Drama – The Magnificent 60s

Dingaka (1964) ****

Whether you appreciate this will depend on whether you were attracted by the prospect of an early offering by South African writer-director Jamie Uys (The Gods Must Be Crazy, 1980) or by the star wattage of Stanley Baker (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) or perhaps by the promise of the salacious. Hopefully, it was the first, because you would be disappointed on the other two counts, Baker not making an entrance until halfway through the picture and not much of an impact thereafter.

Surprisingly relevant due to its depiction of people in the thrall of a higher power – whether you take that in a religious or political context makes little difference – and in the cultural conflict between an indigenous tribe and the “civilized” white man. But there’s also a noir tone here, the fatalism that often prevents the “good criminal” in a noir picture from escaping the judicial consequence of an action that could be seen as moral.

And if you think you know your African music through interpretations by the likes of Neil Diamond and Paul Simon, then here’s a far better introduction. Song is a constant whether for ceremonial purpose, worship, entertainment and work or for making more bearable time spent in jail or hard labor.

And though it’s not spelled out there’s a Biblical element, the old “eye for an eye,” done away with in modern civilization through courtrooms, juries and due process whereby the act of killing is carried out remotely by the state rather than the victim’ relatives.

An African tribesman Masaba (Paul Makgopa), furious at being dethroned after a six-year reign as the local fighting champion, seeks a cure for the loss of prowess from a witch doctor (John Sithebe). He is told to eat the heart of a small child. Soon after the daughter of Nkutu (Ken Gampu) is found dead. The distraught father beats the witch doctor until he points to Masaba. In revenge for Nkutu assaulting the witch doctor, revered as a local god, Nkutu is cursed, resulting in the almost immediate death of his wife.

Nkutu pursues Masaba to the city and strangles him to death. He is taken aback to be arrested since, according to tribal law, he is well within his rights. Of course, that’s at odds with civilized law. When the judge learns of the murder of Nkutu’s daughter and advises that the state would take care of any killing in the way of punishment that had to be done, Nkutu is puzzled. “You must not hang him. He did not kill your child. I must kill him. It is the law.”

It turns out Masaba has survived, giving Nkutu, on meeting him in court, a second chance to kill him, which fails.

“Big hard cynical lawyer” Tom (Stanley Baker), grudgingly doing pro bono work, has his work cut out since Nkutu refuses to give him instruction, is defiantly unremorseful, and can’t provide any proof that Masaba murdered his daughter beyond that “his eyes told me that he killed her.”

But since Nkutu only attempted murder then he gets off with a relatively light sentence, though it still involves back-breaking work. But at least it’s outside, providing the opportunity to escape and go home and kill Masaba properly. Meanwhile, Tom has chanted his tune and tries to help Nkutu by confronting the witch doctor.

Eventually, Nkutu learns the witch doctor was the murderer and despite fear of being eternally cursed challenges the witch doctor’s authority and kills him. And given this takes place away from civilization it’s unlikely that anyone’s going to come asking questions.

Outside of the drama and the culture clash, the director keeps this perpetually interesting by adding in authentic aspects of local life. There’s a milk tree, a man cures hides by spinning them on a rock that dangles from a tree on a rope, access to the otherwise inaccessible witch doctor’s lair on a mountaintop is via a series of vertigo-inducing ladders, prison guards have spears not guns. The use of music adds atmosphere.

And the acting is good, and as a consequence of this Ken Gampu enjoyed a Hollywood career in such films as The Wild Geese (1974) and ended up with over 80 film credits. Stanley Baker’s character is well drawn, exchanging barbs with his wife (Juliet Prowse) his cynicism in part due to the couple’s fertility problems.

Now warned about the limitation of Baker’s involvement, if you are happy to examine the tale as presented – one of struggle against both malicious and just authority – you will be rewarded.

YouTube has a decent print and not one marred with advertisements.

The Wild Angels (1966) ***

Riders stretched out across a sun-baked valley – you could be harking back to the heyday of the John Ford cavalry western instead of the biker picture, the first in the American International series, that sent shockwaves through society and laid the groundwork for the more philosophical Easy Rider (1969) a few years later. Long tracking shots are in abundance. You might wonder had director Roger Corman spent a bit more on the soundtrack, the bikers just worn beads instead of swastikas, and been the victims rather than the perpetrators of violence how this picture would have played out critics- and box office-wise.

The Wild Angels set up a template for biker pictures, one almost slavishly followed by Easy Rider, a good 15 per cent of the screen time allocated to shots of the Harley-Davidson riders and scenery, and a slim plot. Here Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda), trying to recover a stolen bike, leads his gang into a small town where they beat up a bunch of Mexican mechanics, are pursued by the cops, hang out and indulge in booze, drugs and sex, and then decide to rescue the badly-injured Joe (Bruce Dern) from a police station. This insane act doesn’t go well and after Joe dies they hijack a preacher for a funeral service that ends in a running battle with outraged locals and the police.

