Each year I make a point of comparing my judgments to the critical consensus, as summarized by Metacritic and the annual critics’ poll from indieWire (2008 here and 2009 here). I have at last caught up with almost all the best films of 2008, while the lists for 2009 will direct my viewing for the next several months, as the films come out on dvd. Below are lists of my own recommendations, with their indieWire poll rankings. As I reviewed my reviews of 2008 releases, some as recent as last week, I began to see my numerical ratings as pseudo-scientific, so instead of a ranked list I sorted them into a sort of narrative:
Best of the Year: Three stand out for me. Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (#5) only got better on a second (subtitled) viewing. I would expect Laurent Cantet’s quasi-documentary of a year in the life of The Class (#33) to hold up as well. But I’m not sure if the Philippe Petit documentary Man on Wire (#20) could replicate the surprise and delight of first viewing.
Outstanding: Slumdog Millionaire (#28) needs no introduction, just an explanation of how a “Best Picture” could also be a good film. The Visitor (#57) struck some as string-pulling, but I guess they were my strings being pulled. I’m surprised I rated I’ve Loved You So Long (not on 2008 list) so high – must have been infatuated with Kristen Scott Thomas.
Highly Recommended: In this category I have one American film and a handful from around the world. I’m a big fan of Charlie Kaufman, so it’s no surprise Synecdoche, New York (#9) ranks as the best of Hollywood for me. It was a reach to wrap my mind around that film, as well as the others in this category: Fatih Akin’s German/Turkish Edge of Heaven (#16); the French family gatherings of A Christmas Tale (#2) and The Secret of the Grain (#42), the animated Israeli confessional Waltz with Bashir (#10), and the German Oscar winner The Counterfeiters (not on list).
Recommended: I will lead with three documentary portraits of cities: post-Katrina New Orleans in Trouble the Water (#30); Terence Davies’ Liverpool in Of Time and the City (#29 for 2009); My Winnipeg (#13) from Guy Maddin. Then a group of American independents that all take a sympathetic look at marginal lives: The Wrestler (#18); Chop Shop (#46); Wendy & Lucy (#4): Ballast (#19); Frozen River (#49). For a really marginal life, take a look at Swedish teenage vampires in Let the Right One In (#14). And for the Masterpiece Theater crowd, I have to note how much I liked The Duchess (not on list), with not-my-favorite Keira Knightley.
Well-regarded and okay by me: I endorse, without fully sharing, the esteem given to Pixar’s WALL-E (#3), Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married (#11), Gus Van Sant’s Milk (#15), and Jacques Rivette’s The Duchess of Langeais (#21), but would bump up into this group Oliver Stone’s W. (#64).
Critical bandwagons I can’t quite jump on: The Flight of the Red Balloon (#1); Paranoid Park (#6); Still Life (#7); Silent Light (#8); The Dark Knight (#22); and Gomorrah (#25).
As for 2009, the early leader in the clubhouse for me is Jane Campion’s Bright Star (#19). I’m also recommending Summer Hours (#1), A Serious Man (#2), and Avatar (#26), with particular enthusiasm for Goodbye Solo (#47) and Adventureland (#43), with lots more yet to watch – excluding #3, the latest from my cinematic nemesis Quentin Tarantino.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Cria Cuervos
The title of Carlos Saura’s film translates as “Raise Ravens,” with the rest of the Spanish proverb implied: “…and they will peck out your eyes.” This portrays as death-haunted a world of childhood as Pan’s Labyrinth, and stars Ana Torrent, the grave but beautiful little girl who made such an impact in The Spririt of the Beehive. The girl’s mother, played by Geraldine Chaplin, remains a matter of fact presence in her life, even after we’ve witnessed her painful death from cancer. Chaplin also plays Ana as a grown up, in direct to the camera reminiscence. The mother’s death opens a whole world of mortality to the young girl, much of which she takes responsibility for, either the real heart attack of her father, one of Franco’s generals, or for the fantasized death and resurrection of her sisters. The film offers a lovely group portrait of the three girls, however dark the shadows in their house. Ana Torrent’s big brown eyes and bewitching gaze make this film memorable, and it’s surprising that the rest of her career is mostly unknown, unless she grew up to be Penelope Cruz. (1975, dvd) *7+* (Criterion page)
