L'Affaire SK1

2014, France, directed by Frédéric Tellier

Frédéric Tellier's first feature, a well-paced, fact-based procedural that some reviewers characterized as a Gallic Zodiac; however, while there are certain tonal similarities the narration, which proceeds along two tracks, is very different, and we're well aware of the identity of the killer. Indeed, the more apt comparison in some ways is with Bertrand Tavernier's very fine 1992 film L.627, or the multi-year TV series Engrenages, at least in terms of the depiction of the inner workings of a French police unit -- there's even a poster for the earlier film on the wall in the station at one point, as if to underline the connection (or signal the film's aspirations). 

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

1974, US, directed by Joseph Sargent

Le Pull-over rouge

1978, France, directed by Michel Drach

The Dressmaker

2015, Australia, directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse

A Summer at Grandpa's

1984, Taiwan, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

The mid-1980s produced some very fine coming-of-age films from very varied locations -- Bille August's Zappa and Twist and Shout, Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog, or Hou's delicate film, based in part on his screenwriter's memories of a summer spent away from home. As with My Life as a Dog, there's a parental illness in the background, casting an immediate shadow over events, though for the most part the carefree overrides the storm clouds, with the children testing the boundaries of their independence while gathering an understanding of the somewhat different boundaries that apply to adults. Like all of Hou's films, the pace is quite leisurely, with the director allowing scenes to expand in ways that permit the viewer to spend a good deal of time contemplating scenery, sound, and the often picturesque details of small-town life in which the kids make their own schedules. Absolutely absorbing throughout, with Hou drawing lovely performances from the younger cast members.

Deadpool

2016, US, directed by Tim Miller

D.O.A.

1950, US, directed by Rudolph Maté

A noir with an intriguing narrative strategy, beginning, indelibly, with the protagonist reporting his own murder to the police, before the film switches to flashback mode to fill in the gaps in our understanding. These prove to be many and varied in this rather byzantine plot centered on an incriminating document related to the sale of a quantity of iridium, with our protagonist, Edmond O'Brien, simultaneously trying to unravel his own murder while doing what he can to manage his medical situation. O'Brien plays the role with a suitable sense of urgency, although director Rudolph Maté sometimes undercuts the gathering tension by intercutting conversations with O'Brien's secretary and love interest that don't seem to materially advance the plotline to any great degree. Still, a fine, mostly brisk noir suffused with the sense of paranoia that we've come to associate with the time period/genre.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

2003, US, directed by Donald Petrie

Moana

2016, US, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Pete's Dragon

2016, US, directed by David Lowery

Moonlight

2016, US, directed by Barry Jenkins

La La Land

2016, US, directed by Damien Chazelle

The Young Offenders

2016, Ireland, directed by Peter Foott

A very funny first feature from Peter Foott that captures some of the same blend of comedy/affection of the British TV show/films The Inbetweeners infused with a very mild dose of the pathos of Adam and Paul, the film focuses on a pair of ne'er-do-wells who concoct an outlandishly naive get-rich-quick scheme. It's essentially a road movie, on bikes around West Cork rather than in cars across the American West, and while the script is often extremely amusing, it's the chemistry between the leads that really elevates the material; it's no surprise to discover that the film has spawned a TV series in an attempt to re-capture the magic.

The Accountant

2016, US, directed by Gavin O'Connor

Eyes in the Night

1942, US, directed by Fred Zinnemann

An early Zinnemann, featuring a blind detective and his duo of assistants -- one canine, one wisecracking 1940s character actor -- solving a very of-its-time wartime murder caper with a dash of Nazi spy intrigue. Despite the unusual detective trio, there's little memorable on offer here -- this looks and feels like a straightforward programmer.

Inferno

2016, US, directed by Ron Howard

Seen on an airplane journey, and awful on every level.

Tumultes

1932, France/Germany, directed by Robert Siodmak

The French-language version of Siodmak's Stürme der Leidenschaft, starring Charles Boyer rather than Emil Jannings. This is very early Siodmak, though it has some of the darkness and melancholy of the American films that brought him to greatest prominence in the 1940s, and it shows that he was already an assured hand with narrative. Visually, it's not overly distinctive, though several brief passages in the final third are more obviously Siodmakian. 

Jigsaw

1962, UK, directed by Val Guest

This is a contribution to the 2017 vintage of the Late Films Blogathon, hosted, as ever, by David Cairns at his wondrous blog Shadowplay. 

