King for a day (well, three)

On By ghostof82In Apple TV, HorrorLeave a comment

Lisey’s Story (TV Miniseries, 2021), Eight episodes, Apple TV

Sometimes Stephen King can be his own worst enemy. The kernel of this story is really intriguing;  a successful writer, Scott Landon (Clive Owen), whose work has inspired fanatical devotion from his fanbase, has dark secrets from his childhood that continue to haunt him, possibly suggesting an insight into King’s own life and career.  But keeping it simple is seldom King’s style; the consensus being there’s no Stephen King book a good editor couldn’t fix . So this decidedly ISN’T the story of a writer enjoying success and wealth yet troubled by fanatical fans. Its instead the story of a dead writer’s widow Lisa (“Lisey”) (Julianne Moore),  and how she copes  when she is hounded by a particularly deranged, and violent, fan who is seeking Scott’s remaining unpublished manuscripts. Managing her grief by going through Scott’s papers and reminiscing on how they met and key events during their marriage, Lisey dwells upon all sorts of magical mysticism derived partly from the Scott’s abusive childhood at the hands of a psychotic father, a murdered brother, and Boo’ya Moon, a  dreamlike dimension where one can magically transport to and heal in, but with the danger of being trapped there forever in between life and death, or, er, something. 

Oh, and this isn’t a two-hour movie. Its told over eight episodes, so all that padding ( “diarrhea of the word processor, “as its been described over the years) so common in King’s writing is pretty much preserved here, especially as King himself wrote the TV adaptation. I haven’t read the book, although Claire has, and she said the series was very faithful to it so I suspect its flaws are all too preserved here.  We binged the series, pretty much, watching it over three days. I wish I could suggest it was worth the time and effort, but King never was a master at sticking the landing, so to speak, with endings that frequently frustrate.  There’s an emotional weight here that is sadly lacking, with a conclusion that doesn’t  hit the height its aiming for… you can see its reaching, but it lands with something of a thud, no matter how hard Owen and Moore try. 

The leads are indeed very good. Owen and Moore are both solid and have genuine chemistry, and the supporting cast is pretty substantial- Joan Allen and Jennifer Jason Leigh playing Lisey’s dysfunctional sisters,  Dane Dehaan playing Scotts grossly deranged psycho superfan and Michael Pitt playing Scott’s psycho dad in flashbacks fleshing out Scott’s childhood and his discovery of magical limbo Boo’ya Moon… I mean,, you surely get the gist. There’s a lot of story and lots of weird madness and lots of stretches of credibility in a story that might have been from another writer  just a tense drama of an author and his wife troubled by fanatical fans.  But maybe that’s me criticising it for not being what its not.

Is it worth the investment in time regards watching it? For Stephen King’s fans, certainly. For folk less impassioned by his writing, because that’s really where the issue lies with this one, maybe not. There’s a feeling of  everything including the kitchen sink being thrown into this and it could have been more with less, I think.

Melancholy dreams

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Movies, Netflix3 Comments

Train Dreams (2025), DIr. Clint Bentley, 102 mins, Netflix

Robert Grainier, an orphan having lost his parents at such a young age he cannot remember them, lives a quiet life of labour during America’s  early 20th century  expansion, the country’s  landscape changing with intensive logging and the building of railways across the frontier.  As so often happens, by chance Robert finds the love of his life, Gladys, and the couple build a cabin in woods by a stream, and have a child. Robert is away for long periods with his work,  and tragedy strikes leaving him questioning his life, his possible guilt and what everything means. 

This was such a beautiful, poetic film I couldn’t help but fall in love with it. Its like a Terrance Malick film back in the days when he used to stick to script and narrative: clearly Malick is a huge influence on this film. Its a film of few words- more a film of images, most of the films narrative, such as it is,  informed by a gentle voiceover (from Will Patton) and Joel Edgerton’s eyes, alternatively full of wonder, joy, pain. Edgerton is remarkable in a subtle performance of some depth, and is ably assisted by Felicity Jones as his wife, Gladys. A meditation on life, love and loss, its the human condition writ large with a broad cinematic canvas, beautiful to look at, lovely to listen to.  The quiet lives of men who live and die with nothing to mark their passing. The pacing may irritate some, likewise the plot in which, essentially little happens and even that slowly, but that’s how life often is; I would have enjoyed an additional hour of the Old World gradually transforming into the New World.

I do think that the older one is, the more appeal this film may have- the way that this film portrays Robert’s feelings of disattachment and loneliness as the 20th Century leaves him behind, likely intentionally mirrors how many feel today, regards how the world is changing around us so quickly, the familiar becoming strange, and how fleeting life is. By the end of the film, and Robert an old man, he looks and feels anachronistic; on a rare trip to the city he passes a shopfront where a television airs footage of a spacewalk and an mage of the planet from orbit that offers a perspective he never considered; his sense of wonder at it symptomatic of what we ourselves have lost.