Beautiful Losers is a documentary I’d never heard of, till Netflix’s collaborative filtering pointed it out as something I might like. And I did. This was as well-done and ingratiating a piece of egregious self-promotion as I have seen. It tied into a traveling group exhibition of the same name, and it’s no surprise to learn that both film and show were put together by on-screen presence Aaron Rose, proprietor of the Alleged gallery where all the artists were affiliated. An aesthetic derived from skateboarding, graffiti, and punk linked them together but certainly put them at a distance from me (the only one I’d heard of was Shepard Fairey, and only because of that Obama poster). Nonetheless I became engaged with the group on their climb from losers to beautiful people, as their art went from intimate to corporate. Rather than begrudge their commercial sell-out, I am inclined to celebrate the power of collective effort for artists. (2008, dvd, MRQE)
Beautiful Losers is a documentary I’d never heard of, till Netflix’s collaborative filtering pointed it out as something I might like. And I did. This was as well-done and ingratiating a piece of egregious self-promotion as I have seen. It tied into a traveling group exhibition of the same name, and it’s no surprise to learn that both film and show were put together by on-screen presence Aaron Rose, proprietor of the Alleged gallery where all the artists were affiliated. An aesthetic derived from skateboarding, graffiti, and punk linked them together but certainly put them at a distance from me (the only one I’d heard of was Shepard Fairey, and only because of that Obama poster). Nonetheless I became engaged with the group on their climb from losers to beautiful people, as their art went from intimate to corporate. Rather than begrudge their commercial sell-out, I am inclined to celebrate the power of collective effort for artists. (2008, dvd, MRQE)
Secret of the Grain [etc.]
In what seems to be the mode of the moment in serious French film, La Graine et le Mulet (in England, simply Couscous) inserts us into an extended family and forces us to figure out the relationships on the fly, the wrinkle here being that it’s a Tunisian immigrant family in a Mediterranean port city. Abdel Kechiche’s film is long and demanding, but immersive and engrossing. The patriarch of the family is dismissed from the shipyard job he has had for decades. Slimane (Habib Boufares in a nearly silent but speaking performance) has left his wife to live with another woman, who owns a small residential hotel, but he is in daily contact with his ex-wife and grown children (I’m still not sure how many altogether, but a half-dozen anyway, with spouses and kids), but his closest relationship is with Rym (the magnetically beautiful Hafsia Herzi), his mistress’s daughter. As a second-generation acculturated Frenchwoman, she helps him negotiate the bureaucracy as he seeks permits and financing for a scheme to turn an abandoned boat into a couscous restaurant featuring his ex-wife’s cooking. The story builds to a Big Night situation, long on suspense but light on food porn. You don’t know where it’s going, and when it ends, you’re not sure where it went, but it’s likely you will be drawn into this family, for better and for worse. (2008, Sund/T) *7+* (no MC, but MRQE here)
If Tunisian immigrants in southern France seem a little remote from your own experience, take a look at Tulpan (2009, dvd, MC-88), which might as well take place on a distant planet, in its portrait of a shepherding family on the desolate steppes of Kazakhstan. Sergey Dvortsevoy’s film will affect you either hypnotically or soporifically, more ethnographic documentary than standard film fare, though in effect a romantic comedy set among widely-dispersed yurts in a forbidding and unforgiving landscape. Tulpan (i.e. Tulip, in a place with hardly any vegetation at all) is the unseen heart’s desire of our hero, a young veteran of the Russian navy, living with his sister’s family and hoping for a bride and a flock of his own. I was watching this with someone else, who grabbed the remote and fast-forwarded through the second half, so I can neither support nor dispute this film’s highly-laudatory critical reception. I can, however, guarantee you it is different from any other viewing experience you’ve had, both majestic and empty, boring and amusing, understated and overpowering.
You’d be overpowered in a different way by District 9 (2009, dvd, MC-81), a sci-fi alien invasion flick with a novel premise, which bludgeons you with grisly humor before descending into the obligatory futuristic shoot-em-up. So in Neil Blomkamp’s film, the alien spaceship hovers over his native Johannesburg, and the aliens themselves are no superbeings but drones who have lost contract with their masters, and so become wards of the state, sequestered in the District 9 of the title, land too valuable for squatters, so a Halliburton-like company is brought in to move them forcibly to a more distant township, shades of apartheid. (Plot similarities to Avatar are probably part of the cultural moment.) The aliens are dismissively called “prawns” for their semi-crustacean and wholly-creepy appearance. The official responsible for their removal is nepotistically as out of his depth as many of the Bushies in the Baghdad Green Zone of 2004, but goes from comic butt to half-breed superhero as the movie careens to its conclusion. It’s certainly a dispensable film, but not without amusement.