*One of the weirdest posters of all time – at first sight it looks like Nancy Sinatra is holding the decapitated head of Peter Fonda in front of her.*

There’s an odd subplot, given the lifestyle of freedom and independence, of Monkey (Nancy Sinatra) trying to get a romantic commitment out of Heavenly. Conversely, Heavenly, rejecting the traditional shackles of love, finds himself trapped by grief, eventually and quite rightly blaming himself for Joe’s death, and apparently turning his back on the Angels to mourn his buddy. The decline – or growing-up – of Heavenly provides a humane core to a movie that otherwise takes great pride in parading (and never questioning) excess, not just the alcohol and drugs, but rape of a nurse, gang-bang of Joe’s widow (Diane Ladd), violence, corpse abuse, and wanton destruction.

A ground-breaking film of the wrong, dangerous, kind according to censors worldwide and anyone representing traditional decency, but which appealed to a young audience desperate to find new heroes who stood against anything their parents stood for. In a decade that celebrated freedom, the bikers strangely enough represented repression, a world where women were commodities, passed from man to man, often taken without consent, and racism was prevalent.

Roger Corman (The Secret Invasion, 1964) was already moving away from the horror of his early oeuvre and directs here with some style, the story, though slim, kept moving along thanks to the obvious and latent tensions within the group. If he had set out to assault society’s sacred cows – the police, the church, funeral rites – as well as a loathing of everything Nazi, he certainly achieved those aims but still within the context of a group that epitomized some elements of the burgeoning counterculture.

In retrospect this appears an ideal fit for Peter Fonda, but that’s only if viewed through the prism of Easy Rider for, prior to this (see the “Hot Prospects” Blog) he was being groomed as a romantic leading man along the lines of The Young Lovers (1964). Bruce Dern (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) was better suited, his screen persona possessing more of the essential edginess while Michael J. Pollard (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967) was the eternal outsider.

Rather surprising additions to the cast, either in full-out rebel mode as with Nancy Sinatra (The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, 1966) or hoping appearance here would provide career stimulus as with movie virgins Diane Ladd (Chinatown, 1974) and Gayle Hunnicutt (P.J. / A New Face in Hell, 1968). Sinatra certainly received the bulk of the media attention, if only for the perceived outrage of papa Frank, but Hunnicutt easily stole the picture. Minus an attention-grabbing role, Hunnicutt, long hair in constant swirl, her vivid presence and especially her red top ensured she caught the camera’s attention.

Charles B. Griffiths (Creature from the Haunted Sea, 1961) is credited with a screenplay that was largely rewritten by an uncredited Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, 1971).

Rental Family (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Gaming the system takes on a new meaning in this unlikely hybrid. What sets out to be a hard satire of the rigidity of Japanese culture is compromised by the need to turn it into a feel-good dramedy courtesy of importing American sometime star Brendan Fraser. There’s an awful trade-off here and I think the film suffers as a result of the compromise. I’m no big fan of movies that arrive in my multiplex courtesy of picking up accolades at a film festival, but, as it happened, I only saw print ads for this after I had seen it at a Secret Screening” so had no idea it had actually come via film festivals.

Take the Yank, Brendan Fraser at his puppy-dog best, out of the equation and concentrate on either his boss Shinji (Takehiro Hira) or colleague Aiko (Maru Yamamoto) and you would as easily have come to the same emotionally satisfying conclusion. Sold as a hard-edged indigenous Japanese satire I think it would easily broken out of the arthouse ghetto.

Apart from anything else it’s been, out of desperation I guess, sold as a kind of Mrs Doubtfire, imposter bonding with a young child, but in fact that’s a small part of the overall story, and in trying to make it the central element, goes off-piste.

Let me tell you what a rental family is, in case you are as unfamiliar with the term as I was. Apparently – I looked this up – this phenomenon arrived in Japanese culture in the 1980s and there are about 300 companies currently employing in selling human fraud to various clients.

So if, for example, you are gay but are fearful of denying your parents the opportunity to see you settled in a traditional male/female marriage, then you simply hire a husband for the day of the wedding and then once the ceremony is over you go back to your true love. Or, if, for example, you’d really like to experience your own funeral you can hire an actor to play a corpse while you listen to the nice things people say about you. Or if you want to keep your father, a retired famous actor, think he hasn’t been forgotten you hire an actor to play a reporter to provide him with the adoration you think he deserves.

Or, should you be a single mother and think that will prevent your daughter getting into the school of your choice you simply hire an actor to play the daughter’s long-lost father. That’s taking the helicopter parent to an extreme, I’d say. Still, in between playing all his other roles, which include befriending a geek who likes to visit strip clubs, the aforesaid American actor Philip (Brendan Fraser) drops into the life of the appealing daughter and does the kind of things dads do with young children, hardly much of a stretch since this child is nowhere near the kind of parent-hater she’d be when she hit her teens.

Not much thought has gone into what the idea of the extremely brief appearance of a fake dad will do to a vulnerable child, but hey-ho, that gives Philip the chance to fill the kid in on the realities of life. “Adults lie,” he states crassly and the kid is so desperate to have a dad, she’ll go for a fake one, and doesn’t hate him any more for his cruel deception.

There are some other sections I didn’t really understand. Shinji’s specialty appeared to playing a boss who reduced aberrant employees to gibbering wrecks. It wasn’t clear if this was some kind of fetish – a person who wanted to be screamed at – or a dress rehearsal for an employee who would have to grovel before his employers for embezzlement or somesuch. And it’s not entirely clear why Aiko has to don a blonde wig and sit in a bar and wait for a woman to come in and whack her across the face – a proper slap, one that leaves a bruise – for stealing away (supposedly) her husband.

