attract the ire of critics who like nothing better than painting studios in a bad light and hope for a tsunami of social media outpourings. It’s now beginning to look more like a standard platform release, the kind employed to win Oscar favor.

Directors are often declared geniuses because they have a particular facility with visuals, can use the sweep of the camera or a particularly vivid composition, tackle controversial subjects, or build up a distinctive oeuver by returning again and again to a theme or genre. This is well outside Clint Eastwood’s comfort zone. For a start he’s not acting in it, it’s not a western and it doesn’t concern on-screen violence of any kind. His most common screen persona was of the man with a past trying to live a quiet life who is roused into anger and violence.

*WB has been sparing on the poster front but you may notice a certain visual*
*similarity between this old poster and the new one.*

There’s none of that here. In fact, this all seems deliberately damped down. The tale is not told in faux documentary style and there’s no grandstanding. And yet this is one of the best directed movies I’ve ever seen. With no scene-stealing, it flies, and when it lands it’s with a thoughtful air. Just when you think it’s going to head off in he direction of one of two cliches – the high-risk pregnant wife giving birth at a dramatic juncture in the trial, or some zealous cop undertaking an equally dramatic last-minute investigation that tips the trial ass over tip – it damps down on those two.

The set up is ingenious. Recovering alcoholic Justin (Nicholas Hoult) discovers in the course of the murder trial on which he is a juror that he not only knows more about the incident in which the girlfriend of accused is killed, he may even be the accidental cause of her death. On the night in question he was nursing a drink in a bar and noticed the couple having an argument. Driving home on a wild and stormy night, he has a recollection of hitting something, knows it’s not, as he told he told partner Allison (Zooey Dutch), a deer.

Because, after several years of sobriety, he should never have been in a bar in the first place, and because there’s no evidence to the contrary – a field sobriety test should he have reported the incident – it’s automatically assumed that he would have consumed the whisky he bought in the bar. The hint of DUI would condemn him to 30 years in prison and not the new life as a father he has fought hard for.

*Hello darkness would be the design theme*.

So, in a ironic twist on Twelve Angry Men (1957), he’s the only person who stands up for the accused, but out of guilt rather than as with Henry Fonda an uplifted sense of morality. Guilt has certainly struck deep. For it’s insane for him to fight for the man’s innocence, to even raise questions of doubt, when everyone else is convinced he’s the killer. If the man is convicted, Justin will be let off. A hung jury might be a better outcome. A second trial would likely still end in conviction, as the circumstantial evidence and the accused’s drug-running background count against him, but at least Justin will not blame himself for sending an innocent man to prison.

The thing is, we don’t want Justin to be guilty. It’s an accident. Could have happened to anyone. At worst, had he fessed up at the time he would be cleared of any accusation of DUI, given the benefit of the doubt, what with the driving conditions and the fact that the victim was inebriated. He’s turned his life around. He adores his wife and looks forward to fatherhood.

He’s not the only one conflicted. Some of the jurors just want the trial over as fast as possible to get back to more pressing domestic issues. One character is dead set against anyone with anything to do with drugs. Overworked prosecutor Faith Killibrew (Toni Collette) is more concerned with a political future, running for district attorney. Ex-detective Harold (JK Simmons) commits the grievous sin – for a juror – of doing a bit of investigation on his own and is chucked off the jury.

What little information he does collect ends up with Faith. As a prosecutor she wants people put away, not let off. And she’s amassed sufficient evidence against the accused to get him sent down. So she’s not inspired with a desire for justice, the kind of firebrand character that would turn up in any other courtroom drama, digging away for an eternity, refusing to accept guilt as presented. She’s not a beacon for doing the right thing. Rather, the kind of person who doesn’t like the idea of nagging doubt upsetting her well-ordered life.

Given how many Clint Eastwood pictures end in violent showdown, perhaps his biggest directorial coup here is finishing the picture without that episode, it’s more reminiscent of the scene in American Gangster (2007) where Denzel Washington emerges from church to be confronted by a battalion of cops.

Couple of flaws – forensics so derelict there’s no suggestion that the blunt instrument that killed the victim could be a car is explained away by overworked scientists. That Faith doesn’t notice the photos of Justin sprayed around the house of Allison during her investigation reveals just how cursory a box-ticking exercise the detection is in her eyes.

Most of this plays out in the tortured eyes of Justin and in the unseen mind of Faith. With Justin, conflict is upfront, with Faith buried deep, laboriously roused from slumber.

Apart from Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult, reunited after over two decades from their mother-and-son turn in About a Boy (2002), there is some distinctive playing – though under-playing would be more appropriate – from JK Simmons (Whiplash, 2014) and Kiefer Sutherland (The Lost Boys, 1987).

The boldness of the narrative – debut from screenwriter Jonathan Abrams – takes your breath away, avoiding the obvious route of concentrating on the innocent man, or on devious counsellors (all is played straight here) and the usual courtroom theatrics.

