sex – The Magnificent 60s

Landman (2024) *****

The blue collar worker has not taken up much of Hollywood’s time. There was a movie disdainfully called Blue Collar (1978) but the best pictures about people doing actual physical hard work was Five Easy Pieces (1971) about a fella who was putting in the long yards to spite his old man and The Molly Maguires (1968) which was more about politics and anarchy. The British did it better, but concentrating on the monotony, in such ventures as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Gold (1974). though images of anyone getting their hands dirty was fleeting

Generally, films about work are movies or television series about management (Wall St, 1989 or Succession, ) and/or a soap opera (Dallas). Most commonly, there’s a picture about farming – Grapes of Wrath (1940), The River (1984)– but there’s very little farming involved. You get a better idea of what it’s like to till the earth from the recurrent image in Gladiator (2000) when Maximus smells the soil.

Until Taylor Sheridan came along and realized the immense dramatic potential of actual hands-on dirty work and rode Yellowstone (2018-2024) to enormous critical success and sufficient commercial endowment to be able to write his own ticket. I rarely buy DVDs these days, not because I’ve already got thousands of themd, but because that old impetus is long gone, the days when we desperately waited for a movie to turn up at the video rental store, one that you couldn’t otherwise get your hands on or missed on its cinema release, one that you wanted to own so you could watch it again and again.

Now I tend to buy DVDs if I don’t have a subscription to a particular streamer. I did it for Yellowstone and I did it for this Taylor Sheridan enterprise Landman.

On the face of it, this might seem like another oil or big business venture where the emphasis is on wheeling and dealing and heirs fighting over money and how to spend it and everyone just the hell arguing because that’s instant drama. The element devoted here to wheeling and dealing is negligible, restricted to oil tycoon Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), one whisky away from a heart attack, at the other end of a phone getting agitated and taking out his frustration on anyone in sight.

Instead, it’s about very dirty work, the kind where workmen come home saturated in filth and the kind where you could in a flash lose your hand or your life. There have been four instantaneous deaths so far and I’m only at episode six of Series One. We’re not in the all-action Hellfighters (1968) business of quelling fires, but in the dull maintenance part of ensuring that wells with 35 years accumulated wear and rust are kept going.

*I might have to buy into Paramount+ to catch the second series.*
*Don’t think I could wait for the DVD.*

It’s the job of Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) to make sure these wells keep producing and all it takes is a stray spark or a moment’s lack of concentration and the coffins are mounting up. Along the way, we are brought up to speed on how the oil business works – or doesn’t.

Exposition used to be a hell of an issue for screenwriters until those Game of Thrones dudes invented “sexposition” where acres of naked flesh kept the audience awake through the dull stuff. Here, however, Sheridan manages something of a coup by having Monty or Tommy gush like oil wells while setting others right about the business.

This series kicks off with an oil tanker tearing along at 60mph crashing into small airplane that’s parked on a road to disburse its cargo of drugs. And that triggers two increasingly fraught, sometimes thrilling, elements. First, we’ve got the drug dealers seeking revenge and recompense. Secondly, you’ve got legal repercussions in the shape of the all-time Jaws of a lawyer Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace) and how Tommy has to snake through the vagaries of the law, not, for example, pursuing thieves who steal the company’s planes or tankers to shift their ill-gotten gains because the law will invariably impound such items of transport for the couple of years it takes to get a case to court and because the drug dealers are only borrowing them for a short period and return them after use.

On top of that, Tommy is trying to blood son Cooper (Jacob Lofland) into the business, starting off as a roughneck, while turning up out of the blue are glamorous ex-wife Angela (Ali Larter) and daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), who views philanthropy as a tax dodge.

There’s some terrific humor from Tommy’s housemates Dale (James Jordan) and, mostly in reaction shots, Nathan (Colm Feore).

You won’t have seen any of these storylines before, not even the returning wife and daughter, because all the characters are so original and the performances so powerful. Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa 2, 2016) has eschewed all his acting tropes, dumped the sarcasm and temper tantrums, and instead plays a weary debt-laden foreman who fails to resist the lure of his trophy wife.

I remember Ali Larter from such unchallenging fare as the original Final Destination (2000) so she is something of a revelation. While Angela is as vapid as any other trophy wife, majoring on shopping and looking good, actually she’s an education in how an ageing trophy wife stays the course. She is a fabulous cook, for starters, and she puts in the hours at the gym to keep trim. But she’s also a manic depressive and so her emotions spin on the toss of a coin, extremely charming, not to mention endearing, one minute, a venomous snake the next. This is a performance reverberating with depth that should qualify for an Emmy.

Jacob Lofland (Joker, Folie a Deux, 2024) is Gary Cooper reborn. The stillness, the reticence, and yet when necessary, taking no prisoners. He’s way out of his depth not just with the crew he’s landed with, but in unexpected romance with young widow Ariana (Paulina Chavez). But that’s not the last of the star-making turns. Kayla Wallace (When Calls the Heart series, 2019-2025) is phenomenal as the ball-busting lawyer eating up misogyny for breakfast and heading for a showdown with anyone in sight. Sassy Michelle Randolph (1923 series, 2022-2025) has many of the show’s best lines.

And that’s before we come to Jon Hamm (Mad Men series, 2007-2015) and Demi Moore in a more believable role than The Substance (2024). And the simple earworm of a score by Andrew Lockington (Atlas, 2024).

