Apocalypto

Apocalypto 139 min

Language: Maya

Certificate: 18

Director: Mel Gibson

AFTER the wildly successful The Passion of the Christ I was interested to see if the maverick actor and director Mel Gibson could do it again. Like the Passion, this film is made in an obscure language with English subtitles. Not everyone has the patience to deal with subtitles, so it's a bit of a gamble. Subtitled foreign language films have more of the flavour of art house cinemas like QFT rather than the Movie House at Yorkgate. However, the path was cleared for subtitled films in mainstream cinema theatres by the wild success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The House of Flying Daggers.

Gibson has made a terrific tension-filled, rip-roaring chase film. There's lots of blood and gore set to a high-adrenaline musical score. It starts off quietly enough with a small hunting party out to provide food for their little village in the forest. They catch a tapir and have a lot of fun at the expense of one of their number, Blunted, who seems unable to father children. It's the typical piss-taking male bonding seen in any gathering of young males the world over. Even Flint Sky, the older leader gets in the act by offering Blunted some herbs to rub on 'down below' to help his little problem. They turn out to be chillies.

The party is disturbed by a group of strangers passing through their forest who tell fearful tales of having to flee destruction wrought on them by vicious marauders. They say nothing of this to the villagers when they return with the tapir, but their village becomes the next victim of a sneak night attack.

Jaguar Paw, one of the young hunters, manages to hide his young heavily pregnant wife and son before he is captured and dragged through the jungle with many others to a stone-built town. To his horror, he finds that he and his people are to be sacrificed to bring good harvests back to the Mayan society.

Without revealing plot details, Jaguar Paw, is determined to get back to his village and to rescue his wife and family from her perilous hiding place. Equally, a small band of his captors are determined to stop him. The jungle chase scenes are edge-of-the-seat heart-stoppingly awesome. The audience really roots for Jaguar Paw as he dodges wild animals and tries to even the odds in his wild flight to freedom.

Gibson has triumphed with an unknown cast in an unknown tongue. Don't miss it!

Double Indemnity

Double indemnity

Running time: 107 minutes
Colour: Black and White
Certificate: PG

Double Indemnity has a reputation as one of the best-loved classic films of all time. This verdict is well-deserved as the movie sets a cracking pace. I had always associated Barbara Stanwyck as the matriarch in the classic television series, The Big Valley. Some older readers may remember this.

The screenplay for Double Indemnity was written by Director Billy Wilder in collaboration with the great Raymond Chandler who created the private eye, Philip Marlowe.

The story opens in flashback as dying insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) crashes into his office, picks up a dictaphone and tells his story in flashback to a colleague who investigates insurance scams.

Neff is a mess. How did he get this way? While out selling insurance policies he met an extremely attractive young woman, Phyllis Dietrichson, (Barbara Stanwyck) who feels trapped in her marriage to her boorish husband, (Tom Powers). The ultimate femme fatale, Phyllis asks how she could work an insurance scam to murder her husband and collect the insurance.

Infatuated by Phyllis's charms, Neff proposes a scheme that makes it look as if the crutch-bound Mr Dietrichson fell or jumped off a moving train. All seems to be going well, but the investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) is suspicious. He feels in his bones that something about the grieving widow's claim is not right. This has to be one of the best roles of Robinson's career. He is like a terrier who won't let go. When he sees something that doesn't seem right, he worries away at it until he gets to the solution.

There's not a lot of action in the modern sense in Double Indemnity yet there are no boring lulls.either. Instead, the tension builds up gradually through the magnificent performances from Stanwyck, MacMurray and Robinson. Will they get away with it? What went wrong? It's powerful stuff?

This classic is now available to a whole new audience on DVD. It's a perfect example of the film noir genre.

Mickybo & Me

Mickybo & Me (2004)

Certificate 15

Directed by Terry Loane

Starring Adrian Dunbar Ciaran Hinds Gina McKee Susan Lynch Julie Waters, John Jo McNeill and Niall Wright

Mickybo & Me brings back a lot of memories for me. It’s a bittersweet comedy set in a divided Belfast in 1970, just as the troubles were starting to get underway. The opening shots show a shop exploding into the middle of a city street as Johnjo and his mum go to buy a pair of shoes. Part of the fun for me is identifying where in the city the different scenes were shot.