Here we are in January and I’ve probably watched the best film that I’ll see this year. Its funny how often that’s happened, over the years. Probably something to do with Awards season and the best films being held back for consideration.

Remembering (or not) Reminiscence

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Film noir, MoviesLeave a comment

Reminiscence (2021), Dir. Lisa Joy, 116 mins, 4K UHD

Funny thing, watching Lisa Joy’s misfire Reminiscence last night, a neo-noir film chiefly about memory, is that I could remember so little of it from the first time I watched it back in November 2021. I checked my blog to ascertain the date, otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue exactly when I’d watched it last; I knew it was a few years ago now. Maybe I watch too many movies, so many its hard to recall so many of them; sometimes I read posts here from years back and I cannot remember the films at all, the titles drawing a blank. Or maybe its my advancing years, the old grey matter failing me? Anyway, like Deadpool 2 a few weeks back (and maybe I’ll get around to that post about watching the Deadpool trilogy  over Christmas, eventually) I found myself rewatching a film and feeling like I was watching it for the first time, I recalled so little of its details – hell, while sections of the plot seemed wholly new to me I remembered fragments, some of the cast, mostly, but even some of the action scenes seemed new to me. Clearly this film wasn’t as memorable as it was intended to be.

So there’s an irony in me writing about how my memory failed me when watching a film about memory, but what I wanted to discuss was casting, because its this that really failed this film. I can understand the logic of hiring big-name actors for big-budget movies, the old adage that stars sell movies, and to an extent its correct, it works, but Reminiscence was never THAT big a film ($54 million, so no cheapie, but certainly not as reckless as so many now) and it was always a niche film in its subject; sometimes star names can set expectations in audiences that undermine the films.  It happened back in 1982 with Harrison Ford in Blade Runner; everyone expected exciting sci-fi thrills with the guy who played Han Solo and Indiana Jones- its easy to forget how that impacted the film when it turned out a different beast entirely.

Hugh Jackman plays Nick Bannister, a Navy vet from some undetailed conflict abroad (over resources, presumably) who’s back home in civilian clothes in a society sinking as surely as the flooded city he’s living in, a guy whos let himself go somewhat, disillusioned and stuck in a dead-end job. Its a part played better by Ralph Fiennes in 1995’s similarly-themed Strange Days. With all respect to Jackman, he has the acting chops but he’s just miscast here- he’s muscled like an Adonis.  What I’m really thinking regards the character Nick Bannister is someone like James Woods in Videodrome– that’s the kind of casting this film needed. While mentioning Strange Days though, Juliette Lewis seems a much better fit for Reminiscence‘s femme fatale, Mae, played in the film by statuesque Rebecca Ferguson. Ferguson is just too beautiful, too perfect, to really carry the role of being a streetwise, selfish survivor on rotten streets, and a drug addict in the bargain. Its almost laughable how she’s miscast; she’s okay but there’s too much emphasis on, say, her nightclub scenes and that whole 1940s Rita Hayworth sense of sultry feminine perfection. There’s a balancing act there with her character (like Jennifer Connelly’s singer/romantic interest in Dark City) which the film fails to really help Ferguson with; she has to be attractive enough to break Bannister out of his funk, but gritty enough to convince as the streetwise player she really is.

Of course, when Reminiscence was made, both James Woods and Juliette Lewis were too old to play the parts, but what I’m suggesting is casting towards that type, analogues, so to speak, of those actors. Casting in Hollywood films now is so… aspirational, too much towards some ideal. The reason why 1970s American Cinema rings so true is the casting in those films, and the pot of acting talent available then. Every actor now seems perfectly toned from the gym, which is fine if you’re casting a superhero movie but hardly good if you’re casting a character gone to seed.

As for the film itself, second time around, with some distance from original expectations and marketing hype, now that its (presumably) aired on TV occasionally or available on streaming or relegated to bargain-bin special offers on disc, well, it makes one wonder what happens to movies that just ‘exist’ and no longer weighed down by having to be memorable or important. It’s neo-noir sensibilities, its sense of place, is perfectly fine; it looks fantastic, but the plot structure is questionable, and it absolutely exceeds its reach regards the emotional highs it tries for. I suppose in an ideal world, with better casting and a better script, it could have, should have, been a futuristic Chinatown, but it falls far short of that. For all that, its not really as bad as its reputation possibly suggests. Its just flawed and misguided; would have fared better had it been made for Apple, maybe. Maybe then it could have taken some chances with casting etc. Maybe its simply that Hollywood studio films just can’t do leftfield stuff anymore, there’s too many cooks, too many boxes to tick, but Blade Runner might whisper in my ear that its always been like that.

