Parky at the Pictures (DVD 20/7/2017)

NEW(ISH) RELEASES.

Álex de la Iglesia's MESSI (released three years before his recent brush with the Spanish tax authorities and his marriage to childhood sweetheart Antonella Roccuzzo, this meld of dramatic reconstruction and talking-head eulogies takes Lionel Messi from his Rosario home to Barcelona, where his talent even amazed a genius like Johan Cruyff. De la Iglesia is a maverick film-maker capable of moments of left-field brilliance. But watching him try to get insights out of the likes of Javier Mascherano, Gerard Piqué and Pep Guardiola is often excruciating. For all its faults, however, this muddle is still vastly superior to Antony Wonke's dismal Ronaldo [2015].).

Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan's SWISS ARMY MAN (the presence of a flatulent Daniel Radcliffe made this an instant cult hit. But, while it divided critics with its gross-out slapstick and dudish philosophising, there are moments of hilarity and poignancy amidst the crassness in the story of suicidal castaway Paul Dano's eccentric encounters with Radcliffe's washed-up corpse, which unexpectedly reanimates in an amnesiac state and has to be talked through life and all its joys and frustrations.).

Kelly Fremon Craig's THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (this impressive debut as writer-director puts some fizz back into the teenpic, as the sharp-tongued Hailee Steinfeld struggles to overcome the loss of beloved father Eric Keenleyside [in a car crash she survived], the fussing of mother Kyra Sedgwick and the fact that sporty brother Blake Jenner seduced best friend Haley Lu Richardson during a sleepover. Forbearing teacher Woody Harrelson tries to steer Steinfeld through her multifarious (and initially suicide-inducing) crises, as do classmates Hayden Szeto and Alexander Calvert. But Craig offers few easy answers in eschewing the high-school clichés and treating her spiky heroine as an individual rather than a cookie-cut type.).

Gary Ross's FREE STATE OF JONES (opinion divides across the Mason-Dixon line on Newton Knight, an idealistic Mississippi farmer who deserted from the Confederate army during the American Civil War and continued to fight to liberate the slaves because he so despised the wealthy cotton families that owned them. As played by Matthew McConaughey, Knight is a principled freedom fighter in league with runaways like Mahershala Ali against vicious army thugs like Bill Tangradi. But, when it's not blurring historical fact, Ross's screenplay is strewn with high-minded speechifying that McConaughey handles better than he does his relationships with mistress Gugu Mbatha-Raw and understanding wife, Keri Russell.).

EUROPEAN CINEMA.

Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and Mario Monicelli's BOCCACCIO `70 (portmanteau pictures were all the rage when this 1962 quartet appeared. Taking their cues from The Decameron, the vignettes explored the status of women in a resurgent Italy. In Fellini's first colour outing, `The Temptation of Dr Antonio', prudish decency campaigner Peppino De Filippo gets more than he bargained for when he takes exception to a hoarding featuring an Anita Ekberg milk advert. Sex also rears its head in Visconti's `The Job', as Milanese countess Romy Schneider hits upon an unusual way to demonstrate her independence after the press catch husband Tomas Milian in the clutches of a prostitute. However, Sophia Loren's fairground barker proves to be more coy in De Sica's `The Raffle', when she jeopardises her romance with the handsome Luigi Giuliani to make herself the prize in a draw to make some money for her pregnant sister. Finally, this version sees the restoration of Monicelli's often excised `Renzo and Luciana', which centres on the efforts of Germano Gilioli and Maria Solinas to hide the fact they are married at the strictly gender-segregated biscuit factory where they work.).

Vittorio De Sica's YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (more short stories in this 1963 anthology that continues De Sica's successful partnership with Sophia Loren. In `Adelina of Naples', she plays the wife of unemployed Neapolitan Marcello Mastroianni, who exploits a loophole in a 1954 law that prevents pregnant women from going to jail after she is caught selling black market cigarettes. Another brush with the law dictates Loren's actions in `Anna', as a close encounter with a child forces her to decide between writer lover Mastroianni and the Rolls Royce given to her by her rich industrialist husband. The tables are turned in `Mara of Rome', as Marcello plays the neurotic scion of a powerful Bologna tycoon who is pressed into action by Loren's soft-hearted prostitute when neightbour Tina Pica informs her that grandson Aramando Trovajoli has developed a crush on her and is threatening to stop studying for the priesthood and join the Foreign Legion if she rejects him.).