If Tunisian immigrants in southern France seem a little remote from your own experience, take a look at Tulpan (2009, dvd, MC-88), which might as well take place on a distant planet, in its portrait of a shepherding family on the desolate steppes of Kazakhstan. Sergey Dvortsevoy’s film will affect you either hypnotically or soporifically, more ethnographic documentary than standard film fare, though in effect a romantic comedy set among widely-dispersed yurts in a forbidding and unforgiving landscape. Tulpan (i.e. Tulip, in a place with hardly any vegetation at all) is the unseen heart’s desire of our hero, a young veteran of the Russian navy, living with his sister’s family and hoping for a bride and a flock of his own. I was watching this with someone else, who grabbed the remote and fast-forwarded through the second half, so I can neither support nor dispute this film’s highly-laudatory critical reception. I can, however, guarantee you it is different from any other viewing experience you’ve had, both majestic and empty, boring and amusing, understated and overpowering.
You’d be overpowered in a different way by District 9 (2009, dvd, MC-81), a sci-fi alien invasion flick with a novel premise, which bludgeons you with grisly humor before descending into the obligatory futuristic shoot-em-up. So in Neil Blomkamp’s film, the alien spaceship hovers over his native Johannesburg, and the aliens themselves are no superbeings but drones who have lost contract with their masters, and so become wards of the state, sequestered in the District 9 of the title, land too valuable for squatters, so a Halliburton-like company is brought in to move them forcibly to a more distant township, shades of apartheid. (Plot similarities to Avatar are probably part of the cultural moment.) The aliens are dismissively called “prawns” for their semi-crustacean and wholly-creepy appearance. The official responsible for their removal is nepotistically as out of his depth as many of the Bushies in the Baghdad Green Zone of 2004, but goes from comic butt to half-breed superhero as the movie careens to its conclusion. It’s certainly a dispensable film, but not without amusement.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Stanwyck redux
Not quite ready to relinquish my fixation on Barbara Stanwyck, I have been able -- through the good offices of TiVo’s “Wishlist” feature -- to feast on obscure films that have surfaced lately on Turner Classic Movies, and here I offer an appendix to my earlier Stanwyck career summary. In a way, the fact that these films are mostly long-forgotten is part of the appeal – it calls up the routine week to week production of Hollywood’s golden age. The first three were all directed by Frank Capra in the pre-Code era, and have a startling frankness, despite occasional circumlocution.
Ladies of Leisure (1930) makes no bones about the profession of its heroine. You could call our Barbara gold-digger or party girl, but there’s another name for a paid female companion for the evening. She meets up with a bored playboy painter, who wants to paint her portrait as an epitome of hope. And Capra certainly saw that quality in the aspiring showgirl who had been the orphan Ruby Stevens. Stanwyck shines for the first time on film, and while the story plays out conventionally, her fire shows through.
Forbidden (1932) is the only one of these films that really needs to be rediscovered and added to the essential Stanwyck canon. She starts off as a romantically thwarted librarian in a small town, with pince-nez glasses and a tight bun, but kicks over the traces and winds up in a slinky gown on a cruise to Havana. Onboard she falls for Adolph Menjou, and he reciprocates. Back in the States it turns out he’s a rising politician married to an invalid heiress. Melodramatic complications ensue in accelerating fashion, giving Barbara scope to hit all sorts of notes. Sure, there’s a headlong implausibility (yet predictability) to it all, but the dialogue is sharply written and crisply played. There’s a surprisingly natural toddler and BS is surprisingly natural with her, in a forecast of Stella Dallas. There are crimes of passion and moments of reconciliation as the lovers go gray, together and apart. Having been schooled by Douglas Sirk to see more than is immediately apparent in a “woman’s picture,” I found this melodrama absorbing and Stanwyck’s performance bravura.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) was scandalous (and a flop) because of its theme of forbidden interracial romance. Stanwyck is not believable as a missionary bride in China at a time of civil war, but smolders believably when she is abducted by a cultured warlord, who intends to keep her captive till she gives herself to him willingly. This was Capra’s attempt to go arty, and it certainly has an ersatz style to it, so it has some appeal as a period piece, but no lasting merit.