And it beggars belief that Philip would become so enmeshed in his role of reporter that he would agree to accompany the old actor on a two-day cross-country journey to some shack in the middle of nowhere where the old fella grew up, clearly forgetting that the old fellow’s daughter would be going out of her mind with worry.

But take Philip out of the equation and there’s far more dramatic nuggets as the supporting cast do more than enough to satisfy emotional demand. You might wonder why – except for filling in the time and offering a contrast to Philip’s lonely existence – we are given a glimpse of Shinji’s home life, where his happy wife greets him with a beer and a lovely meal and he can set his son’s troubled mind to rest. But in easily the best scene in the film, we discover wife and son are fakes, that Shinji is living the kind of fantasy he sells.

Structurally, Philip is presented as our window on this odd world. But it jars when he’s seen as putting it right – white savior and all that – and also when you consider he has his own fantasy, paying for love by the hour.

Directed by Hikari (37 Seconds, 2019) who shared screenplay credits with debutant Stephen Blahut.

On oddity for sure, the satire works but the feel-good is limp.

This hasn’t been released yet in Japan – though it premiered some months back at the Tokyo International Film Festival – which has, confusingly, the same acronym as the Toronto International Film Festival, so don’t mix up your TIFFs – and I’d be interested to know how it was received by the public there.

Remember the Titans (2000) ****

Denzel Washington’s breakout movie. An odd statement given he had already appeared in such box office hits as The Pelican Brief (1993), Philadelphia (1993), and Crimson Tide (1995). But in the first two he was second banana to, respectively, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. And only the first topped the magical $100 million mark – though only just – the other two reaping $77 million and $91 million, respectively. But all three had considerable juice – Julia Roberts well into her stride as a box office phenomenon, the AIDs drama courting Oscars, uber-director Tony Scott helming the nuke sub drama – and backed with big marketing dollars

Apart from Washington, Remember the Titans had nothing going for it. Nobody else with any box office marquee. And covering a sport that had little traction in the U.S. and zilch in the global market. North Dallas Forty (1979) with Nick Nolte had hauled in just $26 million, The Program (1993) pairing James Caan and Halle Berry just $23 million, biopic Rudy (1994) $22 million and even the heavyweight Any Given Sunday (1999) helmed by Oscar-winning Oliver Stone and featuring Oscar-winning Al Pacino and a roster of top names could only climb to $75 million.

Remember the Titans hit $115 million, the biggest movie of Washington’s career, the biggest sports movie of all time. And here’s the kicker. None of the characters were instantly likeable. You had a ruthless hardass coach who refuses to listen to advice, the jocks are all spoiled and entitled, even the kids are likely to turn you off. But where recent pictures like Roofman (2025), Marty Supreme (2025) and After the Hunt (2025) leave you with no liking for the characters at the end, here the opposite is true.

Each character has a rival. Incoming college coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) has little time for the man he replaced, Bill Yoast (Will Patton). Incoming Sunshine Bass (Kip Pardue) nettles team captain Gerry Bertier (Ryan Hurst) who in turn clashes with newcomer Julius Campbell (Wood Harris). Even Yoast’s daughter refuses to play nice with Boone’s daughter.

All this plays out against a background of racism. In 1971 T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, has been integrated, a notion largely opposed by the existing white authorities and residents, including Bertier’s mother and girlfriend (Emma) Kate Bosworth who refuses to shake a black hand. Like his daughter, Boone isn’t about to play nice and he proves to be the worst kind of driven coach, pushing his players to more demanding physical levels and punishing them when they don’t grasp his plays.

But he does understand how a team works, that it won’t function as a collection of individuals, no matter how brilliant – and the better the players like Bertier, the only All-American on the field, expect to be treated differently. Bonding, in this instance, forces black and white players to learn about each other’s lives.

And you could say the same about victory. Nothing brings a team together like winning. A successful team crosses all racial boundaries.

So we get the usual last-minute touchdowns, the individuals finding redemption on the field, the cheating and off-field maneuvers, and the “coming together” that was such a big part of Al Pacino’s team in Any Given Sunday.

Music plays a big part, as white players begin to enjoy what they initially view as black music, and as the team take music as their very own bonding exercise, dreaming up a theme song and entering the field of play with an original song-and-dance number.

Denzel Washington is the driving force and the fact that he’s not a do-gooder and is just trying do his job rather than undertaking any wider virtue-signalling remit is what propels the picture. Will Patton (Entrapment, 1999) is solid. Wood Harris (The Wire, 2002-2008) and Donald Faison (Scrubs, 2001-2010) catch the eye. Kip Pardue (Driven, 2001) was the breakout youngster and current box office behemoth Ryan Gosling has a small part.

Under the direction of Boaz Yakin (Safe, 2012), it fairly rolls along as the rivalries develop or are resolved. Written by Gregory Allan Howard (Ali, 2001).