Vittorio De Sica's MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE (adapted from the same Eduardo De Filippo that was filmed as Filumena Marturano [1950] by Argentine Luis Mottura, this flashbacking 1964 example of the commedia all'italiana style opens in 1942, as black marketeer Marcello Mastroianni and teenage brothel worker Sophia Loren enjoy a night of passion during an air raid. They reignite their passion in a bombed-out house a few years later and he installs her as his unofficial mistress. But, just as he seems set to marry a younger woman, Loren pretends to be on her death bed and follows a sympathetic proposal with a revelation about the paternity of one of her three sons.).

Luchino Visconti's LUDWIG (concluding the German trilogy that began with The Damned [1969] and Death in Venice [1971), this stately and ultimately tragic 1972 account of the reign of King Ludwig II of Bavaria stars Ludwig Berger as the ruler whose love of opera leads to a friendship with Richard Wagner [Trevor Howard] and whose hedonism results in him filling his fairytale castles with handsome young men. Testifying to a tribunal called to assess the monarch's mental state, courtiers and cabinet ministers like Count Dürckheim [Helmut Griem] reflect on his excesses, as well as Wagner's fascination with conductor Hans von Bülow [Mark Burns] and his wife, Cosima [Silvana Mangano], and with Ludwig's cousin, Elisabeth of Austria [Romy Schneider, who poignantly reprises the role she had played in the charming `Sissi' trilogy in the 1950s].).

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's EFFI BRIEST (one of the many masterpieces produced by Fassbinder during his phenomenally prolific and tragically short career, this 1974 adaptation of Theodor Fontane's novel chronicles the fallout from the brief fling in 1890s Germany between Effi [Hanna Schygulla] and Count Crampas [Ulli Lommel] after her older husband, Baron Geert von Instetten [Wolfgang Schenck], finds some long-forgotten love letters. Mourning the loss of her lover in a duel, Effi tries to atone by being a good mother. But, when von Instetten heads to Berlin to pursue his political ambitions, he drives a wedge between his estranged wife and her adored daughter, Annie [Andrea Schober]. Immaculately photographed in shimmering monochrome by Jürgen Jürges and Dietrich Lohmann, this audacious blend of Bertolt Brecht and Douglas Sirk ranks among the high points of Das Neue Kino. The performances are as outstanding as Kurt Raab's sets and Barbara Braun's costumes, with Schygulla mesmerising as she suffers like an old-time Hollywood diva.).

Miklós Jancsó's ELECTRA, MY LOVE (adapted in a dozen intricate long takes from László Gyurkó's play, this 1974 dissertation on the illusion of freedom and the need for revolutionary resistance to tyranny is full of symbolic references to Hungary's struggle for autonomy. Set 15 years after the murder of King Agamemnon, the action centres on the oppressive rule of Aegisthus [Jószef Madaras] and the efforts of the grieving Electra [Mari Törocsik] to overthrow her father's killer with the help of her miraculously resurrected brother, Orestes [György Cserhalmi]. Some of the pleas to national sentiment may prove elusive. But, such is the hypnotic nature of János Kende's glorious camerawork and the audacity of Jancso's staging [particularly with the introduction of the firebird] that this blend of drama, dance, song and controlled political fury is both challenging and compelling.).

Ildikó Enyedi's MY 20th CENTURY (exquisitely photographed by Tibor Máthé in luminous monochrome, this 1988 debut opens with Thomas Edison [Péter Andorai] demonstrating his electric light bulb on the day in 1880 when Anya [Dortha Segda] gives birth to twin girls. Raised separately after being orphaned and abducted while selling matches, Dóra and Lila [both played by Segda] take very different paths. But a coincidental entanglement with Z [Oleg Yankovsky] aboard the Orient Express on New Year's Eve in 1900 complicates the revolutionary Lili's bid to assassinate the Hapsburg minister of the interior. Complete with deliciously quirky digressions involving a laboratory dog and a zoo monkey, this playfully episodic, but subtly incisive saga won the Camera d'or at Cannes and represents a cherishable discovery.).