Truly original and riveting.

Where It’s At (1969) ****

There is probably no more stunning definition of Las Vegas than the brief shot in this otherwise widely-ignored film of a woman playing the slot machines with a baby at her naked breast.

I doubt if anybody has watched this all the way through in the fifty-odd years since its release. And I can see why. I nearly gave up on what I thought was a lame generation gap comedy. But some distinguished directors at the time clearly perceived its value, the flash cuts and overlapping dialog initiated here turning up, respectively, in Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) and Mash (1970). And as I gamely persevered, I realized it was a different movie entirely, a cross between Succession and The Godfather.

Though saddled with a trendy catchphrase of the period for a title – though making more sense if applied in ironic fashion – the original title of Spitting Image was much more appropriate to the material. As both veteran and new Hollywood directors struggled with understanding the burgeoning counter-culture, youth-oriented efforts of the Tammy and Gidget and beach pictures variety fast fading from view, and Easy Rider (1969) yet to appear, a generational mismatch between Hollywood veterans and younger audiences was in evidence.

And you would hardly turn to Garson Kanin to capture the zeitgeist. Although acclaimed as a screenwriter, with wife Ruth Gordon responsible for a string of Tracy-Hepburn movies like Adam’s Rib (1949), he had not directed since 1941. The story he wanted to put over – he wrote the script as well – was not an easy sell. So he’s disguised it as a coming-of-age tale exploring the generation gap and as a lurid expose of Las Vegas with behind-the-scenes footage of the reality underpinning the glamour.

It’s pretty clear early on it’s not about some middle-aged parent getting jealous over the amount of sex his child has, for widowed casino owner A.C. (David Janssen) can have as much as he wants courtesy of fiancée Diana (Rosemary Forsyth) – and a wide range of available and eager-to-please showgirls – and certainly far more than the majority of his male customers whose biggest thrill is gawping at topless women on stage. Las Vegas was the epitome of Sin City, at the beginnings of its sacred position in American popular culture where what you got up to remained secret. The representation of the “showgirl” world is less brutal than in Showgirls, but even so an audition includes removing your bra.

A.C. wants to introduce son Andy (Robert Drivas) into the business not realizing he is laying out a welcome mat for a viper. At first Andy is happy to learn the ropes by working in menial positions and wise enough to resist obvious lures like showgirl Phyllis (Edy Williams), whose interaction with him is recorded. However, when like Michael Corleone, he is required to make his business bones – “pay your dues and stop your whining” – by transporting cash skimmed from the business and banked in Zurich back home, where if caught he will have to take the rap, a more calculating and dangerous individual emerges. A.C. has been working a Producers-type scheme where by massaging profits downwards he hopes to panic his investors into offloading their stock cheaply to him.

The ploy works but it turns out his partners have sold their stock to Andy, who hijacked the Zurich cash to pay for it. Rather than chew out Andy, A.C. is delighted at the ruthlessness of the coup, until his son, now holding the majority of shares, takes complete control, easing him out – “If I need you, I’ll send for you.” Andy’s prize could easily include, had Andy showed willing, the duplicitous Diana. However, that’s not the way the picture ends and I won’t spoil the rest of the twists for you.

This is one of the few genuine attempts to show the pressure under which businessmen operate. No wonder A.C. is so glum, barking at everyone in sight, little sense of humor, when the stakes are so high and as with any game of chance you might lose everything. Employing indulgence to insulate himself against emotion, he is surrounded by what he deduces is the best life can offer, driven by mistaken values. Optimism is the automatic prerogative of youth, pessimism the corrosion that accompanies age.

The second half of the picture has some brilliant brittle dialog. Assuming the young man has principles, when his acceptance of the Las Vegas dream is challenged Andy replies, “Who am I to police the party?” In a series of visual snippets and verbal cameos, the film captures the essence of Las Vegas, from the aforementioned woman breast-feeding while playing the slot machines to the telephone call pleading for more money, waitresses hustling drinks, a machine in A.C.’s office rigged to give high-rollers an automatic big payout and leave them begging for more, customers not even able to enjoy meal without a model sashaying up to the table to sell the latest in swimwear, never mind the more obvious tawdry elements.

There’s a superb scene involving a cheating croupier (Don Rickles). Of course, when Martin Scorsese got into the Vegas act, violence was always the answer. A.C. takes a different route, allowing the man to pay off his debt by working 177 weeks as a dishwasher. There’s a neat twist on this when Andy, guessing which way Diana is going to jump, warns “watch out you don’t end up washing dishes.”

David Janssen (The Warning Shot, 1967) gives another underrated performance, gnarly and repressed all the way through until he can legitimately feel pride in his son. Robert Drivas (The Illustrated Man, 1968) is deceptively good, at first coming over as a stereotypical entitled youngster (or the Hollywood version of it) before seguing into a more devious character. Rosemary Forsyth (Texas Across the River, 1966) is excellent, initially loving until casually moving in on the young man when he appears a better prospect than the older one. Brenda Vaccaro (Midnight Cowboy, 1969), in her debut, plays a kooky secretary who has some of the best lines. “Two heads are better than one,” avers Andy. Her response (though Douglas Adams may beg to differ): “Not if on the same person.”