The 2026 Reading List

On By ghostof82In Books, Movies, Music1 Comment

Here’s the books I’m either reading or should be reading as I start 2026. There’s a curious musical thread in there – a biography of composer John Williams, a book about the working partnership of composer Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock, John McKie’s book about Prince and the making of  Sign o’ the Times, and Mark Kermode’s Surround Sound: The Stories of Movie Music. 

The last two were Christmas presents, so I’m three-quarters through the McKie book and have dipped into the Kermode book. McKie’s book is one of the best books about Prince that I have read; having read several books about Prince its clear that there’s no way we’ll ever really understand Prince ; he was such a musical genius and (deliberately) a mystery that as far as ‘knowing’ him… well I doubt we ever will. At times Prince seems hardly human, almost alien, which sounds like hyperbole but its clear that he was so unique- he had such a talent and focus (obsession?) on music, and such wealth and fame that its difficult to relate to him, his life experience was so different to ours (something which, to be honest, I suspect harmed the quality of his music in later years).  McKie’s approach (chapters using the titles of the Sign o’ the Times songs, examining the story behind each and using that to branch out to other examination of Prince’s life and work before and after the album) took a little getting used to but I think it works very well indeed.

Sadly, I’m a wee bit cautious regards Mark Kermode’s book; having had a browse (well, its chapter on Vangelis’ Blade Runner score was irresistible, albeit frustratingly light), I was perturbed to see no entry at all in the book’s index for James Horner, for instance- a glaring oversight for a book supposedly about movie music. Or maybe that’s less an issue and just betraying my own leanings. From what I’ve seen Kermode’s book seems to lean more towards current trends in film music and the new wave of composers working today than I expected, but we’ll see.

I expect my ‘classic film music’ itch will be better served by the Herrmann/Hitchcock and John Williams books (can’t wait to read about Williams working on his 1970s scores). I can only hope that we might see a similarly detailed biography of Vangelis one day.

The end of the world x2

On By ghostof82In Horror, Movies, NetflixLeave a comment

IO (2019), Dir. Johnathan Helpert, 96 mins, Netflix Original

The Great Flood (2025), Dir. Byung-woo Kim, 109 mins, Netflix Original

Last night I watched, by accident really, two Apocalyptic films; both turned out to be pretty poor. The best of intentions, certainly- both seemed to be ambitious, rather than just exploitation nonsense, but neither really worked. The first one I watched, a Netflix original from several years back, IO, got bogged down in existential, environmental anxiety to the detriment of actually moving its plot forward (it was rather like watching paint dry) while the other, a recently-released Korean flick for Netflix, The Great Flood, was actually just the opposite, racing forwards so frantically that it just got sillier and dafter as it sped to its non-ending conclusion. Indeed, that seemed a common issue for both films- bad endings. Not in the sense that either ending was actually bad for  either film’s characters, they were fairly optimistic endings, as far as their narratives went, but just bad in the dramatic sense.  Both films had endings that left one with that empty, “that’s ninety minutes/two hours of my life  I’m not getting back” kind of feeling.; no number of beers can make that feel good.

Both films took liberties with viewer intelligence and any relationship with actual science; in this respect, I suppose they were both more Twilight Zone-like fables, rather than actual realistic dramas.  They were possibly dafter than your usual Hollywood  blockbuster disaster flick. Its hard to watch something when you’re stuck thinking “no fucking way” regards the central premise.

In IO, a global ecological disaster, pre-film, has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, poison air killing all living things on land and in the sea, other than in isolated pockets (presumably because they are high up, above the cloud level). Prior to the final loss of all human life, one hundred ships fled Earth to gather at a space station orbiting Io, moon of Jupiter. So in the near future (no year is set, but it all looks pretty much present day) one hundred spaceships capable of travelling to the Jovian system, each containing, what, fifty, sixty people (that isn’t ever clear either) and a space station somehow built and orbiting Io, capable of housing and sustaining all those people for an indefinite period, and not only that, but construction facilities there sufficient to build an interstellar spaceship big enough to embark on a ten-year (don’t get me started on that) voyage to a New World at Proxima Centauri, 4.3 light years away. I can imagine Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C Clarke collapsing in a life-threatening fit of the giggles at that lot.

We can’t even get a man (or woman) on the moon, nor Mars, even for a temporary visit, never mind all the way to Jupiter to establish a colony of survivors there. Its bullshit, all for the expediency of some positive alternative to living on the Earth, because the central drama of IO is that Sam (Margaret Qualley), the beautiful young daughter of a dead ecology scientist has endeavoured to ‘fix’ the Earth’s nature problem where tens of  thousands of scientists failed, and offer some alternative, a chance for everyone to return to Earth.. Turns out, IO is some teen fantasy disaster flick with the emphasis on boring and being pretentious. I’m too old for this shit.