Cristi Puiu's STUFF AND DOUGH (scripted by Puiu and Razvan Radulescu to echo Eugene Ionesco and Jim Jarmusch, this 2001 debut feature uses the tropes of the noir road movie to examine the capricious intransigence of fate and the flawed nature of Romania's post-Ceausescu transformation. Frustrated with running a food kiosk with mother Luminita Gheorghiu in the Black Sea town of Constanta, twentysomething slacker Alexandru Papadopol accepts a commission from mobster Razvan Vasilescu to deliver a package in Bucharest. But the trip proves fraught with perils for the hapless anti-hero and his girlfriend, Ioana Flora, and best mate, Dragos Bucur.).

OLDIES.

Rowland V. Lee's TOWER OF LONDON (played out on splendidly sinister sets designed by Jack Otterson, this 1939 Universal dip into English history strays somewhat from Shakespeare's version of events, as the Duke of Gloucester [Basil Rathbone] relies on the loyalty of his executioner, Mord [Boris Karloff], to dispose of brothers Edward IV [Ian Hunter] and the Duke of Clarence [Vincent Price] in order to be made Lord Protector of his nephews, Edward V [(Ronald Sinclair] and Prince Richard [John Herbert-Bond].).

Will Hay and Basil Dearden's THE GOOSE STEPS OUT (made in 1942 and confirming that Ealing produced cracking comedies before its postwar run of enduring classics, this is Will Hay's most consistently amusing vehicle after he parted company with longtime sidekicks Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat. Indeed, he is superbly supported as a bungling language teacher smuggled into Germany to replace a lookalike tutor at a Nazi spying school by a young Peter Ustinov and Charles Hawtrey. The best gag involves Hay teaching the Hitler Youth how to give Churchill's V for Victory salute to a portrait of the Führer. But, as in Marcel Varnel's The Ghost of St. Michael's and Hay and Dearden's The Black Sheep of Whitehall [both 1941], the knockabout and the wordplay are first rate throughout in this object lesson in how to make crowdpleasing propaganda.).

Charles Vidor's COVER GIRL (filmed in ravishing Technicolor, this five-time Oscar-nominated 1944 Columbia musical turns around publisher Otto Kruger's bid to make a star of the granddaughter of the lost love of his life. But, while Rita Hayworth (who married Orson Welles during the shoot) was the nominal star of the flashbacking story about a Brooklyn club dancer who emulates grannys rejection of the high life for love and more than holds her own on such Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin numbers as `Long Ago and Far Away', `Put Me to the Test' and `Make Way for Tomorrow' (which also sees Phil Silvers cutting a rug), this plush bibelot was more significant for the emergence of Eve Arden as the wise-cracking magazine editor and Gene Kelly as Hollywood's most innovative dancer-choreographer. Swaggering as he was often wont to do as Hayworth's club-owning beau, he particularly excels in the `alter ego' number co-crafted by Stanley Donen, in which Kelly challenge dances with his reflection in a shop window.).

Martin Ritt's PARIS BLUES (boasting sets by Alexandre Trauner, cinematography by Christian Matras and an Oscar-nominated score by Duke Ellington, this 1961 take on a Harold Flender novel sees expat saxophonist Sidney Poitier thriving alongside jazz giant Louis Armstrong away from the racism they have to endure Stateside. But, when tourists Diahann Carroll and Joanne Woodward catch they eye of Poitier and trumpeter buddy Paul Newman, he has to rethink his personal and political priorities. The music is as splendid as the City of Light. But, while this is undeniably chic and impeccably played, it's not as dramatically daring as it might have been.).

John Ford's TWO RODE TOGETHER (echoes of The Searchers [1956] reverberate around this 1961 Western, as Texas marshal James Stewart and cavalry officer Richard Widmark discover that the majority of the settlers abducted by a Comanche raiding party have become assimilated. The storyline may sounds familiar, while the comic relief provided by Andy Devine jars along with the romantic subplot involving Widmark and Shirley Jones, which contrasts starkly with the response of the supposedly civilised whites to the union between Mexican Linda Cristal and her Comanche captor, Woody Strode. But Stewart is a revelation, as he takes the grizzled frontier persona he had perfected in the psychological Westerns of Anthony Mann to compelling new levels. Moreover, the ending is devastatingly sobering.).

