Reviews

This is a small, well-told story. In an unfairly reductive but easy-to-make comparison, it's "Heidi in South Africa"; a girl facing difficulties is sent away to a stunning rural setting to be cared for by her grandparents where, like her Swiss counterpart, she makes an important new friend and overcomes a crippling personal challenge.

There's nothing terribly new or clever here, but it's all nicely done. Anchen du Plessis puts in a lot of good work, but it's more about the writing and the director's choices in the story-telling: frightening images, imaginative childhood obsessions, and a nice plot development that makes the story a more widely relevant coming-of-age narrative.

It's not the film, it's the memories... "Crash of Moons" is a TV film created by cobbling together a few episodes of the TV show "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" to tell the story of massive destruction in space and the benevolent role that the United Worlds can and does play in saving lives, if not moons. It's a very silly, highly improbable tale with geniuses that forget the basics of science, purely evil leaders that never kill anyone or even have anyone killed, and the most rudimentary of effects that I really can't call "special". So what's to like about it? Perhaps it's the chance to look back at the distant past of science fiction and catch it at the moment in history when space was still "sentient beings vs. an uncaring cosmos", before the Cold War gave us invading communis..., er, aliens to fear; even when there are extraterrestrials, they're really just plain folks like you and me. On the other hand, it might just be the easy way that this era's TV tales set in space mirrored all the other TV shows of the time, making sci-fi a seamless part of the greater 1950s experience and not the outlier, geeky passion that it would become a few decades later. Plus, there are the tantalizingly minor but still present seedlings of ideas that will blossom in the Star Trek universe - a federation of worlds, a ship intent on helping out those it encounters in space, missions of peace and a message of hope... I never saw the television show, but since this film is the show, I guess I have seen it now. It's not very good, but it's a relatively faithful continuation of the Flash Gordon-type space narratives of the 1930s, '40s and early '50s. There are brave stalwart heroes and heroines, wobbly sets, and a slightly annoying youngster. It isn't thoughtful or impressive, like "Things to Come", a film made more than 20 years earlier, but then again, this isn't really a film. It's a bit of television, and a bit of fun, as long as you're a fan of Flash and his ilk, and I am.

I'd like to say upfront that I like this series and I'm very happy that they're making it and that ST is back on the little screen, but this particular episode, coupled with moments from the first episode of the new season, gives me pause and threatens my joy. There's nothing wrong with the general subject of the episode, which centers around a group of humans transported without their approval to a place where they re-create the society they left - or, more precisely, a more primitive society, thus making sure that the Prime Directive will be invoked.

There's been an episode of ST Enterprise dealing with abducted humans who re-create a pioneer settlement, but that's not the most blatant plagiarism that appears to be taking place here. I may very well be wrong, and I really hope that I'll be able to post a sincere apology in the very near future, but my suspicions are that the writers are recycling the great big reveal from Babylon 5 involving celestial beings that look like angels and serve a similar savior-like function. If that's true, it's lazy. I look forward to being contrite.

It's a love story, of a sort, but not what we usually see. Instead, it's a story about love. Instead of boy meets girl or vice versa, here we have a happily married individual, parent to two small children and husband to an adoring wife, who happens to fall in love again. What is to be done?

The first thing you notice are the colours - they're stunning, omnipresent and mysterious. Are they there to remind us that this isn't a black and white world, with simple answers, or are they there to beguile us, and lead us astray? Perhaps they're not there for us at all; they just are, like nature.

The next thing you notice is how often flowers come into the frame - right from the start, first as part of a fecund but cyclical natural world and then as bouquets, to make us think about what happens when we don't leave well enough alone. The wild flower, beautiful in its own environment, thrives; the cut flower, beautiful in our homes, dies. But we do want to have our cake and eat it, too.

This film was made in 1964, and it divided public opinion when it came out, because it challenged notions of fidelity and marriage that had endured, at least in their public proclamation, unchanged for centuries. It did so by presenting the act of taking a lover while married as an arguably logical step, based on the concept that happiness can be increased for one without being decreased for another. Whether that concept applies to love, however, is another matter entirely.

The film is beautiful, lyrical and troubling. The actors perform admirably, none so more than the non-professional Claire Drouot, Jean Claude Drouot's real-life wife playing his on-screen wife. (The children are their own children, too.) The script is deceptively simple, the scenes are largely quiet, and yet all the while there are important and substantial ideas being raised. Is love a feeling or a relationship? What do we owe ourselves and what do we owe our loved ones? Varda does not give you the answers, but the way she gives you the questions is marvellous.