The Great Flood, meanwhile, starts with a more interesting premise, a sudden, global flood that we soon learn has been caused by an asteroid impact in Antarctica that has melted all the ice and presumably caused a terrible tsunami that threatens all humanity.  An Na (Kim Da-mi) lives in on the third floor of an apartment building as the city floods, her floor already taking on water as the film opens,  and has to get herself and her infant son Ja In (Kwon Eun-sung) up through the various floors to safety. Just how high can the flood waters rise?  Initially its like an Irwin Allen flick, An Na having to circumvent obstacles along the way, but things soon escalate when a hired-gun Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) from An Na’s employer turns up to assist her with the imperative that she and her child must get to the roof where a company helicopter will be waiting to take them to safety. There are references to An Na’s husband, who died in a car accident when it somehow crashed into a river or lake- more allusions to water and drowning, and some science experiment in AI at An Na’s workplace.

What initially seems to be an increasing series of coincidences becomes its own tsunami of revelations that only get dafter- none of this actually real, its all a computer simulation training An Na to reach some satisfactory conclusion, so the film quickly derails viewer expectations (no bad thing in itself) when everything resets and we’re suddenly in Tom Cruise Edge of Tomorrow (2014) territory, with endless iterations of An Na trying, and failing, to rescue her son. Like the Tom Cruise character in Edge of Tomorrow, An Na  starts to remember and learn from her previous attempts and failures (she dies a lot) to find a way of succeeding.

What derails the movie, other than general viewer confusion seeing a Irwin Allen-type disaster flick turn into a Matrix/ Edge of Tomorrow mash-up, is the child,  Ja In. I’m not blaming the young actor, he was likely only following directions, but he’s unbearable; a stupid, irritating, endlessly whining, capricious child that cannot seem to follow any instructions and sulks and wails endlessly. Its hard to root for a film that has a central narrative intent on saving a child that you just wish would get shot in the head or thrown into the flood water immediately every time he appears onscreen. Children ruin some movies.  Never mind humanity, ditch the kid and save the film. And somehow this kid will be the salvation of the human race?

Well, maybe not- and therein lies the films strangely non-conclusive ending and another leap into IO-level scientific implausibility (oh boy, it was one of those nights): .it turns out humanity is extinct and the simulation is being run by a fleet of orbiting space stations above Earth, in order that, once An Na succeeds in certain emotional and goal targets, she and her child can be 3D printed endlessly as artificial humans who are, in the films conclusion, despatched down to Earth to repopulate the planet.

I think sometimes films can be just too overloaded with ideas, and this was one of them. Its always risking audiences switching off when they feel too disorientated with confusing twists and turns that stretch credibility to breaking point. I wonder how many Netflix viewers abandoned this one midway.  Ever the trooper, I stuck with this one to the bitter end, but as with IO, felt rather the fool after it was over. It was a disaster movie night, for sure.

The Eel- a bizarre path to redemption

On By ghostof82In Blu-ray, Movies, RadianceLeave a comment

The Eel (Unagi), 1997, Dir.  Imamura Shōhe, 117/134 mins (2 cuts, theatrical and Directors cut), Blu-Ray (Radiance)

Takura Yamashita (Koji Yakusho) is sent a letter informing him of the adultery of his wife. Returning home early after a  routine night fishing trip, he discovers his wife having sex with another man. In a rage he knifes his wife to death and then calmly cycles to the nearest police station to turn himself in and hand over his weapon.  Eight years later, after serving eight years in prison, he is paroled, and attempts to start a new life  by opening a barbershop in an rural corner of Japan. Shy and awkward, Yamashita’s only companion is a pet eel whom he confides in (“he listens to what I say”) but his barbershop attracts locals who start to befriend him, particularly the local oddballs who sense a kindred spirit (such as a young neighbour who borrows his barber pole thinking it will  attract UFOs) . One afternoon whilst foraging food for his eel,  Yamashita stumbles upon and saves a young woman, Keiko (Misa Shimizu), from suicide and later at her request gives her a job at his shop. Mindful of his past Yamashita avoids becoming attached to the beautiful Keiko but she is drawn to him nonetheless. Unfortunately the past that caused her to attempt suicide, and Yamasita’s own past (when a prison inmate recognises him and causes trouble) threatens Yamasita’s chance for a new life and happiness.