Bob Kelljan's COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (originally conceived as a sexploitation flick and costing just $64,000 to make, this 1970 revision of the vampire myth sees Bulgarian mystic Robert Quarry prey on Los Angelina Donna Anders after she asks him to hold a séance to contact her recently deceased mother. However, after friend Judith Lang finds puncture marks on her neck, doctor Roger Perry declares Quarry a menace and elists the help of Anders and Lang's boyfriends, Michael Macready and Michael Murphy, to stop the count spreading his pernicious disease. But they have to catch Quarry and his brutish familiar Edward Walsh off their guard. Technically raw, but decidedly unsettling, this is an underrated revision of some familiar genre tropes.).

Bob Kelljan's THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA (an intiguing 1971 sequel that doesn't appear to be a direct continuation of the original story sees Robert Quarry acquire a property adjoining the San Francisco orphanage run by the Revered Tom Toner. While attendng a fundraiser, he becomes infatuated with Mariette Hartley and dispenses with her family during a chilling nocturnal attack. But, while deaf housemaid Yvonne Wilder offers her tacit support, Quarry makes the mistake of biting Jessie Wells, the girlfriend of Dr Roger Perry, who finds willing accomplices in cops Rudy De Luca and Craig T. Nelson. Insinuatingly atmospheric, this is so moreish it makes the decision not to make a third picture all the more disappointing.).

Gilbert Moses III's WILLIE DYNAMITE (now known for playing Sesame Street's Trash Gordon, Roscoe Orman headlines this visually striking 1974 blaxploitation outing, as a purple Cadillac-driving New York pimp who tells mother Royce Wallace he is a successful record producer, when, in reality, he is fighting to defend his empire against some corrupt NYPD cops Albert Hall and George Murdoch and social worker Diana Sands, who is determined to rescue the highest earner of his seven girls, Joyce Walker.).

Randal Kleiser's THE BLUE LAGOON (released in 1980, the third adaptation of Henry De Vere Stacpoole's novel opens with shipwreck survivor Leo McKern teaching seven year-old cousins Elva Josephson and Glenn Kohan how to fend for themselves on a deserted Pacific island. But, after their mentor dies, the adolescent Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins quickly find their thoughts turning to other things than bushcraft. Having caused considerable fuss when it first appeared [although not as much as Shields's appearance in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby, 1978], this looks pretty dated, especially when compared with Michaël Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle. But Nestor Almendros's Oscar-nominated views of the locations in Fiji and Jamaica are sublime.).

Wolfgang Petersen's ENEMY MINE (pitching John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific [1967] into a futuristic outer space, this is a thoughtful 1985 parable that takes too many easy narrative options. Stranded together on the barren surface of Fyrine IV, earth pilot Willis E. Davidge [Dennis Quaid] and his reptilian humanoid Dracon foe Jeriba Shigan [Louis Gossett, Jr.] learn to co-operate in order to survive. There are neat ideas, such as the aside on the Drac reproductive process, while Rolf Zehetbauer's production design and Chris Walas's make-up effects are admirable. But, over the course of three years, problems are too easily overcome and bonds too quickly established. Moreover, the introduction of Zammis [Bumper Robinson] merely serves to set up a showdown with the Scavenger miners seeking slave labour.).

Brian Trenchard-Smith's DEAD END DRIVE-IN (one of the masterworks of Ozploitation, this 1986 chunk of futuristic mayhem adds a dash of Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel [1962] to Peter Carey's dystopic story, `Crabs', as Ned Manning and Natalie McCurry discover that Peter Whitford has turned the Star Drive-In into an electrified concentration camp to aid a regime bent on restoring order to a rebellious futuristic Australia. Full of stinging satircal barbs and closing with a spectacular car stunt, this gives Peter Weir and George Miller's auto classics a run for their money.).

Russell Mulcahy's HIGHLANDER (having had cult classic status bestowed upon it, this 1986 fantasy re-emerges in digitally remastered form to some fanfare. Conceived by film student Gregory Widen and scripted by Peter Bellwood and Larry Ferguson, the plot could easily be dismissed as high-concept tosh, as 16th-century Scot Christopher Lambert is informed by 2437 year-old Egyptian swordsman Sean Connery [with a Scottish accent, natch] that he is immortal and needs to keep his head around ruthless rival, Clancy Brown. Their time-travelling feud ropes in forensics expert Roxanne Hart and NYPD cop Alan North. But, despite the intricate structure and the flashy visuals, this rarely fires the imagination. Even the Queen songs on the soundtrack are sub-par.).