Not a critical hit at the time and still pretty much written off by the media, but picked up a strong head of steam among audiences at the time and since.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

A Place for Lovers (1968) ****

I’ve marked this up since my previous viewing of it. And that’s an exceptionlly rare occurrence. What may not have suited the 1960s audience accustomed to standard boy-meets-girl boy-loses-girl even with whatever complications were available at the time, this should chime more with a contemporary audience seeking more reality and less glorification in a love story.

Not quite the Hollywood romance, too much bellyaching from the male for a start, and a couple of years before Love Story (1971) gave terminal illness a box office shot in the arm, but nonetheless very much an adult love affair and far from deserving a place in the top 50 worst films of all time.

For a start director Vittorio De Sica plays around with audience expectations. This always has the feel of a romance that could end at any time, of characters not quite sure of the other person’s feelings, real love or just sex, the sense of not knowing where this could go, and of where, emotionally, they find themselves. And it begins with confusion, a blaring horn in the background, a close-up of Julia (Faye Dunaway), and then she jiggles around with some bricks in a wall before retrieving a key and finding her way inside a grand though modern Italian pallazo. You’ve no idea why she is here and I guess neither does she.

There’s been no meet-cute and there’s no real intimation of how the attraction began except, judging from a brief flashback, they must have bumped into each other at an airport. That’s my conclusion anyway because the details of the actual meeting are never clarified, like a lot of what subsequently goes on. She hides information from him, he does the same, so for a time feelings are not spelled out. It’s clandestine in all the wrong ways. There’s a separation, a distance, characters often seen in very long shot. Sometimes there are physical barriers between them, a high fence in one instance, as if true intimacy is impossible.

Still no sign of the man she has come to visit. She rescues a stray dog from the town dog collector. It’s an exceptionally grand house, classically designed, marble floors, paintings and artistic artefacts all over the place, but no clutter. When Valerio (Marcello Mastroianni) arrives – it’s his house – he checks the labels on her luggage, presumably finding out her full name, possibly her address, possibly accustomed to lovers providing false information on both counts. We learn he’s a safety-conscious racing driver, a man who requires barriers.

They are on a deadline already. She is only in Italy for a further two days. This is a lie. She has 10 days at her disposal but wants to set the pace, heat up the sexual atmosphere. They make love beside a lake. He takes her to dinner with friends where the entertainment is a lecture on sexual positions shown in art. But after someone suggests a game of what we would these days term speed-dating, he calls an end to the affair, jealous that she would consider spending any time in close proximity to another man.

So that’s it. Grand love affair dead and buried after just one day. Except she turns up next day at a practice at a racing circuit. After they reconcile, she watches in a car mirror as he makes a call in a phone box – speaking to his wife or another lover, we never find out, except her reaction explains it must be either.

There’s little of the sparkling dialog found in Hollywood romances, especially for audiences who grew up on the Tracy-Hepburn pictures, but she tells him that “if you put all the houses I have lived in you would make a good little town” and not just that she had lived a peripatetic lifestyle but that she also had six grandfathers so a rather fluid upbringing. She confesses now she has more time to spare, she just wanted him to ask for it, being stricken by her potential absence an indication in her eyes of true love.

So this is a fragile individual, her smile is always hesitant, external confidence hiding vulnerability. Her face is never flush with passion. When he asks why she never revealed her terminal illness, she replies, “I can’t take any more sad eyes.” There’s an ironic ending.

It is of course set against glorious backdrops but instead of letting the audience wallow in the love affair, as would be the Hollywood temptation, De Sica finds some way of undercutting it. Valerio is never quite sure of her and she is never quite sure of him. Their pasts remain hidden. Their lovemaking beside the lake is interrupted by a hunter bagging game. She coos over a baby only to discover it has an ugly father. She drives too fast even with a racing driver in the passenger seat and she clearly has suicidal tendencies, the love affair almost a salve for her despair.

We could have been presented with the suave charming Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 1960) cliché from a dozen Italian films, but instead he is often jealous, annoyed, real. Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967) plays a character who never knows where she stands with her emotions, accepting her fate one moment, determined to end her life the next, and yet still time to dally in a love affair that of course can have no future.

Vittorio De Sica (Two Women, 1960) has fashioned a picture that is neither uplifting nor downhearted, a love affair that lives just for the moment, but with implied complications that could at any moment wreck it, a romance always teetering on the edge.

I’ve no idea what compelled Harry Medved to include this in The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, published in 1978, but you might easily question his judgement on discovering that his list includes Sergei Eisenstein epic Ivan the Terrible, Alain Resnais’s hypnotic Last Year at Marienbad, Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown, Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn and even such passable entertainments as The Omen.

Maybe you’ve been put off giving this a whirl thanks to the Medved seal of disapproval. A Place for Lovers is not the greatest film ever made, but it’s certainly far from the worst, two striking actors and a director who could never make a terrible picture make sure of that. And, as I mentioned, exerts greater appeal for the contemporary viewer.

No DVD available so you will need to check out Ebay or streaming.

Song Sung Blue (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

So pitch perfect I’m almost tempted to put it up a notch to five stars. It’s hard to find anything that would detract from what was an extremely enjoyable entertainment. They don’t make feelgood movies anymore, certainly not of the innocent Home Alone (1990) variety, because once again we’re back to the William Goldman dictat of “nobody knows anything” meaning nobody knows how movies will perform. Everything these days that might fall into the feelgood category has to have such an edge it removes it from the equation.