Garson Kanin takes the difficult subject of ruthless businessman and provides audiences with an acceptable entry point before going on to pepper them with vivid observations. This is not a picture that divided audiences – not enough critics or moviegoers saw it to create divergence – but it’s certainly worth another look especially in the light of the shenanigans audiences have welcomed in Succession. And if you remember the pride Brian Cox took when shafted by his son, check out this picture and you will see where the idea came from.

And it’s worth remembering that the defining youth-culture movie of 1969, Easy Rider, was actually about two young businessmen. The fact that their product was drugs didn’t make them any less businessmen. The idea that what a young buck “digs” the most is making money rather than peace and love seemed anathema to critics as far as Where It’s At went but not Easy Rider.

To be sure, none of the characters are likeable. Maybe likability was an essential ingredient of 1960s movies, but we’re more grown-up now. Compared to the the horrific characters populating The Godfather and today’s Succession, these appear soft touches. One critic even pointed out that The Godfather did it better without seeming to notice that Where’s It’s At did it first. And there’s certainly a correlation between Andy turning his nose up at his father’s business and Michael Corleone showing similar disdain until the chips are down and the old cojones kick in.

Critics who complained this had little in common with the Tracy-Hepburn pictures missed the point. The Tracy-Hepburn films were always about power, in the sexual or marital sense. Kanin has merely shifted from a male-female duel to that of father-son.

Not currently available on DVD or on streaming, but easy to get hold of on Ebay and YouTube has a print.

Que La Bete Meure / This Man Must Die (1969) ****

Heavily-layered Claude Chabrol revenge thriller that concentrates as much on the tricks the human mind can play rather a string of unusual twists. Self-justification and redemption go hand in hand. The director sucks us in to sympathize with an obsessed killer on the grounds that his victim deserves to die and then at the end makes us question everything we’ve been led to believe.

As usual, with this director, there’s more than enough atmosphere and his exposure of small-town life in France and the flaws in families and relationships almost serve to turn this into more of a drama than a thriller. But then that is Chabrol’s distinctive trademark.

When the police fail to track down the hit-and-run driver who has killed the young son of Charles Thenier (Michel Duchaussoy), the father, an author, determines to find the killer and, as he confides in his diary, not report him to the authorities, but finish him off himself. He makes the smart deduction that since there was no trace of a repair to a damaged car, the killer must own a garage. By a stroke of luck, he discovers a well-known actress Helen Lanson (Caroline Cellier) was a passenger in the car. Hiding behind his pen-name Marc, he seduces Helene, who has been hit by depression as a result of the incident, and discovers the driver was her brother-in-law Paul (Jean Yanne).

Convincing her to allow him to accompany her on a visit to his sister, his self-justification rises a notch as he notes that Paul is exactly the kind of guy who might well come to a sticky end given the detestable way he treats his wife Jeanne (Anouk Ferjac) and teenage son Phillippe (Marc Di Napoli) and is a womanizer to boot. While Charles bonds with Phillippe, who reveals he wants to kill his father, his relationship with Helene takes a knock when he discovers she’s had a brief affair with her brother-in-law.

So Charles plans to stage an accident at sea but Paul is one step ahead. The driver has found Charles’ diary and has taken a gun on the sailing trip to defend himself. But after Charles and Helene leave, Paul is discovered dead by poisoning. Charles’ diary makes him a suspect. And while he argues that it would be foolish of him to disclose his plans to a diary that is in the dead man’s possession, the police take the view that that would exactly what a clever murderer would do to deflect suspicion.

The police can’t find the poison so Charles is released. Phillippe confesses to the murder. But there is a further twist. The tale on which this is based was called The Beast Must Die, and from the various revelations we would be assuming that the beast in question, the remorseless despicable hit-and-run driver with not a single redeeming feature would be the most likely to fit this category.

But on reflecting on his own obsession, Charles clearly realizes that he is as likely a candidate to be termed a “beast.” It turns out he has let the son take responsibility for the murder and now he sets out to make amends, confessing to Helene that he did it and then heading off to sea presumably to jump overboard at a suitable spot.

Justified killing is never, it turns out, justifiable because in reality it turns the innocent into the guilty, and there’s little distinction between killers. When we cast our minds back, we become aware, as he does, that Charles has transitioned from grieving father to ruthless seducer of a vulnerable woman, preyed on a youngster who in consequence of their supposed friendship is happy to carry the can so Charles can escape, and is in any case going to complete his plan regardless of the cost to others.

Michel Duchaussoy (La Femme Infidele, 1969) steps up to the plate. The supporting cast are excellent. After the abysmal Road to Corinth (1967), Claude Chabrol established his name as the inheritor of the Hitchcock mantle after this and La Femme Infidele. Written by the director and Paul Gegauff (More, 1969) from the novel by Nicholas Blake (the pen-name of Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis, father of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis).

No shortage of tension, upends your expectations, totally involving.

Woman of Straw (1964) ***

In a plot worthy of Hitchcock without that director’s sly malice, rich playboy Tony (Sean Connery) conspires with not-so-innocent nurse Maria (Gina Lollobrigida) to rid himself of heinous upper-class racist misogynistic bully Charles (Ralph Richardson), his uncle. Beyond a savage case of entitlement, Tony has good reason to hate the wheelchair-bound multi-millionaire, blaming him for his father’s suicide and for seducing his widowed mother, now dead. Tony’s ploy, in part by opposing the very idea, is to get Maria to marry Charles, inherit his fortune and provide himself a £1 million finder’s fee when the seriously ill old man dies.