Jumping ahead to Christmas in Connecticut (1945), we are in a different cinematic universe. I don’t know whether it’s a quality of Stanwyck’s, or one of the few occupations for single women at the time, but she often winds up playing journalists. Here she’s a faux-Martha Stewart, writing an extremely popular “Great Housekeeping” column, all about her exquisite married life on a New England farm, written from her solo Manhattan apartment. The wacky premise involves a shipwrecked seaman and a publisher who unknowingly scents a great publicity stunt, of sending the lonely vet to have a traditional country Christmas with Barbara and her “family.” An imposture is set in motion and goes off like clockwork, cuckoo clock that is. Stanwyck carries an otherwise unmemorable troupe through its paces, though Sydney Greenstreet scores in some against-type comic moments as the publisher.
Stanwyck is back in calculating femme fatale mode in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), as an industrial tycoon who came into her inheritance by causing the death of her antagonistic aunt. That secret colors all the good she believes she’s accomplished through her wealth, and in true film noir fashion, it’s a secret that comes back to haunt her, in the person of Van Heflin, who returns to Iverstown long after the fateful adolescent night when he was supposed to be running away with Martha, but she wound up having the incident with her aunt. She has taken care of the other witness by marrying him, and he winds up being played impressively by Kirk Douglas in his first screen role, as a timid, troubled man whose political career has been advanced by his wife. The triangle plays out with some interest, and Lewis Milestone directs effectively, but this film does not achieve classic status.
In The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), Stanwyck is a woman in jeopardy, married to maniac painter Humphrey Bogart, and as in Sorry, Wrong Number from the next year, it goes against the grain of her appeal. She must always retain agency, never simply be acted upon. Even in disappointment and defeat, she must remain her own woman. Bogart is simply bug-eyed in his preposterous role, and aside from a few effectively gothic moments of wind and rain in an English mansion (directed by Peter Godfrey, like Christmas in Connecticut), this film is utterly disposable.
The Man with a Cloak (1951) is an historical curiosity of considerable interest, set in 1840s New York. Stanwyck is once again a woman in control of things, as housekeeper to a dying rich man (Louis Calhern), whose schemed-for inheritance is put at risk by the arrival of Leslie Caron, the young bride of the man’s grandson, who has come to get his support for their revolutionary efforts back in France. In the middle of things, solving all mysteries, is the eponymous Joseph Cotten – I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to reveal that he turns out to be Edgar Allan Poe. Intriguing and atmospheric, literate and well-performed, Fletcher Markle’s period piece is worth a rediscovery.
Ladies of Leisure (1930) makes no bones about the profession of its heroine. You could call our Barbara gold-digger or party girl, but there’s another name for a paid female companion for the evening. She meets up with a bored playboy painter, who wants to paint her portrait as an epitome of hope. And Capra certainly saw that quality in the aspiring showgirl who had been the orphan Ruby Stevens. Stanwyck shines for the first time on film, and while the story plays out conventionally, her fire shows through.
Forbidden (1932) is the only one of these films that really needs to be rediscovered and added to the essential Stanwyck canon. She starts off as a romantically thwarted librarian in a small town, with pince-nez glasses and a tight bun, but kicks over the traces and winds up in a slinky gown on a cruise to Havana. Onboard she falls for Adolph Menjou, and he reciprocates. Back in the States it turns out he’s a rising politician married to an invalid heiress. Melodramatic complications ensue in accelerating fashion, giving Barbara scope to hit all sorts of notes. Sure, there’s a headlong implausibility (yet predictability) to it all, but the dialogue is sharply written and crisply played. There’s a surprisingly natural toddler and BS is surprisingly natural with her, in a forecast of Stella Dallas. There are crimes of passion and moments of reconciliation as the lovers go gray, together and apart. Having been schooled by Douglas Sirk to see more than is immediately apparent in a “woman’s picture,” I found this melodrama absorbing and Stanwyck’s performance bravura.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) was scandalous (and a flop) because of its theme of forbidden interracial romance. Stanwyck is not believable as a missionary bride in China at a time of civil war, but smolders believably when she is abducted by a cultured warlord, who intends to keep her captive till she gives herself to him willingly. This was Capra’s attempt to go arty, and it certainly has an ersatz style to it, so it has some appeal as a period piece, but no lasting merit.
