Dogs Bark

Lust For Loss - - T2 Trainspotting (2017, UK, Color, 117 min) - - 29 June 2017

Recommended. It’s impressive how many members of the original Trainspotting have graduated to mainstream respectability. Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) has his Oscar and Ewen Bremner (Wonder Woman), Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary), Robert Carlyle (28 Weeks Later) and Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men) are all A-list actors. Ewan McGregor became Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars: The Force Awakens). But Irvine Welsh (The Acid House) remains NSFW. The gang is all here in this tribute movie to the surprise hit of 1996. I say tribute because this is a movie about nostalgia. But the look back is more than just cinematic, as repeat scripter, John Hodge (Trainspotting) also pokes at the poignancy of middle-age settling. Once again, Spud (Bremner), the one still shooting up, becomes the audience touchstone and his future is ironically the most hopeful one.  You might need to watch this twice if you don’t speak Scottish.

All In The Family - - My Cousin Rachel (2017, England/Italy, Color, 106 min) - - 17 June 2017

Recommended. Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland, DBE (Gone With The Wind), the first Mrs. Ambrose Ashley, will, presumably, turn 101 in Paris next month. I would love hearing her review of this picture. Her signature grace one presumes would prevail and not without reason. This century’s Rachel . . . Ms. Weitz (The Constant Gardner) does a wonderful job reviving this most ambiguous femme fatale. Weitz adds to the part a liberated impatience with deferring to her cousin/suitor’s increasingly feverish impositions. But the question is: does the madness come from his tumor or her toxin? Mopey Sam Claflin (Me Before You) shrivels before Richard Burton’s (Becket) potent - - and youthful - - passion. The photography (Mike Eley, Grey Gardens), primarily shots of Mothecombe in South Devon, is more powerful than the older film and Rael Jones (Les Misérables) finesses Franz Waxman’s (A Place In The Sun) overblown score . . . all in all, an improvement.      

This’ll Be The Day - - The Unforgiven (1960, USA, Color, 125 minutes) - - 9 June 2017

Recommended. Supposedly, John Huston (The African Queen) intended The Unforgiven to be so similar to John Ford’s The Searchers. Both movies were based upon novels by Alan Le May and Huston wanted to revisit the concept of racism and rage, this time inverting the plot. Instead of Natalie Wood (West Side Story) as John Wayne’s niece, kidnapped by Comanches, we have Audrey Hepburn (Charade), a Kiowa kidnapped as a baby by whites and raised among them. While Ford and Huston had similar feelings about racism, the sexism imposed on both characters doesn’t faze either director. The Searchers is the superior movie in every way. On set bickering with star/producer Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry) soured Huston’s enthusiasm. Hepburn gives a good performance. While it probably would have been better to cast a Native woman, her European inflection gives an effective sense of ‘the other,’ relative to the rest of the cast.   

In Amazona, Everything Is Nice - - Wonder Woman (2017, USA/Hong Kong/China, Color, 141 minutes) - - 4 June 2017

Recommended. OK, before you get all Elizabeth Warren on me, the executive producer of Wonder Woman was Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (The Lego Movie); so guess who wound up pocketing your $10.50? Whatever . . .  Wonder Woman is a kick-ass, femi-centric blockbuster, directed by a woman (Patty Jenkins, Monster) and clearly articulating the 'girl-power triumph over chaos' mime better that Hallmark Channel on its best day. Regardless of all that, the script is woeful, the obligatory culminating CGI Armageddon seems gratuitous and oddly boring. Only the lead character, powerfully energized by Israeli semi-newcomer Gal Gadot (Fast & Furious), saves the picture. My favorite recurring pleasure is how WW keeps getting distracted from her mission by  empathy for suffering mortals. Mortal Chris Pine is ‘better that average’ as her squeeze, Steve Trevor; David Thewlis is perfect for his evil role. Ten pints if you remember the first time he co-starred with Ewen Bremner.

Between The Dark And The Daylight - - The Children’s Hour (1961) - - 3 June 2017

Recommended. We have here a classic of bourgeois queer literature. The story of two unmarried, female teachers . . . their sexuality a subject of a rumor that causes their destruction. The movie is stodgy but effectively dramatic; Hollywood had to start somewhere, eight long years before Stonewall. There were no previous studio offerings about the love that dare not speak her name. To play it safe, MGM cast two bankable, sexually unambiguous actresses, Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina) and Shirley MacLaine (The Apartment) as the beleaguered educators. Both are excellent but the film avoids almost any realistic depiction or discussion of lesbianism.  Almost, because a scene near the end - - a harrowing depiction of closeted, gay, self-loathing - - is painful to watch. The work of novice Karen Balkin, as the bad seed who starts the rumors, is wonderfully wicked. The rest of the cast and William Wyler’s (Ben-Hur) direction is forgettable. But The Children’s Hour persists.

She Kicked The Habit* - - The Nun’s Story (1959, USA, Color 149 min) - - 1 June 2017

Recommended. The Nun’s Story was - - famously - -  Audrey Hepburn’s favorite movie. Why would that be after - - also famously - - making such worldly pronouncements as, “I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls.” That sounds like the woman that made Funny Face or My Fair Lady. But once her Hollywood career ended, Hepburn returned to Africa. Nothing about her life seems to betray that idea that she did base her final years on the compassion at the heart of this movie, despite her obsession with Givanchy. The movie is interesting, a bit slow in places, but another serious study of moral conflict from Fred Zimmerman (High Noon). The famous final scene is near perfect. The cast is also extraordinary, with two titled actresses and five Oscar winners . . . and the gowns are Latin.

*alternative title attributed to Jack Warner