Maria’s refusal to kowtow to the old man and her initial resistance to Tony make her all the more desirable to both. When Maria saves the old man from a potential heart attack, he is moved enough to marry her and draw up exactly the will the pair want. But when he suddenly dies, Maria surprises herself by the depth of emotion she feels.

But that soon changes when she comes under suspicion. A bundle of complications swiftly change the expected outcome. A police inspector (Alexander Knox) doubts cause and place of death.

The first half is the set-up, the various figures being moved into place, not quite as easily as might have been anticipated, which adds another element of tension. Charles is such a hideous person nobody could lament his passing, but still his vulnerability, not just his wheelchair confinement but his love of music, his better qualities coming to the fore as the result of Maria’s presence, accord him greater sympathy than you would imagine.

That the otherwise gallant Tony’s entitled life depends entirely on his uncle’s good wishes lends him an appealing frailty. The nurse’s principles safeguard her against being taken in by riches alone, but there is a sense that she has used her physical attraction in the past to her advantage.

After the first two James Bond pictures, this was Sean Connery’s first attempt to move away from the secret agent stereotype and in large part he is successful. As amoral as Bond, he could as easily be a Bond villain, smooth and charming and larger than life and superbly gifted in the art of manipulation, the kind of putting all the pieces in place that Bond villains excelled in.

It will come as a surprise to contemporary viewers that he is merely the leading man, not the star. Gina Lollobrigida (Go Naked in the World, 1961) receives top-billing because she carries the emotional weight, initially perhaps as cold as Tony, but her attitude to Charles changing after marriage, meeting a need that Tony would not consider his to fulfill, and beginning to regret going along with any devious plan. That she then discovers she may merely be a pawn rather than a partner creates the dilemma on which the final section of the film depends for tension.

Both actors are excellent, exuding star wattage, the screen charisma between them evident, and audiences craving the pairing of Connery with an European female superstar will be well satisfied. Lollobrigida has the better role, requiring greater depth, but it is romance as duel most of the way. Ralph Richardson (Khartoum,1966) has never been better as one of the worst human beings ever to grace a screen. Johnny Sekka (The Southern Star, 1969) brings dignity to the maligned servant and Alexander Knox (Khartoum) is a crusty cop.

A slick offering from Basil Dearden (The Mind Benders, 1963), with one proviso – see seaparate article for the racism in this film. Written by Robert Muller (The Beauty Jungle, 1964) and Stanley Mann (The Collector, 1965) based on the novel by Catherine Arley.

Could have done with expending less time on the set-up and getting to the meat of the thriller quicker.

The Mind Benders (1963) ****

As far as Hollywood was concerned brainwashing was ascribed to foreigners intent on disrupting democracy as with The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Such inherent hypocrisy will come as no surprise since scientists at McGill University in Canada had been carrying out C.I.A.-funded sensory deprivation experiments in the 1950s. Where the John Frankenheimer paranoia thriller went straight down the political route, The Mind Benders, based on the McGill tests, is more interested in the personal cost, although ruthless politicians and unscrupulous scientists still abound.

The suicide of renowned scientist Professor Sharpey (Harold Goldblatt), possibly selling secrets to the Russians, sends MI5 agent Major Hall (John Clements) to Oxford to investigate sensory perception tests. The guinea pigs have all been volunteers, keen to expand knowledge of human mental endurance. The latest volunteer, Dr Longman (Dirk Bogarde), is on leave recovering from his participation. To avoid branding Sharpey a traitor it is proposed that he was actually brainwashed by long immersion in a water tank and subsequent sensory deprivation.

In order to prove the point, Longman, a driving force behind the research having shifted the focus from sub-zero temperatures to water, is the unknowing guinea pig, a jealous colleague Dr Danny Tate (Michael Bryant) who fancies his wife Oonagh (Mary Ure) suggesting that the experiment would be deemed a success if Longman was turned against his wife. It transpires that sensory deprivation has already had an effect on Longman, his wife complaining his lovemaking has grown rough.

The callousness with which this stage of research is undertaken, the disregard not so much for human life but emotion and love, in a country that prides itself on honor and fair play, sets up a different register to the Frankenheimer film where at issue is the assassination of the most important person in the United States. Longman, fed lies about his wife’s infidelity, becomes a different character, distrustful, aggressive, embarking on an affair of his own, putting in jeopardy the happiness he has constructed.

Ahead of its time in analyzing the importance of the hidden persuaders (as television advertising would later be termed) and lacking a thriller element to drive the narrative, nor devised as a self-indulgent experiment like the later Altered States (1980), nonetheless this achieves tremendous power through the deliberate dislocation of individual life, personalizing in a way that others in the paranoia thriller genre do not the dangers of tampering with the unknown.

And perhaps because it is so British, with the Longman family living in a big rambling house, the children involved in myriad games, the scientist a loving husband, that the outcome is so horrible. Brainwashing was seen as a form of torture, with subjects susceptible to ideas they may have once opposed, almost forming a new identity.