Which is not to say this doesn’t feature the hard stuff. It does – and how. But for once it’s about the little people without some director with ideas above their station trying to make a political or artistic point. In my time, I’ve known four part-time musicians. They were the opposite of my expectations. Not because they weren’t drugged-out or drunk, but because they didn’t conform to my idea of musicians hellbent on being creative, writing their own music, failing to get record deals. Nope, these were guys only too happy to play anyone else’s stuff if it meant they could get up on stage and perform, even if that was – most commonly – at a wedding.

So that’s where we are here. I’m not sure if tribute singers and bands are a cut above the musicians who play at weddings if only because they have to perfect their imitations and spend more on costumes.

Car mechanic Mike (Hugh Jackman) has all the makings – the moves, the poses – of a rock star frontman except he’s reduced to performing for a touring tribute outfit run by Mark (Michael Imperioli). He’s got some of the musician’s baggage, a recovering alcoholic and divorced. But he’s still struggling to conform until he meets bubbly hairdresser Claire (Kate Hudson), single mom and glitzy tribute singer. Music, or more precisely their dreams, have, nonetheless, taken a toll on both previous marriages with their offspring driven to truculence.

In the course of romancing her quick-style, Mike convinces Claire to join him to join the backing band of his “Neil Diamond Experience,” with somewhat grand aspirations to “interpret” the famed singer’s music and like a rock star determined to play his faves rather than fan faves, planning to open his set with the more obscure “Soolaimon” rather than the widely popular “Sweet Caroline.”

And while this doesn’t head straight for the trashy side of the business like The Last Showgirl (2024) it’s still in the ballpark of the small-time. Mike’s manager is his dentist (Fisher Stevens), their bookings kingpin runs a dismal bus tour operation, and their first gigs are on the humiliating scale.

Even so, once the music kicks in so does the feelgood factor. And I was just humming along to the numbers, enjoying the tale of the little guy getting his big break (opening a concert for Pearl Jam) when I’m knocked for six by a catastrophe that nobody saw coming.

I half-expected the cinema to be full of football fans given the popularity of “Sweet Caroline” on the football terraces. but like The Housemaid this turned out to be a woman’s picture and once again I was the only male in the house, which, surprisingly, for the first showing on a Monday afternoon was packed.

And the rest of the movie is coping with that disaster. Which should have shifted it into another genre entirely and dipped into the mawkish. But it doesn’t. Director Craig Brewer’s (Black Snake Moan, 2006) grip of the material is so tight he keeps it all very earthbound, giving both Claire and Mike equal time when we hit the recovery home straight. And while we’re rooting for Claire through her ordeal there’s a ticking clock where Mike is concerned. He has serious heart problems.

We only realize just how bad his condition is when Mike starts showing Claire’s daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) how to use a defibrillator just before he falls unconscious. Brewer’s concise use of his material is brilliant. We only learn that Mike was a Vietnam vet when he uses Army planning skills to teach Rachel how to plan for pregnancy.

And I can’t be only fed up to be presented with characters always tinkering with engines without demonstrating that they know a spanner from a wrench. Here, Mike explains to Claire that she’s mend the hole in her oil tank simply by pouring in oil because it contains some kind of mending material. I didn’t know that, I doubt if many in the audience did, but it was a superb way of demonstrating his mechanical knowledge.

There are two other brilliant scenes that epitomize the director’s skill. One, believe it or not, focuses on door-knocking. The other concerns a fire that isn’t a fire – but much worse. But Brewer’s main achievement is weighting this correctly. He doesn’t, as would have been the temptation, hand this on a platter to Claire since she will carry the more obvious emotional heft. Instead, screen-time-wise, it’s pretty much evens.

And although Kate Hudson (Glass Onion, 2022) is attracting all the critical attention, that’s unfair on Hugh Jackam (Deadpool and Wolverine, 2024) who not only holds the stage act together but the family.

One of the other pleasures here is seeing a bunch of supporting actors just being ordinary people, not the slimeballs or weirdos who often go with the territory. I’m talking about Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos, 1999-2007), Jim Belushi (Fight Another Day, 2024) and Fisher Stevens (Coup! 2023). Written by Brewer based on the documentary Song Sung Blue (2008) by Greg Kohs.

A great start to the year.

7 Women (1966) **

This is a very difficult review to write. John Ford has been one of my idols and to some extent when I first became interested in the movies I was force-fed the director, who was considered at the time to be a demi-god. While he has moved up and down in terms of critical acclaim, his westerns have stood the test of time, The Searchers (1956) still considered one of the best ever made and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) fast challenging that dominance.

When he made westerns, he tended to be on safe ground. For other genres, acceptance was more fleeting. I can’t be the only one who was appalled by Gideon’s Day (1958) and found The Last Hurrah (1959) somewhat ho-hum and took Donovan’s Reef (1963) with a large pinch of salt. Even so, it’s with some regret that I have come to the conclusion that his final film, 7 Women, falls not just short of the high standards he set but is a poor picture.