I really enjoyed this film.  There’s a real sense of time and place; the little barber shop is a character in of itself and I found something so very appealing about it.  That small physical space, the interesting angles and  spaces behind, like the kitchen; and outside the barbershop window, the narrow road with the river beyond it, and the big sky.  Populating it with such interesting, often endearing characters, and them slowly, gradually bonding, that sense of budding community. Just that would be film enough for me. I could wallowed in something like that for two hours.

There’s something almost… not irritating – or maybe superfluous would be a better word-  regarding Keiko’s mentally-challenged (dementia, I believe) mother, or Keiko’s greedy, criminal former boyfriend who has gotten Keiko pregnant, and the subplot of him and his gangster buddies threatening her for her mother’s money. Or, indeed, Yamashita’s ex-prison colleague, Takasaki (Akira Emoto), who is foul-mouthed, nasty and violent (attempting to rape Keiko at one point) who threatens telling Yamashita’s freinds and customers that he had murdered his wife and was on parole. Indeed for something that is, at its heart, quite a gentle and pleasant film, something decidedly unpleasant about some of it- Yamashita’s murder of his wife is surprisingly graphic, blood splattering the walls and drenching his face and clothes, and similarly flashbacks of intimate moments of Keiko and her boyfriend, and Yamashita’s final fight with Takasaki lingers perhaps too long. Reality impacting the idyll, spoiling the redemption we are hoping for the main characters. I almost wish that UFO-obsessed guy Masaki (Kobayashi Ken), would disappear between scenes and everyone maybe glance up at the skies, wondering.

The film also ends on a… well, its one of those ‘perfect’ endings that is frustratingly, perhaps, for some, rather ambiguous. Yamashita is returned to prison, the violence of the films final denouement resulting in the breaking  of his parole conditions. Keiko is left at the closed barbershop with the other oddball characters that were pulled into Yamashita’s gravity-well, watching the police and parole-officer driving Yamashita away and back to prison. But we have to hope that Yamashita will return to that life he had built in that wonderful space and find her waiting for him. We all like happy endings when the characters deserve it.

Once again, another Radiance disc, a foreign film I’d never heard of but enjoyed very much (I watched the director’s cut, which is supposedly the superior of the two), and the knowledge that if not for boutique labels like Radiance, and physical media in general, so many lovely films would be hidden away from my attention forever. In a perfect world, maybe there would be a curated section on Netflix for World Cinema for titles like this that don’t involve aliens or monsters or gratuitous violence. Maybe one day. In the meantime, bravo Radiance with another great film release on their label. Not every one of their releases  strikes a chord in me like this one did (there’s one or two that have left me unmoved) but I’m game for the blind-buy risk when there’s a chance that some of them can be as rewarding as this one is.

Conscience writ large: A Man for All Seasons

On By ghostof82In MoviesLeave a comment

A Man For All Seasons (1966), Dir. Fred Zinnemann, 120 mins, HD (BBC Broadcast)

Although I didn’t write a review of it (a glaring oversight but life got in the way of this blog often last year), one of the most notable film discoveries for me in 2025 was the 1968 historical drama The Lion in Winter. I knew of the film from John Barry’s wonderful score but hadn’t gotten around to watching the film, until its release on UHD proved too tempting to resist. Whenever I subsequently read about the film, though, reference tended to be always made to Fred Zinnemann’s A Man for All Seasons, released two years prior. So there I was flicking through a TV guide for the Christmas/New Year schedules and noticed it scheduled on BBC2. Well, how could I resist?

My ignorance of this film seems to have known no bounds: I had no idea that it won six Oscars, for instance (Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Director, Best  Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and also an Oscar for Robert Bolt’s screenplay based on his own play) so although I had heard of the film, I had no real idea of its pedigree or reputation. As I’ve grown older of course, the kudos of Oscar wins has rather dulled but nonetheless, as an indication of what might be expected, watching it for the first time, I had no inclination it would be as good as it was. Which is a long way of saying I was probably more impressed with it than I might otherwise have been.  I thought it was magnificent and I’m certain I will return to it (well, if only it would get released on a UHD seperate from the Columbia Classics boxset its currently limited to, but hey-ho it won’t be the first such title).

One particular  thing that I took from this frankly magnificent film was how it seemed curiously prescient of our current times and therefore a film, for all of it being sixty years old, that is very timely indeed.  While the film is chiefly about the machinations of a ruthless, spoiled and nightmarishly powerful King at odds with the Church in his intent of getting his own way (divorcing his first Queen so he can marry another),  essentially its a morality play: a political drama of nobles and politicians trying to ensure the King’s satisfaction. Moral fibre and conscience seem to be luxuries one could dispose of back then around 1530, in order to ensure ones own political career and social stature, which uncannily reflects upon Westminster today and the ugly business of maintaining a country seemingly on the brink of calamity. I suppose one could say that this has always been true of politics: Dirty Work, rather than Gods Work, something as true in Westminster of 1966 when the film was made as it is in 2026, so no doubt A Man for All Seasons has always seemed timely for anyone who watched it.