The structure here sucks in the audience. It’s ostensibly initially about spies, outing a traitor, a notion that every British citizen would go along with, the film especially relevant in the wake of the Kim Philby affair the year of the film’s release, when the idea of “spies among us” took root. Then we move on to a scientific account of the deprivation experiment, the first one taking place in the Arctic Circle, footage of a volunteer emerging in a fugue state. When Longman does another experiment, himself the guinea pig, to show what is involved, the various changes the body and mind undergo, it still seems far removed, captivating and intriguing though it may be, from any human horror.

*James Kennaway wrote the movie tie-in paperback based on his original screenplay.*

But when Longman becomes the unknowing victim, the audience becomes privy to the worst aspects of the brainwashing. The personal price paid would put every member of the audience off endorsing its use.

This is a very measured film, cunning in its construction, that puts the viewer at the heart of the story. Without spelling out the psychological terror, the implications are nonetheless clear, a nightmare from which there is no escape, no guarantee the process could be reversed, men turned into different personalities at the behest of government for who knows what end.

Dork Bogarde (Hot Enough for June, 1964) does this kind of role so well, the well-meaning person whose life is thrown into disarray. Mary Ure (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) is superb as the fun-loving wife, fighting for her husband, Michael Bryant excels as the sly friend, determined to win his wife by illicit means. Michael John Clemens only made two films this decade and his portrayal of the MI5 agent, as dispassionate as any scientist, putting country above individual, is almost as frightening as the experiment he provokes.

The idea came from an original screenplay by Scottish novelist James Kennaway (Tunes of Glory, 1960) who had come across the Canadian research. He was adept at placing stories within institutions in some respect with their own sacrosanct traditions and while the army barracks of Tunes of Glory could not be further removed from Oxford academe both reek of unchallenged hierarchy, of sacrifice to a cause.

Basil Dearden (Woman of Straw, 1964) directs this brilliantly, the attractive countryside location in contrast with the gloom of the experimental rooms, the warmth of a happy marriage evaporating in the face of insidious threat. He returned to the theme of identity in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970).

This is one of these films that lives on in the mind long after the viewing has ceased and will strike a contemporary note where identity, and its shifting values, is such an issue.

Secret Ceremony (1968) ***

Few stars were as willing to trade their glamorous screen persona for a decent role as Elizabeth Taylor, here eschewing the trademark hip swivel, low cut dresses and elegant costumes for a clumping walk, frumpy look and eating with her mouth full. After a chance meeting on top of a bus with rich waif Cenci (Mia Farrow) middle-aged prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) swaps a dingy bedsit for life in a massive mansion, cupboards stuffed full of furs, all her needs met. Cenci seeks a mother; Leonora, whose daughter drowned aged ten, seeks a child substitute.

Soon Leonora is prisoner to a fantasist, her own identity swamped by Cenci’s needs, accepting the role of “mummy” as the price of a life of luxury until she learns that what appears so freely given can be as easily taken away. This cloistered life is creepy. Cenci has rape fantasies. To a pair of interfering and thieving aunts, Leonora pretends to be Cenci’s dead mother’s cousin.

The fantasy conjured is threatened by the presence of Cenci’s poet stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum) who intends to become the girl’s legal guardian. He talks like a child molester, “the extraordinary purity of my longings,” but given the depth of Cenci’s fantasies Leonora initially discounts inappropriate behavior on his part especially when Cenci wishes to become inappropriate with her. If Leonora stands in Albert’s way it is only to have the girl – and her wealth – to herself.

A psychological drama that appears more like a stage play in structure, skirting around core issues in favor of later revelation, and in essence making a good effort at dealing with behavioral problems which would find greater currency today – inherited mental illness, PTSD, low self-esteem, abuse, and incest. Though the last area is hard to specify, on the basis that, technically, Albert is a stepfather rather than a father, underage sex would appear to be more likely.

In an era when permissiveness virtually ensured audience shock, director Joseph Losey makes a decent stab at presenting the impact of sex on the vulnerable, despite her apparent steely exterior Leonora damaged by life as a sex worker, Cenci pretending to be younger as if that can sustain her innocence, not realizing how appealing that would be to a predator.

At once hypnotic and impenetrable, this is director Joseph Losey (The Servant, 1964) at his best, a story that by its subject matter must remain obscure, a mother-daughter relationship that should be twisted but reveals nothing but tenderness, ending for a time the torment of the emotionally unfulfilled, but when bonds appear to be strengthened they are fragmenting. However, the film is let down by the script and the somewhat grand guignol setting. Losey is wonderful at times with nothing to say just a prowling camera, only two lines of dialog exchanged in the first 15 minutes. You would certainly file it under “eclectic.”

The two main performances are electric. This is Taylor at her powerhouse best, her profession not glamorized as in Butterfield 8 (1968) and no male to bring to heel, and her last scene with Cenci is extremely touching. This was a bold role, too, for Mia Farrow after the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1967) turned her into a box office star. She brings believability to a difficult role, especially as she is far from the spoiled child one might expect.

Robert Mitchum fans must have received the fright of their life to see their hero not just with uncomely beard but portraying a sinister character, not an out-and-out villain which would have been acceptable, but fast forward a couple of years and you can see evidence here of the kind of portrayal he would evince in Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Look out for Peggy Ashcroft (The Nun’s Story, 1959) in a smaller role, her first film in nearly a decade.

Check out the “Behind the Scenes” article for this film.