You have to wonder if he was still on the redemption streak that fueled Cheyenne Autumn (1964) and wanted to make amends for by and large reducing women to also-rans in his movies. There are some plus-points. It takes a rawer view of the Chinese missionary movie, this one set in 1935, not just the notion that Chinese rebels would not dare attack Americans but also that such establishments major on the pious and the gentle.

But in turn the constant bitching between the virtually all-female cast turns this into a glorified soap opera. There’s a constant battle between incoming heavy drinking free thinker Dr Cartwright (Anne Bancroft) and prim mission chief Agatha Andrews (Margaret Leighton) whose management style errs on the dictatorial. Cartwright is upbraided for smoking at dinner, bringing booze to the table, not standing for Grace, and worse of all, it would appear, having had sex. While there were further penalty points for taking a married man as her lover, it’s the mere notion of anyone having sex that sets off the over-pious Andrews.

Setting a new bar in the entitlement stakes is pregnant Florrie Pether (Betty Field) who’s coming very late to motherhood – she’s 42 – and was so determined to have a baby it was conceived with two months of marriage to ineffectual second husband Charles (Eddie Albert) and takes to the extreme the idea of pregnancy stimulating odd food needs – in the middle of nowhere in the middle of China she demands melon.

Added into the mix is that standard trope of the Chinese missionary picture, an outbreak of cholera. Mrs Pether can’t come to grips with the notion that the good doctor might have to concentrate on saving patients from plague rather than come running every time the pregnant gal feels the foetus kick.

So while Andrews and Cartwright are scoring points off each other, with the doctor further accused of corrupting the innocent young Emma Clark (Sue Lyon), outside pressures, introduced during the credit sequence but then left alone for way too long, grow. Chinese bandits are on the rampage. Another mission of a rival denomination led by Miss Binns (Flora Robson) turns up seeking refuge and eventually the bandits charge into the compound and demand ransom.

Naturally, such an invasion is going to get in the way of imminent birth, and while Andrews falls to pieces at the thought of sex producing an actual “brat”, it’s left to Cartwright to negotiate with the bandits. In return for cooperation, bandit chief Tunga (Mike Mazurki) demands sex with Cartwright. While such sacrifice only triggers further contempt and denunciation from Andrews, it does provide the other women with free passage out.

Cartwright, left behind, poisons the bandit chief and commits suicide.

There’s a heck of a lot of talk, which seems rather alien to Ford, who directs as if he’s fashioning a stage play rather than a movie, characters arranged almost in a series of tableaux. And the lighting and general atmosphere would have you believe you were watching a western rather than something set thousands of miles away.

Anne Bancroft (The Slender Thread, 1965) looks as if she’s strolled in from a western or a film noir with her tough talking stance and cigarette perpetually dangling and all those slugs from a bottle. Margaret Leighton (The Best Man, 1964) overplays the nervous breakdown and Betty Field (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) is too often in a lather, as if they are in a hysteria competition. Sue Lyon (The Night of the Iguana, 1964) isn’t given enough to do. The other women, since we’re counting, include a more self-aware Flora Robson (Young Cassidy, 1965), Mildred Dunnock (Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962) and Anna Lee (In Like Flint, 1967). Written by the team of Janet Green and John McCormick (Victim, 1961) from the Norah Lofts short story.

Given John Ford went to extremes to place the Native Americans who had so often played the bad guys in his movies in a better light in Cheyenne Autumn, it seems odd he has reverted to instinctive racism here. There’s no suggestion that the bandits might be trying to win their freedom and they are often referred to as degenerate and by that awful epithet regarding their supposed color of “yellow.”

And it’s about time that revisionism was applied to the notion that Christianity had any right to be invading a country that had its own long-established traditions of religion and worship.

Has more of the feel of a Tennessee Williams text gone badly wrong than a John Ford number. Not the swansong the director deserved.

Petulia (1968) ****

A dislocated, fractured film about disjointed, fractured people. Takes a heck of a long time to work what’s going on because director Richard Lester in the elliptical style of the times tells us bits of the story a bit at a time and no guarantee anything is in logical order or that the characters tell the truth about themselves or their actions. And, unusually, outside of a western, all the men appear prone to violence.

Petulia (Julie Christie), a self-appointed “kookie” (in the vernacular of the times) and married for just six months to wealthy naval architect David (Richard Chamberlain), for no reason at all begins an affair with surgeon Archie (George C. Scott) that she encounters at a posh function. Archie, getting divorced for no reason at all except boredom from Polo (Shirley Knight), already has a girlfriend, all-round-sensible boutique-owner May (Pippa Scott). Petulia and Archie may or may not have consummated the affair, she certainly puts him off often enough. Petulia may or may not be the daughter and sister of prostitutes. You see where this is going? Unreliable narrator, par excellence.

A broken rib may be the result of stealing a tuba from a shop. She could have cracked her head open after a dizzy spell. A Mexican boy keeps turning up and, it has to be said, nuns. It’s all very avant-garde: an automated hotel where the key comes out of slot and the fob sets off flashing lights at the bedroom door, the televisions in hospital rooms are dummies, Janis Joplin is the singer in a band, characters viewed in longshot down corridors, up car park ramps, emerging from tunnels.