But therein lies one core question of this film; what price Truth and the integrity of ones’ own soul? The film champions the integrity of Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) a man who was ultimately executed for his refusal to forgo his faith in the supremacy of God and the Church in order to accommodate the whims of his King, I’m not all convinced regards the historical accuracy of the film’s portrait of More, which paints him as a steadfast and wholly innocent figure. I’ve read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall books and  Diarmaid MacCulloch’s weighty biography Thomas Cromwell: A LIfe which suggest otherwise, but on the whole its an applaudable study of a man of conscience. I dare say historical accuracy and dramatic licence are endless thorns making films such as this, but any liberties taken can be forgiven, as this is a fascinating and riveting drama.

I’m not at all surprised that the performances in this film got Oscar recognition – Scofield is excellent as More, and Robert Shaw’s mercurial Henry, which I expected to be awkward casting (I always think of Shaw in terms of Jaws)  is actually a nuanced performance approaching genius. Shaw’s Henry is hugely charismatic and yes, rather larger than life but this was a King who had essentially absolute power and whose whim, that seems to balance as on the head of a knife, is rather terrifying. One can well appreciate the predicament of those exercising his will and fancies, Henry possibly as close to a Mad King as any this country has survived.  Little wonder he has so fascinated writers and historians and film-makers.

And who does not sneer and despise John Hurt’s horribly ambitious idiot Richard Rich whose route to power suggests he has a particularly low price for his soul (“Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?”)? Here lies the films clearest relevance to modern times and those inhabiting the corridors of power today; while one may admire the integrity of More and the cunning of Cromwell (played wonderfully by Leo McKern), what really convinces, sadly, is the toad Rich and the ladder he is prepared to climb for wealth and stature- maybe that reflects more my genuine dissatisfaction with the current political elite contesting for and running this country. At any rate, I think a drama focussing solely on Richard Rich would be very interesting, if only as a study of what some men may be prepared to do at the expense of others.

Moreover, I am reminded how often I’m struck by the thought that historical subjects done as well as this, whether it be Ancient Egypt, Rome or Medieval England, seem rather like science fiction. Familiar as things regarding most human behaviour might be, the world of 1529 – 1535 is one so very different in many respects that it might as well be an alien planet. It is difficult to properly comprehend, living in what is largely a secular society today, with common knowledge unthinkable for the people of Henry’s world, how important a role religion played in a man’s life and in the function of society as a whole. It was a time of absolutes; most things deferred to the Church and Christianity exerted the most powerful influence on people.  The ability of someone such as Sir Thomas More to essentially sacrifice himself on a matter of principle might seem admirable or insane, depending upon one’s point of view- but its fascinating and dramatic stuff for a film.

The 2026 Watchlist (well, a starting point)

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Blu-ray, Favourite Films, Life!, Movies5 Comments

I thought I might be in for a quiet Christmas watching discs over the holidays, so I’d bought a few extra discs in the pre-festive sales, but its funny how you never have as much time as you think you will. The photo above indicates where I’m at. As well as a few purchases that still have the shrink-wrap on, there’s a few culprits there that have been waiting on the shelf far too long already- notably the Kurosawa titles, although now that I think about it, I have the suspicion there’s a few more discs that I’ve neglected to include here- indeed, I’m looking over at the shelves now and can see another already. Oh well.

It is annoying though- one of my pet hates is buying a film or series on disc and not watching it. Feels like a failure of discipline.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get through some of the above during January and before any purchases this year add to it (more on what’s incoming in another post). The Wicked Games set from Radiance has one more Robert Hossein title left, The Taste of Violence, and The Sweeney Series 2 set has three episodes remaining (I haven’t purchased the third series box yet, and the series four set is due mid-February I think so there’s no respite on the “you’re nicked, my son!” front). I think I’ll hold off on buying those series 3 & 4 sets for a bit though, try to get some of that outstanding pile out of the way first; the trouble with TV boxsets is that there’s often so many episodes they can consume available time to the detriment of, say, sitting down with those Kurosawa titles.