Powell and Pressburger do it yet again in this wonderful film, capturing with uncanny ease just the right balance between real life and artifice so as to make this account of a young woman from England on her way to a remote isle in Scotland to marry her wealthy fiancé work successfully in two ways. It is both a wonderfully crafted metaphor on the uncertainty of life in the face of forces beyond our control (remember that it was filmed towards the end of the Second World War) and the consequent futility of sticking to plans and preconceptions - in truth, no one knows where they're going, only who they are - as well as a captivating look into life in a rural community where the sense of unity is essential to survival even while basic human nature still works to separate people. As far as the actors go, the work is top-notch, with Hiller as on-pitch as always, Livesey perfectly earnest and Pamela Brown absolutely brilliant. There's also an appearance, and not a bad little turn, by the very young Petula Clark as the precocious child of an insufferably smug wealthy couple, and a good part, too, for the Irishwoman Margot Fitzsimons, who gets to deliver a particularly stinging diatribe to Hiller. The Scottish location is tremendous, and Powell and Pressburger do it full justice. On that subject, I was amazed to find out that Livesey did not, in fact, travel to the on-location filming but instead shot all his scenes in studios down south as he was appearing in a long-running West End play (by Peter Ustinov) and couldn't absent himself. One final point: in a daring move, Powell and Pressburger simply omit the third party in what may, in fact, not really be a love triangle - Hiller's fiancé never appears on screen, underlining the idea that the conflict in this film is entirely an internal affair of the bride-to-be. That's only fair in a film whose title is a first-person statement in its female protagonist's own voice, and even more so considering that this bold claim will be wonderrfully and divertingly subverted.

Apart from the pleasure of seeing Lina Wertmuller's magnificently titled and very successful 1974 film "Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August" replayed in space (with Connor Trinneer standing in for Giancarlo Giannini and Padma Lakshmi for Mariangela Melato), there's not much here. T'Pol's willingness to engage in subterfuge seems a little surprising, as does the lack of natural dangers (animal or insect) in a swampy alien environment.

In John Ford's "Mogambo", a remake of Victor Fleming's "Red Dust" from 1932, Clark Gable (who also starred in the Fleming film) plays a "great white hunter" – his character even uses the term, minus the adjective "great", in a disparaging self-description – who has a thing first for Kelly, a worldly young woman (Ava Gardner) stranded at his safari camp and then, shortly after, falls hard for Mrs. Nordley(Grace Kelly), the wife of one of his safari clients (Donald Sinden).

It's rather unusual to find a remake of a film in which the lead is the same as in the original – Sean Connery in "Thunderball" and "Never Say Never Again" springs to mind, thanks in part to the memorable clue that is the title of the remake - but when it does happen, it's an interesting situation for the viewer. Obviously, comparisons will inevitably occur, so let's clear the big plate off the table right away and agree that "Mogambo", much like "Never Say Never Again", is not as good a film as its original version. At all. The secondary characters are, in general, underdeveloped – Eric Pohlmann and Philip Stainton are simply clichés – and, as his would-be primary love interest, Grace Kelly is weak.

On the other hand, it is worth watching, particularly if you've seen the earlier film, and not only to see how the legend of Gable, accrued over his career, weighs on that same actor's shoulders in this updated African take on the classic love triangle. Ava Gardner is distracting and light, not the incredible sexual force that Jean Harlow was in the first film, and there's a wonderful sequence involving gorillas that makes all of the rest of the stock footage from wildlife shots look Tarzan-amateur; in fact, the quasi-Tarzan feel that runs through most of the film carries its own irony, given that Gable had apparently been in the running for the role of the Ape Man that Weissmuller landed in 1932.

For me, this film is a special treat because of a terrific back-story that my Galician friend told me about it. During the Franco years in Spain, there was heavy censorship of film themes and content, which was often made easier by the practice of dubbing rather than using subtitles. When this film was distributed into Spain, because the idea of adultery was unacceptable to the dictatorship, the theme of "Mogambo" was changed, just a little, in the dubbing. Mrs Nordley, the wife, was quietly and quickly changed, thanks to a few alterations in the dialogue, into Mr. Nordley's sister. Apparently, it was less uncomfortable for the powers in charge to watch scenes ostensibly between a brother and sister that were therefore fraught with incestuous tension than to imagine for a moment that a wife might stray from her marital path.