Oblivious to the disintegrating society around them two bright youngsters from each side of the rapidly widening sectarian divide in the city meet and become firm friends in the face of a gang of older boys led by Mickybo’s archenemy, a bully he calls ‘Fartface’. Mickybo (Niall Wright) fascinates Johnjo (Niall Wright) who is quite unlike anyone he has ever met. Mickybo is cheeky but loveable – he’s definitely the leader - brash, self-assured and confident.

After blagging their way into a local cinema to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the boys become obsessed by the lives of Butch and Sundance and decide to run away to Australia, living as outlaws on the way. A scene in which Mickybo ‘robs’ a small town banks branch while Johnjo waits outside on a getaway bike is priceless. And a scene where the boys, like their heroes Butch and Sundance, are chased by security guards and gardai (across the border in ‘Australia’) is terrific.

Sadly the reality of Seventies Belfast hits the boys hard in a shocking twist to the storyline just as they return from life on the run. Powerful stuff!

The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Directed by: Michael Curtiz; William Keighley

Writers:Norman Reilly Raine; Seton I. Miller (original screenplay)

WATCHING a DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood is a revelation. It's incredible to think that this restored classic was released as long ago as 1938 - nearly seventy years ago!

One reason why it has stayed the course and still appears regularly on television is that it was made in colour - Technicolor. Many younger people today just have no patience to watch black and white films. This is a big mistake as they then miss out on many of the terrific classic movies I have featured in this series of classic reviews.

As virtually all films today are made in colour, it is hard for a modern audience to imagine the impact of a full-colour film on an audience in 1938. The colours are rich and natural looking, especially in outdoor settings. Its fresh new look and vivid colours then must have blown the cinema-going public away back then. It's no wonder that it took three Oscars that year, for art direction, original score and film editing.

Errol Flynn was made for swashbuckling and it shows in this marvellous movie. Flynn looks like he enjoyed every minute as the outlawed Robin of Locklsey takes on the tyrannical Prince John and his lackeys, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Oddly enough, James Cagney was originally cast in the role of Robin Hood. Cagney had a big row with Warner Brothers and walked off the set. Enter Tasmanian-born Flynn, who had impressed the directors with his role in the pirate movie, Captain Blood.

The story is well known. A Saxon nobleman, Robin of Locksley, opposes the rule of the Norman usurper, Prince John who has terrorised and taxed the whole countryside and treated the Saxons very badly. Claud Rains makes a scheming Prince John and Basil Rathbone excels as the evil Guy of Gisbourne while the Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper) brings some comic relief to the production. There’s also great character acting from the merry men and Marian’s nurse.

The on-screen chemistry between Robin and the lovely Maid Marian as his love interest was given a boost by a real-life relationship between Flynn and DeHavilland. This film has it all: good versus evil, Normans versus Saxons, the True King versus the Usurper, the rivalry between Robin and Gisbourne for Marian's affections, comic moments, sword-fighting and archery. The final fight between Gisbourne and Robin set the standard for on-screen duelling for decades to come. The sets are sumptuous and - as you'd expect - extremely colourful.

This is a fun, thrilling classic that all the family can enjoy. Warner Brothers have gone to a lot of trouble with their DVD release. The first disc is taken from a restored print of the movie. The quality is superb. The second disc gives the history of Technicolor and its use in film making. There's also a background story to the making of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin Hood through the ages, some vintage cartoons bloopers and out takes. It's good for at least another seventy years!