Regards that watchlist in the photo- readers may have noticed the Italian release of Once Upon a Time in America on UHD, which arrived from Italy a week prior to Christmas and which to my considerable chagrin I still haven’t seen yet, even though the film is one of my personal top ten all-time favourites. Clearly the running time (close to four hours) works against it, mind; just accommodating for it, never mind ensuring I have the energy to do it justice without nodding off after a long day. I have watched the first twenty minutes though, as I was (justifiably, if you know the track record of Leone films) nervous regards the transfer and colour timing and wanted to be certain I hadn’t wasted my money  but it does look to be the best the film has ever looked on home video ( and I’ve brought the film numerous times, ever since the Thorn EMI VHS that I bought in London many moons ago). Hopefully maybe Arrow Films or some such boutique here in the UK will have a crack at it someday to ensure a thorough restoration and the extra features this classic really deserves, but who knows, at this point, regards physical media? Its getting to the stage if some favourite  film is released on Blu-Ray or UHD you daren’t hang around as a surprising number slip OOP.

Oh, and a Happy New Year, everyone- I sincerely hope that 2026 proves to be a better year than 2025, which from a personal standpoint probably ranks up there with the stinkers when all is said and done. Here’s to a better one this time around the sun.

Beware taking a car ride with a femme fatale

On By ghostof82In Blu-ray, Film noir, MoviesLeave a comment

Nude in a White Car/Toi… le venin (1958), Dir. Robert Hossein, 92 mins, Blu-Ray (Radiance, Wicked Games boxset)

With a title like this film has, its clearly not an arthouse meditation- this one’s absolutely the pulp potboiler that the title suggests it is. Like Hossein’s earlier film, The Wicked Go to Hell (1955) this is based on a story written by Frederic Dard and is best considered one of those cheap disposable paperbacks adorned with garish covers one used to find on carousel racks in train stations, airport lounges or convenience stores. The kind of paperbacks with low-grade paper that often seemed to be already yellowing and having that musty smell of old secondhand bookstores. 

The film opens with failed poet/drifter Pierre Menda (Robert Hossein) walking along a beach as dusk falls to night, towards and past the camera as he reaches the road running along the beach. A white convertible pulls up alongside him, and the driver within, a blonde woman, offers him a ride. He accepts and slides into the passenger side of the car’s front bench seat.  She drives him along the road, her face hidden in shadow, but then makes a turn and drives them out onto a secluded wooded carpark. Killing the engine she slips off her coat, revealing that she is naked underneath, and offers herself up to him. Well, Pierre is clearly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and takes advantage of the offer, but afterwards, when they are finished, the woman dumps him from her car and races away, leaving him stranded, and having very nearly run him down.

Pierre takes note of part of the car’s registration details and the next day tracks it down to a luxurious  house owned by two sisters,  Eva (Marina Vlady) and Helene Lecain (Odile Versois, in real life Marina’s elder sister, some very clever casting). Naturally Pierre’s intention is to ascertain which of the sisters took him on that car ride, a deduction simplified (or not) by the revelation that one of the sisters, Eva, is confined to a wheelchair. This being a noir potboiler, one perhaps naturally has suspicions regarding the validity of Eva’s disability, but Helene seems to have genuinely sacrificed her own freedoms in order to care for her sister.  Is she being inexplicably fooled by Eva or is it perhaps simply the case that it is Helen who is taking night rides in a bid for some freedom and sensual thrills away from her caring duties. 

And yet here is possibly the surprising genius of the film- it does indeed keep you guessing. Just when you think you have a bead on what’s going on, and who is fooling whom, there’s a sudden twist and one begins to doubt. Clearly one of the sisters is lying and fooling Pierre- but when they hire him to run their new record store, and suggest he can live with them in a spare room, one has to wonder, are they BOTH fooling him? Indeed, as the film seems to be slipping into some noir ménage à trois, are they taking away his agency, and emasculating him, even as he  in turn thinks he is exercising his own masculinity over them and taking advantage of their kindness, while working out who the woman in the car really was? 

Of course, the central conceit of the film, and what I had issue with, is just how someone can be driven in a car to a secluded spot, and have sex with the driver, without ever seeing their face?  Or, indeed, recognise her voice afterwards? Think about it- you’re sitting in the passenger seat of a car, less than two or three feet from the driver, and you never see their face? It struck me as patently ridiculous, but you have to go with it- the whole film depends upon it. I suppose its something that a writer in some potboiler can get away with, but depicting it in a satisfactory way in a film is quite another matter, and possibly a nightmare for a cinematographer to manage.

Unless Pierre KNOWS which of the sisters was driving the car, but maintains the pretense of ignorance to further his own ends- this being a noir when you cannot trust the reliability of what we ae seeing and hearing; one has to wonder.

So no masterpiece, but a genuinely fun suspense thriller- spiced up by some nudity at the start that very much shocks/surprises, considering that the film dates as far back as 1958: that early sequence in the car would hardly get past censors during the 1940s/1950s noir heyday in America. Taken at the level of what amounted to some pulp sexploitation potboiler in its day, it works very well- Hitchcock it isn’t, but it is good fun with plenty of surprises. Dated, maybe, but I have to say, this film looks lovely on Blu-Ray, clearly restored back to its prime.