One year after the release of Wes Craven's "Swamp Thing" and a year before "The Toxic Avenger", "The Being" hit the screens in the US. This is a film that shares elements with both of them, but also reminds me somehow of "Lake Placid", albeit without much of the latter's intelligence or humour. In Jackie Kong's directorial debut, which was in fact shot three years before its cinema release, a small and peaceful town in the middle of nowhere (okay, Idaho) is overrun by destructive monsters spawned from irresponsibility (remember, this is years before "Gremlins", too), and it's up to the local lawman to save the day. Woefully unprepared, he sets out.

This film is unusual in that it attracted semi-major names (Martin Landau, Jose Ferrer, Ruth Buzzi and Dorothy Malone)to a project that clearly had no budget – no special effects, lousy sound and a script that has little to offer the actors or the audience. It's not a good film at all, but I feel somewhat protective of it – despite the lousy sets, the repetitive action and one of the most wooden leading men (Bill Osco)of all B movies. It's a taste of what average and sub-average horror flicks are still like (such as "Pinata: Survival Island" or "The Relic"), and yet there's this element of parody that is never more than an inch below the surface. Take, for instance, how everyone rolls around in passionate hugs with the attacking monsters, animating them with their own victim-flailing. It's both pathetic and hilarious. But that humour is not sustained, or developed.

So why do I like it? Perhaps because it might be that, more than anything, this was the picture that best prepared Martin Landau for his exceptional role in "Ed Wood". After all, this was a movie Ed would have loved.

Three years after James Dean gave us the quintessentially tortured young man in "East of Eden', John Cassavetes brought youthful angst to the western in this very fine but perhaps too hardworking film from Robert Parrish and an uncredited John Sturges. Yes, Robert Taylor is in it, and Julie London is there, too, as she will also be for Parrish's next western, "The Wonderful Country", but the film belongs to Cassavetes.

Cassavetes plays the ever-striving younger brother of a reformed gunfighter, now a rancher, performed with competence by Taylor. It's hard for the younger sibling to carve out his own space under these circumstances. Sound familiar? There's more – in fact, there's everything you've ever seen in a western rolled together in this one film, apart from conflict with native Americans. There's the fast gun gone legit; the itchy young gun undergoing his first blooding; the mysterious femme fatale; the power struggle at the ranch; the omnipresent chief cattle baron (although in this case he's remarkably benign); the vengeful gun-toting stranger; the resentment left over from the Civil War; the arrival of homesteaders and the conflict they created with cattle ranchers – it's all here. And it's not done too badly, but with so much to cover, it's spread too thin to make any real impact.

What does pack a wallop, however, is the performance of John Cassavetes. Along with a splendid role for Royal Dano, one of the outstanding character actors of his time, and the smart muddying of ethical clarity that is a hallmark of scriptwriter Rod Sterling, it's the very good work of Cassavetes that makes this really worth watching.

This Capra film is wonderfully deceptive; while it delivers all the sentimentality that one expects from this director, it also gives the viewer a whole new level of pragmatism that is not usually apparent in Capra's stories.

A young woman arrives in China to marry her missionary boyfriend. However, before the wedding can take place, she finds herself instead the captive of a powerful warlord. What plays out then is a battle of two distinct world views, one based on modernism's reverence for the self-determining individual and one based on a traditional comprehension of hierarchical values, fate and the importance of continuity.

To Capra's credit, neither side of this east/west debate is shown as possessing a monopoly on truth, but there is nonetheless at the bottom of this debate a clear criticism of colonialism and western imperialism that is rare for the period.

The actors are very earnest - (Spoilers) Barbara Stanwyck convinces you first of her convictions and then of their collapse, but it is Nils Asther, Danish-born Swede playing General Yen, who is really exceptional. Walter Connolly is perfect,too, as the soulless American war profiteer who's yoked himself to General Yen's rising star.

No, it wasn't filmed on location, no, it didn't bother itself too much with cultural authenticity and yes, the actors can be hammy at times, but, as happens so often to me with these older films, I am amazed at the commitment to real issues, albeit presented in the fully developed guise of an ill-fated love story.

As may be apparent from my moniker, I have a particular interest in all things Greek. This film, which I saw at the 2015 International Film Festival Rotterdam, deals with current political and economic difficulties that this nation faces, but its focus is on the domestic (in both senses)causes of those troubles.

