Drama – The Magnificent 60s

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.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) ***

Forget swashbuckling shenanigans in the Captain Blood (1935) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) vein, this has more in keeping with Lord of the Flies (1963) as a bunch of third-rate pirates get more than they bargained for after kidnapping a bunch of English children.

The pirates are clever enough when required, using the ruse of pretending to be a ship in distress to defeat an enemy, capable of torturing a captured captain into revealing concealed treasure, or hiding from pursuit by disguising the masts with palm leaves, but generally short on intelligence. That the kidnapping is unintentional, no sensible pirate wanting the British Navy breathing down its neck, gives an indication of the mentality of Captain Chavez (Anthony Quinn) and his mate Zac (James Coburn). Nor are the children Disney-cute and far from being petrified they see it as a great adventure while the crew are superstitious about having the youngsters aboard.

The kids have great fun running rings round the pirates, stealing Chavez’s hat, climbing the rigging, and ringing the bell, while turning round the ship’s figurehead provokes another bout of superstition. When the kids are eventually imprisoned in a rowboat to prevent upsetting the crew they still manage to do so by playing a game that the crew take too seriously.

An attempt to abandon the children on the island of Tampico fails when the oldest boy John (Martin Amis) dies by accident. The children are unperturbed by his death, the only question raised is who can have his blanket. Much to his surprise Chavez discovers he has a strong paternal side, protective when he discovers that one of his captives is a young woman rather than a child, and going against the wishes of his crew when he tends to a knife wound on Emily (Deborah Baxter).

The children are far more grown-up and matter-of-fact than the childish crew, consumed by superstition, and Chavez, consumed by emotion. Although there is considerable comedy to be had from the children’s endeavors, it’s largely an adult film about children. In general, they don’t react the way they would in a Disney picture, nor in the manner which many adults would expect. The sexual tension of the book is considerably underplayed. But the fact that the adults are brought into harm’s way by sheer folly, and their reactions to life are essentially childish, creates a contrast with the more savage attitudes of the children. Emily essentially exposes Chavez’s guilty conscience.

While there is ambivalence aplenty, the depths the book explored go unexplored here, much to the benefit of the picture. The movie dances a tightrope as the children who would otherwise expect to trust an adult grow to learn how to distrust, a rather sharper lesson in growing up than they might have anticipated from their middle-class innocent lives.

Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers, 1955) excels in ensuring the tightrope remains in place while taking advantage of the opportunity for comedy, the realization that this adventure is far from fun only becoming gradually apparent.

Anthony Quinn (Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) reins in his tendency to ham things up, and his development from unbridled pirate to responsible adult is an interesting one. James Coburn (Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, 1966) reins in the flashing teeth and reveals a more ruthless side than his captain anticipated. Deborah Baxter (The Wind and the Lion, 1975) is easily the pick of the kids although future novelist Martin Amis with his trademark sneer gives her a run for her money.

Lila Kedrova (Torn Curtain, 1966) appears as a brothel madam, Nigel Davenport (Sebastian, 1968) as the father and Gert Frobe (Goldfinger, 1964) as the captured captain. The cast also includes Dennis Price (Tamahine, 1963) and Vivienne Ventura (Battle Beneath the Earth, 1967).

Stanley Mann (Woman of Straw, 1964), Ronald Harwood (The Dresser, 1983) and Denis Cannan (Woman of Straw) wrote the screenplay based on the celebrated Richard Hughes novel.

Ella McCay (2025) **

I should have taken notice of the horrific opening weekend for Ella McCay – just $2 million return on a $35 million budget. But it seemed unfair to ignore a new picture by the Oscar-winning writer-director of Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987) and As Good As It Gets (1997). Maybe I should have taken into account his cinematic rustiness, this is his first picture in 15 years, though that’s leavened by the fact he’s not exactly been prolific, including this a career spanning just eight pictures, so this could just be another gem a long time in the making.

Alas, no. It’s an unholy mess. From the set-up it presents as an expose of politics in the sharply satirical manner of Broadcast News. But all we learn about politics is the amount of time politicians spend drumming up money from sponsors in boiler rooms filled with begging employees working the phone and that be careful who you choose as a running mate because if the top person dies or – in this case – gets promoted, you’re left with someone nobody voted for and who has such little grasp of the humans she’s meant to be working for that in her ideological frenzy she bores everyone to death.

This looks as if it started one way and went another. A simple plot device could have been used to explore the problems of politicians squaring family lives with duty. Ella McCay (Emma Mackey) – promoted to governor of an unnamed state because the incumbent, Bill (Albert Brooks), is promoted elsewhere – has been caught out using a room in the government building to have lunchtime sex with restaurateur husband Ryan (Jack Lowden).