Jumping ahead to Christmas in Connecticut (1945), we are in a different cinematic universe. I don’t know whether it’s a quality of Stanwyck’s, or one of the few occupations for single women at the time, but she often winds up playing journalists. Here she’s a faux-Martha Stewart, writing an extremely popular “Great Housekeeping” column, all about her exquisite married life on a New England farm, written from her solo Manhattan apartment. The wacky premise involves a shipwrecked seaman and a publisher who unknowingly scents a great publicity stunt, of sending the lonely vet to have a traditional country Christmas with Barbara and her “family.” An imposture is set in motion and goes off like clockwork, cuckoo clock that is. Stanwyck carries an otherwise unmemorable troupe through its paces, though Sydney Greenstreet scores in some against-type comic moments as the publisher.
Stanwyck is back in calculating femme fatale mode in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), as an industrial tycoon who came into her inheritance by causing the death of her antagonistic aunt. That secret colors all the good she believes she’s accomplished through her wealth, and in true film noir fashion, it’s a secret that comes back to haunt her, in the person of Van Heflin, who returns to Iverstown long after the fateful adolescent night when he was supposed to be running away with Martha, but she wound up having the incident with her aunt. She has taken care of the other witness by marrying him, and he winds up being played impressively by Kirk Douglas in his first screen role, as a timid, troubled man whose political career has been advanced by his wife. The triangle plays out with some interest, and Lewis Milestone directs effectively, but this film does not achieve classic status.
In The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), Stanwyck is a woman in jeopardy, married to maniac painter Humphrey Bogart, and as in Sorry, Wrong Number from the next year, it goes against the grain of her appeal. She must always retain agency, never simply be acted upon. Even in disappointment and defeat, she must remain her own woman. Bogart is simply bug-eyed in his preposterous role, and aside from a few effectively gothic moments of wind and rain in an English mansion (directed by Peter Godfrey, like Christmas in Connecticut), this film is utterly disposable.
The Man with a Cloak (1951) is an historical curiosity of considerable interest, set in 1840s New York. Stanwyck is once again a woman in control of things, as housekeeper to a dying rich man (Louis Calhern), whose schemed-for inheritance is put at risk by the arrival of Leslie Caron, the young bride of the man’s grandson, who has come to get his support for their revolutionary efforts back in France. In the middle of things, solving all mysteries, is the eponymous Joseph Cotten – I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to reveal that he turns out to be Edgar Allan Poe. Intriguing and atmospheric, literate and well-performed, Fletcher Markle’s period piece is worth a rediscovery.
Loose change
Here are some films that I’ve watched lately but can’t recommend, so I mention them in a cautionary way, in the interest of complete coverage at year’s end, from best to worst of a so-so lot. Each has elements that might lead you to expect something good, but in the end proves disappointing.
I’m not sure what led Michael Mann to think that the story of John Dillinger needed to be retold, but his Public Enemies (2009, dvd, MC-70) did not convince me on the merits. Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard are definitely worth watching, and jailbreaks, bank robberies, and tommy-gun shootouts are filmed in luscious HD with balletic as well as ballistic grace. But the story is told in a breakneck and inconsequential manner, with intriguing cameos but little genuine character development. Billy Crupup is amusing and surprisingly convincing as J. Edgar Hoover, and Christian Bale is steely and enigmatic as the G-Man charged with bringing in Dillinger “dead or dead.” But a number of well-known faces come and go in a flash. This latter-day gangster film looks good and goes down easy, but lacks point.
The same goes twice for another Depression-era true story, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (2009, dvd, MC-63). The production values are smooth, but the point is elusive. Is it grief porn? We watch Angelina Jolie’s face in extreme close-up as it is tortured through all the emotions of a devastated mother, after her young son goes missing, and then the police return a different boy whom they insist is her son. Her denial of his identity is written off as hysteria and she is sent to an asylum to admit her obstinacy. So Angelina is back in the snake pit, where she first made her mark in Girl, Interrupted. But then there is the parallel story of an honest investigator who uncovers a serial killer of boys, and then the protracted, painful wait to confirm that her son was one of the victims. And then an equally protracted execution scene. All of which scenes go off in different directions, making for an aimless film, which exploits suffering rather explaining or exploring it.