Angeliki Papoulia, the bright star at the heart of this film, plays Maria, a woman who has not seen anything go her way. Her husband, a sailor, is not there enough for her, and her sister, her one-time perfect companion, is now married to a reprehensible lump of a human. What's more, the family business, which her invalid mother has handled (poorly) without help from her husband, is on the verge of ruin. The family is in debt, Maria is at her end of her tether, and nothing in her personal life gives her satisfaction anymore.

This film, like others that have been placed under the general heading of films from the Greek Weird Wave, needs thought and attention. Its narrative breaks up linear time, and its characters are often found committing strange acts, but there are, I think, valid reasons behind all the choices that the director has made. The use of flashback in a film that is examining how Maria's past (and her family's past actions) has thoroughly destroyed her present, is a reminder that we cannot always simply forget and move on. As to those moments where some viewers might ask why - her husband's sexual actions at sea, her father's failure to act until he is forced by his daughter into undertaking a final mad measure, or Maria's own orchestration of her father's desperate crime - I would put their behaviour down to a shared tendency to live in the now, regardless of consequences, a tendency that, at the national level, sits as the foundation-stone of the crisis depicted in this film.

I cannot close without heaping praise on Angeliki Papoulia's performance. Once again, she has offered the viewer a fully fleshed, complicated and absorbingly real character that also manages to operate as an archetype.

The story, torn straight from the newspapers, is simple - a young Pakistani woman is on the run from her family. Sabeena Jabeen Ahmed, who plays Laila, the object of pursuit, is terrific in this role, delivering a thoroughly believable and moving portrayal, and her co-star, Connor McCarron is equally spot-on as a young man in love and in over his head.

The achievements of the cast are matched by the excellence in direction; this is a film that keeps the viewer both involved and anxious. Between moments of sheer suspense and genuine menace there are snippets of beauty and, on occasion, the kind of incidental humour that is found in everyday life. All in all, this is an exceptional first feature film from the happily talented Wolfe Brothers

A number of films address the concept of doppelgangers or doubles, but few do it this well. Ercan Kesal and Maryam Zaree perform an amazing dance, each offering up very believable dualities of self even while they illustrate how we all touch lives with others through a careful presentation of someone we wish we could be.

The film begins with the portrait of an emptied (rather than empty)and lonely man who seizes the opportunity to change - first, he changes his circumstances, and then he changes, on a literal level, who he is. Accompanying him on his metamorphosis is an equally unfulfilled woman.

This is, however, not a straightforward love story, and all does not end well or happily. What do we want, if not a happily ever after ending for our own stories? Sometimes, all we want is to find a skin that fits us better than the one we are wearing right now.

I found this film intensely moving and poetic. At times, it seemed to carry with it some great unspoken human truth - in particular,the first prison cell scene was, for me, as insightful as, say, the Ferris Wheel scene in The Third Man. The director, Tayfun Pirselimoglu, is also an author, screenwriter and painter. I hope that, with all this going on, he does not drift away from the cinema, because he makes very good films.

Aleksey German's epic masterpiece is one of a kind - I have never, ever felt so entirely immersed inside such a complete and yet completely other universe as I did when watching this film. But the fun does not stop there; along with that deepest dive into the fetid and fecal squalor of another planet in the throes of a dark age which will not lift, the film also affords a whole grab-bag of ideas about societal development, about morality and about the role of independent thinking in the progress of intelligence.

The premise of the film is relatively simple, if wonderfully metaphorical: a group of scientists have traveled through space to a planet less socially developed than earth, and they live there as semi-impotent anthropologists, not overtly interfering with the violent and ignorant society with which they now co-exist. They allow the denizens of the planet their own free will in blundering their way forward through a history of their own making.

This is not, strictly speaking, entertainment - it is long, hard work, full of mud, blood and feces, but it is vastly rewarding. Every actor is near-perfect, but Yarmolnik and Tsurilo are sublime; the former, as Don Rumata, presents a man burdened and slightly maddened with unutterable knowledge and invalid responsibility who nevertheless strives to do his best for those around him, while Tsurilo, as Baron Pampa, provides that life-embracing spark of animism that defines humans as those animals capable of feeling enthusiasm over their own existence.

Not everything makes sense here, but then again, neither do our lives. There is chaos in this world of German's, and fear, and a hope for order that is as dangerous as the chaos. But, as his widow reminded us in her opening comments to the screening of this film at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January 2014, this is, above all, a love story. This god loves us; he just can't do much about it. This film is beautiful, utterly engrossing, and unmissable.