Death By Lightning (2025) ***** – Netflix Hits A Home Run, At Last

Streaming at its best. Take an obscure subject, a long-forgotten character, an incident that’s a mere blip in history, actors of less than middle rank in box office terms, and by breaking it down into easily consumable parts turn a history lesson that might be an indigestible three hours on the big screen into a riveting, enthralling drama of the highest quality that takes a no-holds-barred approach to politics

Small wonder you won’t have heard of U.S. President James Garfield (Michael Shannon) given he held office for around three months. Or of his misfit assassin Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), less than a footnote in history for making the grave mistake of gunning down a President nobody had ever heard of.

Garfield shouldn’t even have been President. A mid-level politician on the verge of retirement, he wasn’t even in the running for the Republican nomination, which should have gone to Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant. But in one of those quirks of politics, the voters liked what they heard of Garfield and in a grass roots rebellion shooed him in. He won the Presidential election by a whisker.

And then his troubles started. He was too honest for the job. Unwilling to follow the standard corruption and hand out highly-paid posts to rank-and-file unfitting for the job, he found himself up against the New York political powerhouse headed by Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham) who controlled the bulk of the revenue entering the country. And the battles with Conkling would have easily made a House of Cards-style series in itself as the dueling politicians attempt to outwit each other.

But in the background, and weaseling his way into the foreground, is con man, thief, forger, misfit Guiteau with as much entitlement as could sink a battleship who, nonetheless, grasps the key essential of politics of the era which is that helping to grease the greasy pole is all you need to reap the benefits. Except his efforts to become anyone’s righthand man fall way short, as his ambition and lack of any relevant skills are widely mocked – he expects to be handed an ambassadorial role although he speaks no foreign languages – despite occasionally finding an opening.

Having been dismissed by the President himself, he decides Garfield is totally the wrong person for the highest position in the land and takes it upon himself to rid the nation of this burden. Even the assassination is ham-fisted and Garfield would have survived except for the efforts of the ham-fisted surgeon who killed him through septic poisoning.

That’s the climax to a thoroughly involving mini-series where no punches are pulled as far as politics are concerned. Conkling doesn’t mind being the man behind the throne as long as he gets credit for pulling the strings. Political wheeling-and-dealing has never been so ruthlessly exposed.

But it’s not as if Garfield is an innocent in that department. While not stooping to corruption, he pulls the legs from under Conkling by appointing Conkling’s righthand man Chester Arthur (Nick Offerman) as his Vice-President, a scheme that while initially backfiring eventually pays dividends. And it’s ironic that Conkling’s demise is down to a thwarted mistress.

The narrative switches on like a thriller, twists and turns every inch of the way. But as much as the riveting narrative, the joy of this is in the performances. Matthew Macfadyen, double Emmy award-winner for Succession (2018-2023), is rightly going to be considered to have landed the plum role, a fellow so much of a misfit that in a “free love” community nobody wants to have sex with him. But it’s a close-run thing. Michael Shannon (A Different Man, 2024) is outstanding, and Shea Whigham (F1, 2025) has immense fun especially with his eyebrows and dominating curl, while Nick Offerman (Civil War, 2024) in shifting from oaf to man of honor has a peach of a role, not forgetting Betty Gilpin (The Hunt, 2020) as the straight-talking wife of the President.

None of these are stars, not even of the indie persuasion, and yet it’s amazing what they can do with their characters.

Directed with effortless style by Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic, 2016) from a script by Mike Makowsky (Bad Education, 2019) adapting the bestseller Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard.

Outstanding.

Out of Time (2003) *****

The most tension-filled thriller this side of The Day of the Jackal (1973). Stone-cold classic in my book. Admittedly not a big box office success in its day nor critically acclaimed, but this nod to film noir with cop taking a stroll for his own convenience down the wrong mean streets and an old-fashioned femme-fatale male-dupe scenario coupled with witty dialog and terrific set pieces suggests to me this is long overdue for reappraisal.

This was really the start of Denzel Washington as action hero – Crimson Tide (1995) was more a straightforward drama albeit with characters facing the ultimate consequence – and it probably helps that I’m looking back at this through the prism of more than two decades of the actor whizzing along in the derring-do department especially in his turn as The Equalizer (2014) – and sequels – where he demolishes opponents in seconds. Apart from the occasional side hustle as a bad guy, he’s generally been a good guy, the sort of dependable hunk that Tom Hanks would aspire to if he wanted to add brawn to his guy-next-door persona.

Matt Whitlock is the top law enforcement officer in a Florida slumber town (pop 1300) but he’s not as clean-cut as he looks given his affair with married Ann Harrison (Sanaa Latham) who bursts his romantic bubble by announcing she has just six months to live thanks to a cancer so advanced that only some new-fangled treatment could save her. I smelled a rat, I have to confess, the minute she decided she was going to make him the beneficiary of her million-dollar insurance policy.

So what’s a decent guy to do but steal the $500,000 drugs money he’s holding in his police safe, that’s liable to sit untouched for years to come, in order to fund her treatment on the assumption that the insurance policy acts as his insurance. How dumb can you be?