Julianne Moore is another mother in panic and pain over a missing child in Freedomland (2005, dvd, MC-43). Since the investigating cop is Samuel L. Jackson, along with other welcome performers such as Edie Falco and Clarke Peters, and the script is by Richard Price, adapted from his own novel (not his best but better than this), most of the blame for the failure of this film to move or enlighten, or even make much sense, must be laid to director Joe Roth.
As of fan of Buffy and Entourage, I had reason to hope that James Toback’s Harvard Man (2001, dvd, MC-49) -- with Adrian Grenier as the student-athlete of the title and Sarah Michelle Geller as his mobster-bred girlfriend -- was not as bad as they say. It is. And is only made worse by the ridiculousness of Joey Lauren Adams as a hot, hot philosophy professor with whom Toback’s autobiographical hero is having an affair. There was some amusement to be had watching this film with my Harvard man son, but I would warn anyone else away. The style is as annoying as the story, with the exception of some fun with distorting lenses that gives a pretty good representation of a bad LSD trip. The rest of the movie is a bad trip in itself.
I’m not sure what led Michael Mann to think that the story of John Dillinger needed to be retold, but his Public Enemies (2009, dvd, MC-70) did not convince me on the merits. Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard are definitely worth watching, and jailbreaks, bank robberies, and tommy-gun shootouts are filmed in luscious HD with balletic as well as ballistic grace. But the story is told in a breakneck and inconsequential manner, with intriguing cameos but little genuine character development. Billy Crupup is amusing and surprisingly convincing as J. Edgar Hoover, and Christian Bale is steely and enigmatic as the G-Man charged with bringing in Dillinger “dead or dead.” But a number of well-known faces come and go in a flash. This latter-day gangster film looks good and goes down easy, but lacks point.
The same goes twice for another Depression-era true story, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (2009, dvd, MC-63). The production values are smooth, but the point is elusive. Is it grief porn? We watch Angelina Jolie’s face in extreme close-up as it is tortured through all the emotions of a devastated mother, after her young son goes missing, and then the police return a different boy whom they insist is her son. Her denial of his identity is written off as hysteria and she is sent to an asylum to admit her obstinacy. So Angelina is back in the snake pit, where she first made her mark in Girl, Interrupted. But then there is the parallel story of an honest investigator who uncovers a serial killer of boys, and then the protracted, painful wait to confirm that her son was one of the victims. And then an equally protracted execution scene. All of which scenes go off in different directions, making for an aimless film, which exploits suffering rather explaining or exploring it.
Julianne Moore is another mother in panic and pain over a missing child in Freedomland (2005, dvd, MC-43). Since the investigating cop is Samuel L. Jackson, along with other welcome performers such as Edie Falco and Clarke Peters, and the script is by Richard Price, adapted from his own novel (not his best but better than this), most of the blame for the failure of this film to move or enlighten, or even make much sense, must be laid to director Joe Roth.
As of fan of Buffy and Entourage, I had reason to hope that James Toback’s Harvard Man (2001, dvd, MC-49) -- with Adrian Grenier as the student-athlete of the title and Sarah Michelle Geller as his mobster-bred girlfriend -- was not as bad as they say. It is. And is only made worse by the ridiculousness of Joey Lauren Adams as a hot, hot philosophy professor with whom Toback’s autobiographical hero is having an affair. There was some amusement to be had watching this film with my Harvard man son, but I would warn anyone else away. The style is as annoying as the story, with the exception of some fun with distorting lenses that gives a pretty good representation of a bad LSD trip. The rest of the movie is a bad trip in itself.
Tunes of Glory
This is a film that I’d never seen, partly because I’d always confused it with Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, from the same era and with a similarly military setting, though a different war and nationality. When Criterion released a DVD a few years ago, I put it on my Netflix queue and it very gradually made its way to the top. Ronald Neame smoothly directed this story of a Highland regiment in the years after World War II, but it is really a showcase for two giants of British acting. Alec Guinness is a crude hard-drinking Scot with flame-red hair, who has risen from the ranks to achieve command, only to be succeeded by an Oxford-educated martinet played by John Mills. Our sympathies waver between the two, until both are destroyed from within. The process is never less than interesting to watch, but the resolution is not fully satisfying, rendering the film well-made but not especially significant. (1960, dvd.) *7*
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