Paradise Lost (Turistas)

Paradise Lost
(released as Turistas in North America)

Directed by: John Stockwell
Written by: Michael Ross
93 minutes. Certificate: 18

PARADISE LOST sets out to be a tense thriller involving the fate of a diverse group of young English-speaking backpackers. Whether it succeeds is open to question.
A ramshackle local bus carrying local people and a handful of tourists comes to grief on a winding Cliffside road. The drive and passengers manage to get out before the bus tips over the edge and smashes to bits at the bottom of the cliff.
The backpackers (three Americans, two Britons and an Australian girl) find themselves stranded in a beautiful beachfront area awaiting the next bus – a “mere” three days away.
The Americans are ALEX (Josh Duhamel), his sister BEA (Olivia Wilde), and her best friend AMY (Beau Garrett). The two Brits are FINN (Desmond Askew) and LIAM (Max Brown). The Aussie is PRU (Melissa George), who is able to speak Portuguese..
They befriend one another and try to make the best out of a bad situation at a local beachside bar where they party the night away with a Swedish couple and the locals, especially a friendly young local boy named KIKO (Agles Steib).
On the morning after the night before they awake to discover the Swedes have gone and they’ve been robbed. Things turn ugly with the remaining locals. Kiko then turns up and offers to lead them to his uncle's house in the jungle where they can wait for the next bus. They begin a long, exhausting hike through the jungle with a welcome rest at an amazing swimming hole with caves where they swim and dive in the water. Kiko misjudges a dive and seriously injures himself. The panicking tourists carry the bleeding Kiko the rest of the way to the house to try and save his life.
Here they meet Uncle ZAMORA (Miguel Lunardi) and his band of heavily armed thugs. Zamora locks them up, and proceeds in a gruesome scene to harvest Amy’s liver and kidneys – while she’s still alive – for surgery. If they want to avoid the same fate the remaining tourists have to try to escape through the jungles and underwater caves with Zamora and his men in full pursuit…
This is a thoroughly unpleasant film: a mixture of titillating shots of attractive young girls and boys wearing not very much and close-ups of pain and suffering. The scene where the camera lingered in anatomical detail as Amy’s belly was cut open and her organs slowly removed was unnecessarily graphic and hard to defend.
The film’s ‘message’ was a bit skewed too – a strange mixture of sick liberal self-guilt and distrust of foreigners in poor countries. Hell, Tony Blair, George Bush and Australian PM John Howard are heartless exploitative bastards so sure maybe Amy deserved to have her organs cut from her living body. In Zamora’s words, “I'd take the hearts and even the skin from their lily-white asses if I could... but they don't travel well.” Yes, Amy came from a White English-speaking nation that exploits Brazil and other developing countries. It’s a bit rough on Amy to become in effect the sacrificial lamb for the Western world, but there you go, what do you expect flaunting your wealth and privilege travelling throughout South America while being White, Western, blonde and beautiful? Such provocation!
On the other hand, I can’t see Paradise Lost doing much for the Brazilian tourist board. Bus drivers are reckless to the point of suicidal or homicidal. Those seemingly friendly locals you dance the night away with are just lulling the unwary Gringos into a false sense of security before robbing them of their valuables and luring them into the hands of ruthless organ-harvesters.

North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock’s

North by Northwest

Certificate: PG Running time 131 minutes

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense rarely made a dull film. One of the constant themes of his films was the reaction of ordinary people who fall victim to threatening circumstances. We see this in The Birds, The Man who Knew too much, Rear Window, Foreign Correspondent and most notably in this exciting comedy thriller, North by Northwest.

Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is the victim of mistaken identity. He’s really a shallow advertising executive under his mother’s thumb but he finds himself accosted by a group of burly thugs. They drive him to a magnificent mansion to meet the urbane Lester Townsend (James Mason at his oiliest) a foreign spy who believes him to be an FBI agent called George Kaplan.

Thornhill escapes from a murder bid made to look like an drink-driving car accident. He is unable to convince the police that he’s not a drunk telling lies to save his own skin. He goes to the United Nations building to confront Townsend, only to discover that the real Lester Townsend is not the man who tried to have him killed. Worse still, the real Townsend is stabbed to death in front of him. Thornhill picks up the bloody knife. He looks guilty. He goes on the run from the police and from the killers.

On a train he meets up with the glamorous Eve Kendall ( Eva Marie Saint) who at first helps him to escape from the police but whose true motives are open to question. This leads him to his famous encounter with a crop-duster and a spectacular dénouement on Mount Rushmore.