Eventually the demented jigsaw puzzle comes together but not after a tsunami of overlapping dialog, flash scenes and snippets that have nothing to do with the film. It’s San Francisco so there’s a scene in Alcatraz. But little is constant, every marriage seems on the verge of break-up, even the contented Wilma (Kathleen Weddoes), wife of another surgeon, wishes she had Archie’s courage in ending his marriage.

But Petulia is anything but free-spirited. She is trapped and doesn’t know how to get what she wants. She may be a tad unconventional and big-hearted and occasionally small-minded but once you get to the end of the film and find what she really wants the rest of her behavior makes sense. And although Archie is able to verbalize what he doesn’t want from marriage, the only option open to Petulia is one apparently mad action after another.

Although set in the Swinging Sixties, the male hierarchical system remains dominant. Archie’s ex-wife relies on him for money, David and his father (Joseph Cotten) hold sway over Petulia regardless of her bids for freedom. David is unsavory, his father is willing to provide a false alibi, another surgeon Barney (Arthur Hill) lets loose with a vicious rant and even the harmless soft spoken Archie lets loose on Polo.

Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago, 1965) makes Petulia as irritating as she is endearing, the freedom she expects to embrace in the counterculture impossible to grasp, leaving her only with the vulnerability of the vanquished. George C. Scott (The Hustler, 1961) has forsaken his growling persona, the volcanic screen presence set to one side, to portray a more interesting character, bemused by Petulia but ultimately standing up for her.

There’s an excellent supporting cast in Richard Chamberlain, still in the process of shucking off Dr Kildare (1961-1966), Arthur Hill (Moment to Moment, 1966), Shirley Knight (Flight from Ashiya, 1964) and Joseph Cotten (The Third Man, 1949).

Britisher Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night) was a director du jour who, while fulfilling the expectation of delivering cutting-edge techniques and casting a wry eye on contemporary mores, offered some surprisingly more homely family scenes and for a movie which is so much about the distance between characters many scenes of just touching, Petulia stroking Archie’s hands, Archie stroking is wife’s neck, even when the intimacy they seek is a forlorn hope. The incident with the tuba which would be a meet-cute to end all meet-cutes in other pictures turns into a cumbersome irrelevance. You get the impression that the chopping up of the time frames and the points of view reflects the characters’ feelings that they can impose their own reality on a situation. Lawrence B. Marcus (Justine, 1969) wrote the screenplay from the novel Me and the Arch Kook Petulia by John Hasse.

Check out a Behind the Scenes on this film’s Pressbook.

Marty Supreme (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

I’m sorry to be bursting the bubble of yet another Oscar juggernaut. Once more an outstanding performance just about saves this shaggy dog story, a narrative so rambling if you had dropped King Kong into the plot I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s a mesh of two narratives that just don’t fit. In the first place we’ve got a Paul Newman (The Hustler, 1961) type of hustler in the shape of the titular Marty (Timothee Chalamet) in yet another “sport” (like American pool in The Hustler, not to be confused with the more widely-accepted snooker or billiards) that’s not been recognized by the powers- that-be as a proper sport.

And then we’ve got a standard 1950s slice-of-life drama where everyone is just mean to each other. Marty knocks up his neighbor’s wife Rachel (Odessa A’zion) and refuses to take responsibility in case it gets in the way of his dreams. Out of spite, his uncle Murray (Larry Sloman) arranges for him to be arrested. For a spot of revenge, millionaire benefactor Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) forces Marty to bend over a chair and be beaten on the bare backside by a table tennis paddle. Rachel fakes being beaten up by her husband so that Marty will beat him up in return

And that’s before we get into a smorgasboard of bits and pieces that are either rejects from other screenplays or might well have made a small indie picture of their own such as the the bizarre attempt to extract $2,000 ($25,000 in today’s money) from small-time hood Ezra (Abel Ferrara) for his lost dog, this being a gangster who lives in a fleapit hotel, whom Marty first makes acquaintance with when his bath falls through the ceiling on top of Ezra and dog. This particular episode ends, would you believe, in a shootout of the Quentin Tarantino/Tony Scott intensity.

And that’s before we get into exactly how a posh hotel like the Ritz would fall for a cheap New Yorker in a cheap suit and let him run up a bill not far short of $20,000 in today’s money while he seduces former movie star Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow), wife of Milton. And before Marty sets fire to a bunch of table tennis players he has successfully hustled.

Of course, everyone’s against our darling Marty, the powers-that-be don’t allocate him decent accommodation and ban him from a tournament because he failed to get his notification of attendance in on time, the Japanese guy Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) who beats him must be cheating , and he’s forced to earn a crust by competing against a seal. Given he’s so busy biting the hand that feeds him – stealing a necklace from Kay, trying to shaft Milton, refusing to rush to his mother’s hospital bed – it’s a surprise he’s got any time left for actual table tennis.

The sporting action, what little we see of it, works well. Though the director doesn’t see fit to fill us in on the rules – no idea how many points are needed to win or how many games are in a match though to keep us onside someone occasionally calls out “match point”. However, it is athletic stuff, both players racing around the table.

There’s a mawkish ending which I didn’t for a minute believe.

So what we’re left with as with most of the other major Oscar contenders is a picture’s that’s run away with itself (150 minutes, anyone?) redeemed by a fabulous performance. This is truly one of the all-time greatest performances. In any other world Marty would be a low-life who never got anywhere or perhaps given his line in salesmanship ended up a conman, but here he finds redemption in table tennis.