Naturally, not for the first time, it occurs to me that I would likely never have had opportunity to see this film -or even be aware of its existence- without some boutique label such as Radiance, here, releasing the film on physical media. You’d think that streaming would allow more opportunity for older films, and World Cinema, in general, to be seen, but that hasn’t proven true.

Son of a bitch wants to play chicken?

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Movies1 Comment

Night of the Juggler (1980), Dir. Robert Butler/ Sydney J Furie, 101 mins, 4K UHD (Radiance/Transmission)

The swinging ‘sixties gave way to the psychotic ‘seventies, marked by films like Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Death Wish, Klute, The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three and Taxi Driver, but perhaps none more so than The Night of the Juggler, a mad, hyper-kinetic plunge into a cesspit, sleaze-fest New York shot entirely on location in the summer of 1978. Belatedly released,  almost reluctantly it seems, in 1980, and only ever released on home video back in the VHS/Betamax days, this is a largely forgotten film that I’d never heard of until this  UHD release was announced.

And boy, is it brilliant. I loved every moment of it. Wildly excessive and absolutely nuts, this is exactly the kind of film that could never be made today and utterly devoid of any political correctness. Its gritty, dirty and sweaty, a time capsule to a world largely lost now but, disturbingly, one that could almost be yet waiting ahead of us, just around the corner. Once its premise is set up in the first ten minutes, it launches into a brutal, non-stop ride into the dark underbelly of Fear City.

Living in a derelict apartment building that was once owned by his family but is now pretty much  reduced to a pile of rubble, a target of property developers waiting to take over and ‘renovate/rebuild’ the area  for billions of profit, racist pervert Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman) seethes, feeling abandoned by a society that has left him behind. Gus is after revenge on “the rich bastards” that have wrecked his life and neighbourhood. He plans to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy real estate entrepreneur and demand ransom of a million dollars- but mistakenly kidnaps the daughter of truck driver Sean Boyd (James Brolin).  Boyd is an ex-NYC cop who was let go during the budget cuts of 1975 after he reported some of his colleagues for corruption; bearded with big hair, the character seems like a human waystation between a ‘sixties hippy and an ‘eighties Rambo.  Boyd starts a frantic manhunt through filth-ridden streets and sex parlours to track down the kidnapper and get his daughter back,  thwarted by low-life scumbags, street gangs and a cop that hates him- Otis Barnes (a manically bug-eyed Dan Hedaya) who has a score to settle for Boyd wrecking his career,  and who finally goes crazy, grabs a shotgun and chases after Boyd to blow him away. Its like the film continuously dials things up, the plot a seething mess of humanity gone all Travis Bickle in the heat of the decaying city, until the viewer doesn’t know whether to wince or chuckle.

Well, as I say, I thought this was great, one of my favourite ‘new’ films this year. What an amazing ride of a movie. Sure, its quite crazy, absolutely far-fetched, but the sweaty, tactile realism of its setting proves irresistible to someone like me who so adores American Cinema of the 1970s. How exactly has a film like this escaped my attention for so long?  Maybe back in the 1970s or 1980s this kind of film wouldn’t seem quite so unusual or deserve to be quite so applauded, but here in 2025, well, its rather like a breath of fresh air. In quite the same way as one might look back and discover 1960s or 1970s music and make some wonderful finds, I think the same is true of films ((albeit that its a rather more difficult search).

Night of the Juggler is the premier release of Transmission, a new sub-label of Radiance, focusing on “late-night TV oddities, all-night cinemas such as the Scala and 42nd Street grindhouses, and the video shop experience of the 80s and 90s, Transmission will invite new audiences to recapture that same thrill of discovery with its upcoming slate of left-of-the-dial 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray titles”. Sounds rather like a physical media version of Moviedrome, the cult film series that ran on BBC2 back in 1988-2000, which probably isn’t an entirely new idea –  I’m sure many boutique labels, from Arrow to Eueka! and 88 Films, would claim to having similar intentions with their own slate of films, but its clearly a seperate enterprise from Radiance’s focus on World Cinema releases. What’s clear is that the quality level is of a typically high standard – the film has substantial on-disc extra features, and the limited edition release (a standard will presumably follow) boasts a rigid box, poster, art cards and booklet- the disc case even boats its own heavy-stock slipcase with alternate artwork. Curiously, the disc case itself is a Scanovo but the cover isn’t reversible, which being a Scanovo does look a little odd, and suggests an oversight or manufacturing snafu, but I’ve not heard any confirmation that its an error. I’ll certainly look forward to further releases in this line.