This might have done wonders for her career, given she’s such a stuffy uptight lady, and the issue would have deserved no more than a mild slap on the wrist for illicit use of government property, and highlighted the problems of work-life balance in the business. Instead, it’s forced to do triple duty in a bizarre manner.

A journalist with so little grasp of politics is dumb enough to think this is actually an expose worth blackmailing someone over. And a politician with so little grasp of PR is dumb enough to think this poses a threat. And a husband with probably a very good grasp of how business works tries to pay off said journalist only for the whole farrago to explode in everyone’s face and result in a vengeful husband instigating divorce proceedings and blaming her for the bribery.

Oh dear, these bad men damaging a young woman’s promising career. Except the head of her political party calling her to book is a woman and it’s Ryan’s mother who puts him on collision course with his wife. Ella is just tone-deaf to everyone except herself. In her inauguration speech she fails to thank Bill or her husband and in her first meeting with her staff drones on for so long fails to notice they are falling asleep.

*Reminder of just how good James L. Brooks could be*.

It’s not just Ella who’s tone-deaf it’s the director. There’s a just terrible scene where having decided to spend the night at her brother’s apartment she fails to notify her police guard and then blasts them in the morning for watching over her overnight and wasting taxpayer’s money by clocking up overtime and this is presented as if in fact her anger is proof of her innate goodness.

Rammed into this bizarre concoction is estranged dad Eddie (Woody Harrelson) whom Ella refuses to forgive for his womanizing – and in fact the only scene that actually carries any heft is the one where as a teenager she refuses to play the happy family game when he’s been caught out in a misdemeanor.

Oh, and while we’re at it, her brother Casey (Spike Fearn), an agoraphobic computer geek who happens to pocket $2 million a year on a spread betting hustle, is on hand to listen (unwillingly it has to be said) to her self-justifying rants and effort is put in to justifying his continued presence in the picture with a dumb plugged-in romance.

The main problem is that mostly Ella is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, constantly whining, bursting into tears (or screaming – the apparent alternative) and what sets out to show how women are constricted in politics actually instead reveals how someone constitutionally unfit for the hard graft of politics becomes a liability. But, wait, hooray, she does good in the end.

Everyone overacts. So there’s no excuse except directorial slackness for usually dependable actors like Woody Harrelson (Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, 2025) and Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl, 2024) and for Emma Mackey (Emily, 2022), face in constant fidget, inexperience might mitigate. Jack Lowden (Tornado, 2025), done no favors by the script, and veteran Albert Brooks (Concussion, 2015), in his first movie in a decade, are better, but that’s not saying much.

Just awful. American moviegoers were right to give this a body swerve.

Medium Cool (1969) ***

Self-important essay on the self-entitlement of journalists who see themselves as victims, hated by the authorities whose activities they expose and hated by the public for being so cold-blooded – it opens with a television cameraman getting footage of dead people in a car crash before phoning for an ambulance – and for filming stuff that genuine victims did not want filmed.

Filmed in cinema verite style and covering much of what went down in Chicago 1968 when demonstrators clashed with police and the National Guard and tanks rolled through the streets. Certainly strikes a contemporary chord when filming is an universal pastime and many criminals have been brought to book and various issues highlighted by social media.

As if making its point about action and controversy versus talking heads, the movie begins with talking heads, discussing the role of television and journalism in society, with cameramen telling stories of occasions when the public they were trying to help turned on them. The narrative is slight, following television cameraman John Cassells (Robert Forster) going about his business, and betraying girlfriend Ruth (Marianna Hill) with single mother Eileen (Verna Bloom). John is fired after objecting to his television station handing over to the cops and the F.B.I. footage he has filmed of demonstrations and incidents.

Because of the documentary style, much of what has been filmed carries particular resonance as a sign of the times, not so much the police violence because that is widely available elsewhere, but simpler scenes that seem far truer to life. Eileen’s son Harold (Harold Blankenship) is interviewed by an off-screen canvasser about his home life, age, brothers and sisters and so on. Questioned about his father, he explains his father is not at home. “Where would I find him?” asks the interviewer. “Vietnam.”

The boy’s mother Eileen, a teacher who has to manage five grades in one classroom, and John are skirting round the physical side of their romance until jokingly John takes the plunge. “I know your husband’s not going to come charging through the door.” “Buddy’s dead.” The director could already have delivered this information to the audience in talking-heads-fashion but this carries probably the biggest dramatic punch in the picture. This family provides a solid core for a movie which makes its points in more hard-hitting style.