It’s a testament to Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown, 2024) that we invest so much in this thoroughly unlikeable character and go with the actor all the way. Gwyneth Paltrow (Avengers: Endgame, 2019) is the best of the rest who mostly seem as if they are stock characters from an early Scorsese picture.

But it’s a testament to the lack of studio management that is bankrupting Hollywood that nobody is able to rein in the narrative excesses of director Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, 2019). Written by the director and producer Ronald Bronstein (Uncut Gems) – never a good idea to leave control of a screenplay in the hands of the screenwriter.

Another great performance in a mess of a narrative.

Ship of Fools (1965) ****

Too easily dismissed as soap opera masquerading as a movie making a serious point, this is redeemed and, in some respects, elevated by the performances. If anything, the two political aspects are underdone. The heavy air that hangs over proceedings given the German passengers are heading back to Nazi Germany at the start of Hitler’s reign in 1933 with no idea of the outcome is only there in the audience’s mind. That the racism is underplayed is in part due to the fact that those victimized, a Jew and a disabled man, refuse to act as victims and indeed bond.

The other political aspect, of Spaniards being deported from Cuba for economic reasons, would have more resonance today. But they, too, are heading for consequence and the Spanish Civil War which would break out a few years later. Director Stanley Kramer was noted, indeed often ridiculed, for tackling weighty subjects in movies like The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) and Inherit the Wind (1961). That was tempered somewhat when he went off-piste for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and although that’s generally remembered for its hilarity what’s often overlooked is the director’s dexterity in handling a busload of characters and narratives, his pacing and his understanding of character.

Deduct the comedy and you have a similar approach here, the meshing of various narrative arcs while allowing character to flourish so the general smorgasbord of, if I’m allowed such an obvious notion, ships passing in the night is what gives this more heft. And the fact that the audiences knows more than the characters about what the future holds permits the director just to concentrate of character interaction.

Unusually, for a historical movie of the period, it’s the females who dominate and have the best storylines. The ship is so full that upscale single passengers who might otherwise have the choice of dining alone are thrown together thus divorcee Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh) shares a table with former baseball player Bill Tenny (Lee Marvin).

Their paths unexpectedly cross in unusual fashion. Both are seeking love, though in reality Tenny is happy to settle – and pay for – sex. Mary finds Captain Thiele (Charles Korvin) ignoring her subtle advances while in turn she dismisses the lieutenant. When a drunken Tenny without warning bursts into her cabin, she responds with ardor until she realizes he thinks she’s a prostitute.

La Condesa (Simone Signoret) is a civil rights activist who finds a fellow traveler in Dr Schumann (Oskar Werner). Although, initially, she mines him to feed her opiate addiction, it’s soon apparent they are falling in love, although that doesn’t end well. Not much ends well in the romance department, Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley), while initially supportive of artist David (George Segal), soon realizes that his art will take dominance in their relationship.

The older Rieber (Jose Ferrer), with the most pronounced Nazi sympathies, has taken up with younger blonde Lizzi (Christiane Schmidtmer), among whose physical attractions is that she’s a great table tennis player, until she discovers he’s married.

Flamenco dancer Elsa (Gila Golan) is pimped out by her father Pepe (Jose Greco). Social exclusion leads Jew Lowenthal to bond with Glocken who suffers from dwarfism and when German World War One hero Freytag is forced to join them that permits most of the discussion about the state of Germany.

Otherwise, the fact that a mastiff is permitted to sit at table is more to do with aristocratic entitlement than any other social condition.

For once, Kramer is more interested in character than scoring points. So what might have been heavy going turns into an acting class. To accommodate its portfolio of ageing superstars Hollywood had returned to the subgenre of movies about ageing beauties. Double Oscar-winner Vivien Leigh’s previous outing The Roman Spring of Mr Stone (1961) belonged in that category but this latest reincarnation was a class above, a truly tender examination of loss. However, it was Simone Signoret (The Deadly Affair, 1967) who was Oscar nominated.

Michael Dunn (Justine, 1969) and Oskar Werner (Interlude, 1968) were nominated and while Lee Marvin (Point Blank, 1967) and George Segal (The Bridge at Remagen, 1968) were overlooked the latter two clearly scored points judging by their future acceptance in the Hollywood hierarchy, Marvin in particular alerting the industry to untapped talent, a point made more emphatically in his next picture Cat Ballou for which he won Best Actor. Ship of Fools missed out to The Sound of Music for Best Film. Nominated for eight awards it picked up two, ernest Laszlo for Cinematogrpahy and Robert clatworthy and Joseph Kish foir Art Direction

You might also spot Alf Kjellin (Ice Station Zebra, 1968), Barbara Luna (Firecreek, 1968) and Gila Golan (The Valley of Gwangi, 1969).

Even without the political overhang, this holds together as Grand Hotel on the high seas with Stanley Kramer in his element employing compelling characters to flesh out an interesting narrative. Written by Abby Mann (Judgement at Nuremberg) from the Katherine Anne Porter bestseller.

While the politics add a contemporary veneer, watch it for the acting.