The story goes that Hitchcock deliberately kept the whole plot from the cast. He wanted them to seem totally bewildered and uncertain about what would happen next. Grant in particular carries the air of someone feeling ‘Oh my goodness, what’s happening to me?’ In this he is supported well by Eva Marie Saint as the mysterious blonde femme fatale and by James Mason in a scene-stealing role as the oily villain Philip Van Damm. A perfect plot from a perfect cast. This film still enthralls with its thrills, chases and humour. The widescreen Warner Brothers DVD release bundles in a 39 minute behind the scenes film of the making of the movie, together with an audio commentary by the screenwriter Ernest Lehman and a selection of trailers.

HIGH NOON

HIGH NOON

SOME of the best films are the simplest. The storyline in High Noon has few complications. Each scene – right from the opening credits – goes straight to the point. Each scene moves the story along as the clock on the wall relentlessly ticks off the minutes to the arrival of the noon train in the remote frontier town of Hadleyville.
The film opens to the strains of Tex Ritter singing the theme song, Do not forsake me, oh my Darling. Under the rolling credits, at the same time as three desperadoes converge on the town’s railway station to check that the noon train is on time, the retiring Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is in the local courtroom, marrying Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly in her first role) a gorgeous Quaker girl.
It’s 10:35. News filters through that a notorious killer, Frank Millar, (Ian MacDonald) has been released from prison. He’s on the noon train and his declared aim is to meet up with the rest of the gang and kill Kane – the man who put him away – just as soon as he gets into town.
At first Kane and his new bride hitch up a horse-buggy but a short distance out of town he turns back. He has never run away from anything yet and isn’t about to start now. His new bride doesn’t understand his resolve to defend his town and his honour. She flounces off, declaring her intention to board the noon train herself – with or without Will. It’s up to him. Amy is only the first to desert him.
The rest of the film moves in real time as the clocks wears its way round towards noon. Everywhere Kane goes to seek help he is rebuffed by townspeople who always have good personal reasons for leaving him to his fate. His deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) has a thing for his ex Helen Ramirez, (Katy Jurado) a local businesswoman. He feels guilty about taking over from Kane in her affections and resents the fact that Kane hasn’t appointed him as his successor. Kane will just have to do without him.
The tension builds up as Kane travels from pillar to post to get support to take down Millar and his gang. The judge, the respectable church-going folk – all the good people who cheered him on when it cost them nothing – make their excuses and walk away or hide in their homes. The awful truth dawns on Kane. He is going to have to fight alone.
The train arrives. Kane’s wife sees the gang heading into town to kill her new husband and gets off the train. Her place is by her man. Kane manages to kill two gang members. Amy, valuing her man over her pacifist principles kills the third, only to be taken hostage by Millar. She struggles as the two men face one-another down. They open fire. Millar falls. Kane’s shot has taken him down. The townspeople come out at cheer the man they refused to help. In contempt he throws his Star of office into the dust. He and his wife and ride off without looking back.
Not surprisingly, High Noon did well in the 1952 Oscars. Cooper won best actor. The movie also won best song for Do Not Forsake Me, best musical score and best film editing. It was controversial, though. John Wayne, who had turned down the role of Kane, called it the ‘most un-American’ film he had ever seen, probably because the screenwriter Carl Foreman had once been a member of the American communist party. It was thought to be a thinly veiled allegory on many of the great and the good who looked the other way when Senator Joe McCarthy was blacklisting communist sympathisers and other leftists. Perhaps so. Nevertheless, many others admired it for the Marshall’s emphasis on courage and duty despite the odds against him.

The Third Man

THE THIRD MAN (1949)

Directed by Carol Reed from a story by Graham Greene

Running time: 104 minutes Cert: PG

Carol Reed's The Third Man is generally regarded as a British movie masterpiece. The British Film Institute voted it the Number One British Film of the Twentieth Century. It is set among the bombed-out buildings and sewers of postwar Vienna: a city divided like Berlin by the occupying powers and home to black-marketeers, spies, refugees, racketeers and all sorts of shady characters.