Questions of respect and ethics loom large. Making no bones about finding audience-grabbing material, John is disgusted that people steal hubcaps and the radio antenna from his car when clearly he feels news journalists should be given more respect. But that the public hold an opposite view is clear from Ruth who instances turtles filmed going the wrong way after nuclear explosion distorted their instincts and they went inland to lay their eggs (where they would die) rather than out to sea. She complains that none of the cameramen present thought to turn the turtles round and show them the correct way.

A plot point allows Eileen and John to mingle with the demonstrators during the actual Democratic Convention. There is a shock – and ironic – ending in which John is himself photographed by a passerby after being involved in an accident.

Robert Forster (Justine, 1969) carries off the arrogant victimized reporter well and in her debut Verna Bloom (High Plains Drifter, 1973) is excellent as the real victim of the system while Mariana Hill (El Condor, 1970) raises the tempo as the volatile girlfriend. Peter Boyle (Taxi Driver, 1976) has a small part.

Oscar-winning cinematographer for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Haskell Wexler (who also wrote the script) makes a notable debut as director, mixing fact and fiction, taking a political stance and introducing a revolutionary camera technique. Half a century on, not much has changed in attitudes to media ethics although it is another photographic revolution via social media that is leading the discussion in what takes top billing in terms of news. Its content has led the film to be seen as a landmark of the cinema.

The Hustler (1961) ****

You get the impression this is the kind of movie that contemporary “visionary” directors think they are making when they focus on an unlikeable obsessive character causing chaos all around. It’s not just star quality they are missing – who wouldn’t give their eyeteeth for a Paul Newman to get behind a movie with poor commercial prospects, especially one tackling a sport that is guaranteed to put off the female element of the audience. Without Newman’s involvement you didn’t have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near the female audience.

And this was quite a different Paul Newman. In the first of his iconic roles, he’s far from the traditional hero. He’s an obsessive loner. But you are drawn towards him because of both the intensity and vulnerability of this character. He could as easily be the loser, the last thing an audience wants, he’s often accused of being, the bottler looking for an excuse for not going the extra mile it takes to win. And even when he does win, triumph comes with loss, of love and his avowed profession.

And it takes a heck of a confident director – Robert Rossen (Lilith, 1964) – to lock us into the dark prison of a pool room for virtually the first 30 minutes of the picture. If you don’t know the rules of American pool – as opposed to billiards and snooker – you’re not going to learn them here. “Fast” Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) has spent years on the road, hustling in small town poolrooms, to built up the kind of cash stack he requires to take on the greatest name in pool, Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) whose unbeaten run stretches back a decade and a half.

And the movie should be over in that first half hour – or at the very least turned into a very different kind of picture, the one where the champ squanders his fortune – because Felson has thumped Fats. He’s $18,000 ahead at one point. In any other sport that should be mean he’s not just won but he’s won in style. Except it doesn’t work that way here. Fats has to concede. And Fats won’t concede because this is a marathon and despite his bulk Fats is better built for a 40-hour match than his slimmer opponent. And so it proves.

Felson is back to the beginning, welshing on his business partner Charlie (Myron McCormick) and heading out into the night. Where he meets alcoholic Sarah (Piper Laurie) who’s sitting in a bus station in the early morning sipping coffee until the liquor stores open. She’s not your usual easy pick-up, she knocks him back easily and in an idiosyncratic manner. She nearly does the same again, but relents and they start a relationship that’s built on nothing except ships passing in the night. She’s a lush, he’s a has-been. She’s a bit of a cultured lush, reads, writes short stories, but still booze is her first love.

If he’s not down enough, here comes the kicker. Thugs in a poolroom object to being hustled and break his thumbs. But she’s not very maternal and he’s not the kind of man who wants to be looked after in that fashion.

Eventually, he hooks up with another backer, a shady underworld character, Bert Gordon (George C Scott) whose first move is to break up Felson’s relationship, attempting to belittle Sarah, getting her smashed and putting the moves on her as if free sex is part of the deal. Felson gets badly hustled by wealthy Louisville Findley (Murray Hamilton), duped into playing billiards instead of pool, and the potential loss might well have slammed the door on the deal with Gordon. But Gordon gets his pound of flesh, literally, and Sarah, clearly better versed in the ways of the world than Felson, gives in to her lover’s manager and then is so disgusted with herself that she commits suicide.

Felson gains his revenge on both Minnesota Fats and Gordon but at a cost, lover lost, and kicked out of his profession. Victory has never been so negative.

While the acting all round is superb, all four principals plus the director Oscar-nominated, it’s the feel of the piece and the obsessiveness of the characters that resonates. Robert Rossen makes no concessions to the audience. He doesn’t explain the game and he doesn’t, as would be par for the course anywhere else, show how Felson learned how to handle a cue a different way after his thumbs were broken and there’s a distinct lack of the triumphalism that generally comes with the territory.