It's perhaps a bit cruel to suggest that Jigsaw belongs in Late Films company given that Val Guest was only halfway through his lengthy and eventful life when he filmed the picture, but his career often teetered on the edge and took an undeniable nosedive shortly afterward, so we'll say that this marked the beginning of the end, and a very long final phase it was. There's not much to redeem you once you're stuck helming Confessions of a Window Cleaner, though. 

Jigsaw is much more solid stuff, and like Guest's Hell is a City, made two years earlier, makes for a revealing glimpse into provincial Britain of the early 1960s; the films function as a fascinating north/south Manchester/Brighton diptych, with some compelling moments of local colour, perhaps especially in the earlier film. Structurally, Jigsaw is a fairly straightforward procedural, with Jack Warner playing the lead detective, and like many a later TV show the focus is resolutely on the professional rather than the personal lives of the cops -- there are brief mentions of offscreen lives, another contrast to Hell is a City, in which Stanley Baker's home life plays a critical role (interestingly, both films give prominent thanks to the local police forces, though the Mancunian force hardly benefits from Baker's portrayal). 

Warner is already well advanced in years here, well over the usual retirement age for the average copper -- not that it stopped him playing the lead in Dixon of Dock Green until 1976, a most remarkable feat given that the character was shot dead on his first appearance in 1950. The gravitas of age works rather well here -- unlike a younger detective, Warner has no need to get himself all hot and bothered over each and every lead, proceeding instead methodically through his inquiries, with Guest playing up shoe leather much more than forensics. He orchestrates a clear, compelling march through the exploration and elimination of leads, married to an intriguing depiction of the back-streets of Brighton and surrounds. We're not quite on the seamy side of the tracks, and yet the setting is always something just a little short of respectability, too -- as though the town's true colours come out in the off-season. 

The film also plays with the permissible when it comes to sex and violence in a way that feels of a slightly later era -- though Guest is careful to avoid anything truly gruesome, preferring to have our imaginations add the most ghoulish touches, and the point-of-view shots lack the truly terrorizing quality of, say, Peeping Tom. As David himself has written elsewhere, such modest pushing of the envelope was characteristic of Guest's work at the time, though there's no hint of the lurid on this occasion -- there's a dour, even sour, quality to the depiction of the sordid crime that has at least as much in common with the more domestic dramas of the era as it does with Guest's lively work for Hammer.

While Warner remained highly visible on television for another fifteen years, this was close to his swansong on the big screen, and I must confess that I've always found his bluffly English stolidity rather appealing -- there's not even the hint of a surprise in his depiction and yet it's low-key and effective, grounding the film in a sense of the real that complements the location shooting. The support is generally good, too -- Michael Goodliffe is very well-cast slightly lower down the class spectrum than we usually see him, which of course immediately makes him rather louche, as though he's done something vaguely disreputable and can't get better work than as a hoover salesman; the same might be said of the character played by John Barron, an actor who usually had a more military bearing, often as something of a martinet. There's also a glimpse of Ray Barrett, a key presence in many films of the Australian cinema revival of the 1970s and 1980s, although unlike Goodliffe and Barron he's entirely straight-laced here, in contrast to his most memorable roles back home.  As is sadly too often the case in films where women serve as victim, there are far less notable roles for female actors, though Guest does assign a key smaller part to his wife, Yolande Donlan, who turns the part into something far more memorable than the script probably deserves. 

The poster above seems to have little in common with the actual film -- I'd say the producers were disappointed that Guest delivered such a solid piece of work, not well-suited to the exploitation advertising that the poster suggests. For better or worse, Guest would give them what they wanted with most of the rest of his oeuvre...

Logan

2017, US, directed by James Mangold

It Always Rains On Sunday

1947, UK, directed by Robert Hamer

An atypically downbeat Ealing film, set over the course of the titular day with some brief flashbacks, and centered on a manhunt/criminal back on his home turf. The picture of British domesticity is very carefully and precisely undercut, with the crowded London streets seen to harbor a good deal more than they seem, while the East End’s market-sellers and Jewish businessmen (both legitimate and somewhat less legitimate) get an extended onscreen airing. Unlike in Hell is a City, which I watched immediately before this, there is a certain air of doomed romance, and while some commentators link that atmosphere to pre-war French films, I thought it equated at least as closely with some of the cynicism and sourness of immediate post-war French film.