Absolutely superb performance from Hoult, who virtually has to do everything through his eyes. Had he been more over-the-top, Oscar would certainly have come calling, but deprived of that it’s an even more convincing performance. The low-ball direction swings this into a different class of courtroom picture, putting the audience in the situation of wanting the “bad guy” to get off.

Go see. Let Clint make you day (for likely) one last time.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965) ****

Steve McQueen had little trouble identifying with this role. He was the Hollywood contender, trying to knock current kingpin Paul Newman off his perch, and in Norman Jewison’s tense, often heart-stopping, drama he has the ideal vehicle. For the most part this is a winner-take-all face-off, as much a showdown as any western shootout, in darkened rooms under the harsh light of a New Orleans poker table between a rising star always referred to as The Kid (Steve McQueen) and the unofficial world champion, the urbane cigar-smoking Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson).

Broadened out in the initial stages to include scenic diversions – the Mississippi at dawn, a cockfight, some jazz – plus romance and intrigue, this is essentially pure sport, a game of stares, where bluff holds the ace and women exist on the perimeter only to fill in the time before the next hyped-up encounter. There’s no trophy to be won, not even glory, just the right to call yourself “the man.” The Kid feels the pressure of punching above his weight, Lancey of getting old.

Farmer’s daughter and arty-wannabe Christian (Tuesday Weld) is the Kid’s main squeeze until she gets between him and his game. When she takes off, he makes do with Melba (Ann-Margret), girlfriend of dealer Shooter (Karl Malden) somewhat preoccupied with giving the Kid more than a helping hand to satisfy the vengeful Slade (Rip Torn), a rich businessman.

Although it finally comes down to a confrontation between the Kid and Lancey, subordinate characters like sweating poker player Pig (Jack Weston) and stand-in dealer Ladyfingers (Joan Blondell) help dissipate the tension. But in fact anything that occurs only seems to increase the tension as it comes down to the one big final hand.

This is McQueen (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) in transition, from the loner in The Great Escape (1963) to an actor exuding charisma and on top of his acting game. While on the face of it little more than a sporting lug, the Kid is an appealing character, engaging with a little shoeshine boy, winning over Christian’s truculent parents with what appears a card trick but is actually a demonstration of the phenomenal memory necessary to excel in his chosen field. There’s a winsome child in there among the macho persona. The poker face that McQueen developed would become one of his acting traits over the years.

Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves, 1960) gives a rounded performance as the reigning poker champ accepting emotional loss as the price for all his financial gains. Tuesday Weld is an appealing waif. Karl Malden (Pollyanna, 1960) essays another tormented soul and Rip Torn (Sol Madrid, 1968) a sleazy one. Also look out for a host of great character actors including Jack Weston (Mirage, 1965), Oscar nominee Joan Blondell (Advance to the Rear, 1964) and Jeff Corey (Once a Thief, 1965) plus composer and bandleader Cab Calloway.

Ann-Margret (The Swinger, 1966), all eye-shadow and cleavage, is in her best man-eater form. But, thankfully, there is more to her character than that. It is unclear whether she simply latches on to a potential winner or is pimped out by Shooter, but just hooking up with him makes her interesting, since looks are far from his attraction. Her ruthlessness is spelled out in simple fashion. She is determined to win, even at solitaire and she slams the wrong pieces into a jigsaw just for the satisfaction of making it look complete. You can sense depth in this character which the film does not have time to fully explore.

Although often compared to The Hustler (1962), and in many eyes considered both its inferior and a crude rip-off, this is in some respects a greater achievement. At least in The Hustler, there actually was action, players moving around a pool table, clacking balls racing across the surface. Poker is all about stillness. Any gesture could give away your thoughts. Unlike any other sport, poker requires silence. There is no roaring crowd, just people slotted round the room, some with vested interest if only through a wager, some wanting to say they were there when a champion was toppled.

So the ability to maintain audience interest with two guys just staring at each other, interspersed with minimal dialog, takes some skill. Building that to a crescendo of sheer tension is incredible.

The first four pictures of Canadian director Norman Jewison (Send Me No Flowers, 1964) did not hint at the dramatic chops, confidence, composure and understanding of pacing, especially as he was a last-minute replacement for Sam Peckinpah, to pull this off. That he does so with style demonstrated a keen and versatile talent that would come to the boil in his next three films: The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

The former blacklisted Ring Lardner Jr. (Tracy-Hepburn comedy Woman of the Year, 1942) was credited with his first screenplay since The Forbidden Street in 1949 and he shared the chore with another iconic figure, Terry Southern (Dr Strangelove, 1964), basing their work on the original novel by Richard Jessup. Mention should be made of a terrific score by Lao Schifrin.

Gripping.

Check out the Blog for both a Behind the Scenes article on this film and a Book into Film article.