So when Ann and husband Chris (Dean Cain) die in a horrific fire, his world unravels, especially as detective soon-to-be-ex-wife Alex (Eva Mendes) is in charge of the murder investigation and the Feds arrive out of the blue looking for the drugs cash. So basically he’s an old-fashioned “running man”, diving from one hole to the next, barely keeping ahead of the cops and the FBI, fingered twice by witnesses, discovering that the specialist who diagnosed the cancer is an imposter, and not just being made to look the biggest fool who ever fell in love with the wrong woman but liable to pay for his error with a lengthy jail sentence.

Alex begins to suspect he knows more than he’s letting on, he’s desperate to trace the bogus doctor, all the while, in a nod to No Way Out (1987), desperately trying to stop a tsunami of telephone evidence – arriving via fax and computer – that links him to the supposed dead woman.

There are verbal confrontations galore and a couple of physical ones, a chase through a hotel culminating in a brawl on a balcony, and possibly a second murder charge.

It’s not just a terrific tale, mostly consisting of twists and narrow escapes, I counted half a dozen twists in the last ten minutes alone, but offers some terrific dialog. In a diner, the relationship between Matt and Chris is spelled out in style: Matt recommends the crab, Chris points out he’s allergic to crab. “I know,” retorts Matt. The movie opens with some decidedly salty goings-on between Matt and his lover and the verbal duel between Matt and Alex has the underlying Tracy-Hepburn classic squabbling.

For all that Matt is smart enough to chase down the missing cash and hold the Feds at arm’s length long enough, he’s still, when you come down to it, only going from dumb to dumber and the shock when he realizes just how well he’s been duped is a cracker.

So, obviously, the key is that the audience wants him, guilty though he is of theft and stupidity, to get away with it or at least be thrown a get-out-of-jail-free card and that’s part of the hook, and that element is brilliantly done. I had no idea how he was going to get off with it, as one avenue of escape after another was rigorously shut down, until the very end.

There’s a whole stew of those reversals that screenwriters throw at audiences who think they are one step ahead of the game.

It’s a great cast. Denzel Washington is superb, Eva Mendes (Training Day, 2001) is an excellent sparring partner, Sanaa Latham (AVP: Alien vs Predator, 2004) as slinky as femme fatale as you’ll find. Look out for television’s Superman Dean Cain and especially character actor John Billingsley.

Director Carl Franklin (Devil in a Blue Dress, 1995) piles on the tension and kudos to screenwriter Dave Collard (Annapolis, 2006) for creating the blueprint.

I caught this on Amazon Prime but be quick about it because it’s in the section that the streamer calls “leaving in 30 days.”

An absolute classic.

The Learning Tree (1969) ****

Director Gordon Parks made a big noise a couple of years later with Shaft (1971), Richard Roundtree shooting to fame as a slick and sexy private eye, memorable score by Quincy Jones. But The Learning Tree had possibly a bigger impact on the Hollywood consciousness, the first movie released by a major studio (Warner Brothers) that was directed by an African American. Although actors like Sidney Poitier and Jim Brown had smashed the Hollywood glass ceiling, directors lagged far behind. And this would have been an interesting tale in its own right of adolescence in 1920s Kansas had the leading character Newt (Kyle Johnson) and buddy Marcus (Alex Clarke) not faced such blatant racism.

Told today, the story would take a different route, concentrating on the dilemma of Newt in coming forward with the evidence that could convict Marcus’s father Booker (Richard Ward) of murdering a white man, not just the guilt at sending another African American to the electric chair but fear of the killing spree that must follow from enraged whites. Instead, that aspect comes at the tail end of a story that sees Newt and Marcus react in different ways to white supremacy. It’s not that Newt is spineless, toeing the line, but that Marcus, filled with venom, sees violence as the only way to establish any kind of equality.

When Newt, a reasonable enough scholar, though hardly in the genius class, is marked down by his teacher on the grounds that it’s a waste of time going to college when he will still end up a cook or a porter, the young man responds, “You hate us colored kids, well, we hate you, every one of you.” Marcus has a similar mantra, “this town don’t want me and I don’t want this town.” That underlying endemic racism contrasts with the more overt vicious bullying of local cop Kirky (Dana Elcar) who casually shoots any African American who sensibly runs away at his approach and who ends every sentence with the word “boy.”

What makes this so powerful is that for long stretches there’s just the ordinary coming-of-age tale of Newt falling in love with Arcella (Mira Waters), sneaking a kiss, finding their own special place among the daffodils, buying each other Xmas presents, the romance conducted among summer picnics, winter snow, rowing on the river, the young man showing his beloved every respect even given that he is not a virgin, having unexpectedly lost his cherry while sheltering from a tornado. He has a conscience, too, going to work voluntarily for a farmer whose apples he stole.

It’s not just Newt’s equable temperament that’s prevents him from reacting like Marcus to the unfairness of the white-dominated world. He has the ability to get the best out of situations. A born negotiator he manages to triple the reward offered by Kirky for helping bring up a dead man from a river, and, having been taught to box, earns good money in a match. Marcus goes to jail for beating up a white man who attacked him with a whip and this not being a sanitised version of the African American world on release ends up working in a whorehouse while his father steals a supply of hooch.

Even so this is a hierarchy even a prominent white person cannot overturn. When a judge’s son invites Marcus and Arcella into a drug store, the other two must take their drinks outside.