Behind the Scenes article tomorrow.

Fate Is the Hunter (1964) ***

More like Flight from Ashiya (1964) than Flight of the Phoenix (1965) in that airline disaster triggers flashback rather than contemporaneously finding a solution to the problem, but similar in tone to the more recent Flight (2012) and Sully (2016) where the automatic response of the authorities was to blame pilot error rather than ascertain mechanical malfunction. Unlike the two modern pictures, pilot Jack Savage (Rod Taylor) cannot be interrogated in court because he died in the explosion. So investigator Sam McBane (Glenn Ford) seeks some corresponding incident in the past which might account for the pilot making such a mistake.

Other options face McBane. Sabotage could be the cause since a passenger took out a $500,000 insurance policy days before boarding the twin-engine plane. Bird strike cannot be ruled out after feathers are found in the engine. Or it could be simple misfortune. Three inbound planes all running late prevent the plane returning immediately to Los Angeles and it would have landed safely on a beach except for hitting a temporary structure. But engineers hardly need to pore over the evidence. The fault is staring them in the face. Savage had reported two engines catching fire but the wreckage reveals one engine intact.

However, the only survivor, stewardess Martha Webster (Suzanne Webster) maintains that two red warning lights were flashing, indicating malfunction in both engines. But since she is badly injured and in a woozy state, this is not taken as gospel. So McBane dips into the playboy past of Savage, a buddy, a man with such appeal he can serenade real-life figures as Jane Russell (playing herself). Two occasions highlight the man’s heroic history of emergency landings. So can he be the unreliable character painted by a jilted fiancée (Dorothy Malone) or the drinker who should not have been in a bar so soon before take-off?

The tight-lipped shoulder-hunched humorless soulless McBane, described as “one of the best-built machines” known to man, finds himself questioning his own attitudes as he uncovers more of his friend’s life. But when it comes to the big enquiry, televised, he has no better an explanation to ascribe the unexpected collision of different events than the “fate” of the title. Naturally, that mystical prognosis hardly goes down well with his superiors. Luckily, McBane comes to his senses and suggests a simulation which does, in fact, pinpoint the flaw.

It’s relatively easy to pinpoint the flaw in the picture. Audiences expecting a disaster movie with characters stranded by a crash were disappointed to find that by cinematic sleight-of –hand they were being presented with The Jack Savage Story, which with the larger-than-life character and his various aviation and romantic adventures would easily have made a picture in its own right. Stuck instead with the glum McBane as their guide, who, beyond his steadfastness, does not come into his own until the last 15 minutes, seemed an unfair trick. The explosion of the doomed plane at the 10-minute mark is easily the dramatic highlight and the continued flashbacks rather than adding to the tension often eased it.

With four stars above the title, audiences might have anticipated some kind of four-sided triangle, but the two female stars scarcely appear although Martha has one excellent scene, shocked when asked to don her uniform again, and Sally (Nancy Kwan) enjoys a fishing meet-cute with Savage.

That said, if you accept as McBane as more of a private eye, his surly demeanor fits, and the Savage life story is certainly a fascinating one and the various aviation episodes unusual enough to maintain interest. Glenn Ford (Is Paris Burning?, 1965), his box office sheen waning and about to shift exclusively to westerns, is always watchable but there’s no real depth to the character. Rod Taylor (Dark of the Sun, 1968) is at his most exuberant and that’s no bad thing, and beneath the bonhomie a good guy at heart, but his portrayal provides little of the shade that would make it thinkable he was to blame. Suzanne Pleshette (The Power, 1968) and Nancy Kwan (Tamahine, 1963) are both under-used. Look out for Mark Stevens (Escape from Hell Island, 1963), Jane Russell (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953) in her first movie in seven years, and Dorothy Malone (The Last Sunset, 1961).

Ralph Nelson (Once a Thief, 1965) sticks to the knitting but four scenes stand out: the explosion, Martha’s breakdown at the sight of her uniform, the stewardess during the simulation staring down the plane at the empty seats filled with sacks of sand, and an excellent composition (which Steven Spielberg pays homage to in West Side Story) of a character being preceded into a scene by his very long shadow. Also worth pointing out is that, in almost James Bond style, the opening sequence lasts ten minutes before there is any sign of the credits.

Harold Medford (The Cape Town Affair, 1967) wrote the screenplay based very loosely on the eponymous bestselling memoir by Ernest K. Gann, whose The High and the Mighty had been turned into a hit picture a decade before. The author was so furious with how much the adaptation veered from his biography – which often pointed out the dangers of flying, recurrent pilot death and airplane unworthiness a main theme – that he took his name off the credits, missing out on an ancillary goldmine as the movie, a box office flop, proved a television staple.