Holly Martins (Joseph cotton), a writer of pulp westerns has been invited to come to work for his old school friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he arrives in Vienna he discovers that Harry has not met him at the airport for one very good reason. Harry is dead; killed in a motoring accident. Martins is just in time to attend the funeral. At the funeral he meets a British officer, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and notices another mourner weeping freely - an attractive actress called Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli).

When he tries to find out more about the accident Martins is at first confused. Harry was killed instantly. His dying words were about Holly.. Two men helped him. No, there was a third man..Everyone he questions seem to be hiding something. They are as guilty as hell. The people Martins question only arouse his suspicion. Something odd is going on. Perhaps Harry's death was no accident? Perhaps it was murder!

The awful truth dawns on Martins that his old pal was not a very nice man. When the major tells him That Lime was a thief, a murderer and a dealer in smuggled diluted penicillin he can't believe it. Not Harry. Not his old friend. However, the evidence mounts up and he has to accept the unbelievable truth. Harry Lime was a corrupt, murdering gangster, loyal to nobody but himself.

After this shock, he gets a greater one. In Anna's flat he strokes her cat which pulls away from him. She tells him that it only liked Harry. The cat leaves the flat and cuddles up to a mysterious stranger lurking in a nearby doorway. Martins later notices this man and the cat as his feet when he too leaves the flat. He challenges him. Suddenly a light from a nearby balcony throws a beam of light on the man's face. Martins is astonished. It's Harry Lime! Harry's not dead after all.

Martins soon discovers that he hasn't heard the half of it. Lime is a real nasty piece of work. In a showdown in a ferris wheel, he cold-bloodedly dismisses all his crimes. “Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if any one of those dots stopped moving forever. If I offered you £20.000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man, free of income tax. It's the only way to save money nowadays.” Martin is disgusted and is faced with a dilemma. Should he shop his old friend?

This film has it all. Dark shadows, stylish cinematography, paranoia, a love triangle, a haunting musical score from Anton Karas on the zither and more twists and turns than you'd expect even from Albert Htichcock. Carol Reed's masterpiece was written by Graham Greeene, the author of The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana.

The Third Man won only one Oscar in 1950 for Robert Krasker's cinematography; shot on location amidst the genuine ruins of postwar Vienna. The current DVD release has a superb print of the film with a few fascinating extras. There's archival footage of Anton Karas, the composer of the zither score that permeates the film, a Lux radio play of the movie, theatre trailers a Harry Lime radio play starring Welles and a photo-gallery.

ON THE WATERFRONT

On the Waterfront (1954)

Running time: 108 minutes

Director: Elia Kazan

I could've had class. I could've been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am. Terry Malloy

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a former boxer, does a bit of work as an errand boy for Johnny Friendly (Lee J Cobb) – a vicious local gangster and a corrupt trade union leader. Terry is riddled with guilt because of his role in luring a potential court witness to his death. His sense of guilt deepens as he falls in love with the dead man's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint).

Malloy's conscience troubles him, and he distances himself from Friendly and the boys. He realises that Johnny Friendly and the corrupt local union branch oppresses the ordinary dock workers much more than any bosses. The code against speaking out against the union leadership is enforced with brutal violence. Joey Doyle was thrown of a roof after Malloy betrayed him. Another man has a crane dump its load on top of him while working in a ship's hold. Friendly and his henchmen decide whose face fits, who gets the work in a degrading line-up each morning and who is left behind to starve.

Worried about his loyalty, Friendly orders Terry's brother Charley Malloy (Rod Steiger) to kill him. Charley can't bring himself to do it and is himself murdered on Friendly's orders. Terry then combines with Edie and a local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden) to resist union intimidation and bring Johnny Friendly to justice. This sets the scene for a showdown between the two men; the corrupt union boss and his former flunkey.

This film won eight Oscars. Deservedly so! Unlike his character, Brando has class. He was not only a contender but a winner. The director, Kazan was hated by many of the Hollywood liberal set for testifying to the House Un-American Activites Committee on the extent of communist infiltration of the media. This powerful film amounted to the case for the defence when it came to informers: the informer, not a hero but a troubled man struggling with his uneasy conscience and trying to do the right thing.