A staff photographer for Life magazine, director Gordon Parks, adapting his autobiographical novel, avoids the temptation to pack the movie with brilliant images, instead concentrating on core coming-of-age aspects to drive forward the narrative. He doesn’t have to do much to point up the injustice. That’s inherent in the material.

It probably helped that the three young principals were inexperienced, although at the time of course roles for African Americans, except in cliché supporting parts, were hardly abundant. Kyle Johnson (Pretty Maids All in a Row, 1971) was 16 when playing the 14-year-old, Alex Clarke (Halls of Anger, 1970) pushing 20 and making his debut as was Mira Waters (The Greatest, 1977). There’s no straining for dramatic acting effect. Everyone plays it straight.

Others involved are Estelle Evans (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962), Dana Elcar (Pendulum, 1968), Richard Ward (Black Like Me, 1964) and Russell Thorson (The Stalking Moon, 1968). Not only did Parks write, produce and direct but he supplied the music too.

It’s an absorbing, if at times difficult, watch. It’s an accomplished picture for a beginner. And you can’t help but wondering how four decades after this story takes place little had changed for ordinary African Americans and another five decades after the film’s release the battle for equality has not been resolved.

Eden (2025) ****

By all accounts this should be a stinker. Colossal box office flop without little potential redemption in the form of critical accolades. Mis-sold as a horror survival thriller with too upscale a cast for that strategy to work. And yet it gives the likes of After the Hunt and Roofman an object lesson is how to make unlikeable characters appealing.

There’s no great secret. Just don’t hide anything. Make your characters upfront from the outset and let them roll the dice without artifice. Solve any puzzles. Set out your stall fairly and go with it. And you know what, put any random characters anywhere and you’ll trigger a battle for power.

This would be in the vein of Lord of the Flies (1963), Robinson Crusoe (1997 the most recent version) and Cast Away (2000), except the characters here are on a remote island by choice, sold on the notion of getting away from a civilization which is in a bad way, this being 1932 and the world in a spiral of financial depression and rising fascism.

Wannabe philosopher Ritter (Jude Law), determined to change the world, is narked when, three years into his sojourn on Galapagos, his hardly idyllic isolation with partner Dore (Vanessa Kirby) is interrupted by the arrival of fanboy Heinz (Daniel Bruhl), wife Margret (Sydney Sweeney) and ill son Harry (Jonathan Tittel).

Somewhat surprised at the unfriendly welcome, Heinz would be astonished to learn that Ritter suggests they go live in, unknown to them, one of the worst spots on the island, assuming they won’t survive and he can go back to peace and quiet. But the newcomers have come prepared for hardship and build a home and convert a spring into a home-made pool.

A grudging truce is shattered by the arrival of the Baroness (Ana de Armas), her two lovers Rudolph (Felix Kammerer) and Robert (Toby Wallace), and her wildly ambitious plans to build a luxury hotel. Worse, she’s determined to seize power, forcing those further down the society tree to bend the knee, and if her sex appeal doesn’t achieve that purpose, then she’ll take the old-fashioned route. Heinz kisses her outstretched hand but Ritter refuses. She’s a particularly ruthless specimen and when her supply of food runs out just steals from Heinz’s horde then has the audacity to invite him to a meal featuring the stolen food.

Her plan to set Ritter and Heinz against each other, her barbed tongue a singular weapon, only results in them forming an alliance. While it’s obvious it’s not going to end well, three sequences in particular are distinctly brutal.

Along the way, facades are broken. The Baroness has invented her title. Hunger is all it takes for Ritter to shift from his avowed vegetarianism leaving Dore is appalled. Her beloved donkey is killed. Heinz has to face up to the fact that Margret only married him to get away from home. After Heinz and Ritter conspire against the Baroness, Margret and Dore conspire against Ritter.

It’s about 15 minutes too long, the seeming need to wrap up the tale unnecessary, but the rest of it is a joy to watch. There’s one absolute cracker of a sequence. While Margret is giving birth alone and threatened by feral wild dogs, the Baroness pointedly ignores her plight, not surprising since she has more important matters on her mind, namely her lovers looting of Heinz’s stores.

I had not expected much in the way of performances. Daniel Bruhl (Rush, 2013) would at least be solid, but after Black Rabbit (2025) I thought Jude Law would be way over the top and the two actresses, struggling for critical acceptance, way out of their depth. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Jude Law goes back to the quiet brooding intensity that made him a star in the first place. Ana de Armas (Ballerina, 2025) steals the show as the arch manipulator, her mind quick enough to rescue any dire situation. Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) turns her screen persona on its head, famed cleavage kept under cover, as the stalwart, almost puritanical, wife.

While this might seem a bit of a come-down for Oscar-winning director Ron Howard after box office and critical hits like The Da Vinci Code (2006) and A Beautiful Mind (2002) and making do with stars of a lower marquee class than Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and in their day Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson and Jim Carrey, he’s tackled similar obsession before with In the Heart of the Sea (2015).

And he’s great with the cast, knocks over-acting on the head, so that every performance looks perfectly pitched and in keeping with the characters. The directing, too, is spot-on. Powerful scenes, such as the Baroness’s failed seduction of a millionaire explorer and a poisoning, are played in a low key. Written by Howard and Noah Pink (Tetris, 2023)

A shade too long, as I said, but several cuts above the likes of After the Hunt, Roofman and One Battle after Another.

What used to be called a sleeper.

Catch it on Amazon.