Cinehouse

END OF THE ROAD - CINEHOUSE R.I.P

2018-09-21T20:06:00.000+01:00

On 15th September 2009, I started Cinehouse as an alternative to my main site The Peoples Movies. Giving me a chance to talk and review the alternative side of the mainstream film. From World Cinema, Arthouse, Indie film, Short film, the weird and wonderful. For about 6-7 the journey was great though bumpy one. Then came along some wonderful people who decided to help keep the site going and did a brilliant job. But even those great things must end and today Cinehouse 9 years, 6 days old I've Decided to put Cinehouse into Hiatus. Not the end but at the moment closed for now.

Like to thank everyone who has written for the site, read, likes, shared, gave opinion on the reviews and posts. If you're looking for World Cinema, indie, arthouse, classic film head over to The Peoples Movies which we'll cover more of what we did here.

SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS: THE KRAYS: DEAD MAN WALKING. (2018) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-11T19:18:00.000+01:00

THE KRAYS: DEAD MAN WALKING. (2018) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY RICHARD JOHN TAYLOR. STARRING MARC PICKERING, NATHANJOHN CARTER, GUY HENRY, JOSH MYERS, RITA SIMONS, NICHOLAS BALL, CHRISTOPHER ELLISON, DARREN DAY, CHARLIE WOODWARD, LINDA LUSARDI AND LESLIE GRANTHAM.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'Be lucky, Frank.'

'Politics bear no relation to morals.'

'It's a fucking Christmas miracle...!'

'Girls like you disgust me, Margaret.'

'I told you not to talk to me, you fucking cunt.'

'It's much better to be feared than to be loved.'

'We rule with an iron fist. We are old-school, proper.'

'This friend of ours, he's got a bit of a temper on him.'

'It's my job to make people believe they're loved. It's their job to make people scared.'

'My Mum always says that there's nuffin' you can't fix wiv a nice fucking cup of tea.'

I can hear the seagulls whirling and dipping and croaking at each other in the sky above my house as I write this. They come inland in search of all the food scraps we surfeited humans apparently leave lying around the place, tut tut.

It's fitting, anyway, the sight of these magnificent birds (but don't let 'em peck you while they're nicking your sambo, it really hurts!), because the bird motif from THE KRAYS (1990) is repeated in THE KRAYS: DEAD MAN WALKING, possibly as a tribute to the older film.

THE KRAYS is a fantastic film. Starring brothers Martin and Gary Kemp from 'Eighties New Romantic pop band Spandau Ballet, it's the story of the notorious twins' lives, describing their stint as London's East End's most violent ever (and most celebrated!) crime-and-gangland bosses.

The Kemp brothers, Martin and Gary, turn in magnificent performances as Reggie and Ronnie Kray, but I especially loved Billie Whitelaw (FRENZY, THE OMEN) as their old Ma, Violet, who gave birth to these two little darlings in 1933 in Britain-Between-The-Wars.

Is THE KRAYS: DEAD MAN WALKING as good as or better than THE KRAYS? Well, you know, I think it's nearly as good but it's just different, dealing not with the Kray twins' lives as a whole but with only one specific period in it, the time in December 1966 when they sprung a friend of theirs, Frank 'The Mad Axeman' Mitchell, from Dartmoor High Security Prison.

Why did they do it? The guy was an horrifically violent criminal with a terrible record of behaving badly, both in and out of the nick. Well, he and Ronnie were sort of mates, having once served time together in prison. Also, Frank hadn't been given a release date and was very frustrated about this.

Ronnie, whose idea the prison-break was, had this idea that the publicity attached to a break-out might help to secure the longed-for release date for Frank. Also, it was a chance to say 'fuck you' to the Establishment and it might even enhance the Krays' standing in the world of organised crime, as if they needed such a boost...!

I like the fact that the whole film isn't taken up with the actual nitty-gritty of the escape, but gets more or less straight to the point by showing us Frank being taken to an empty flat by some of the Kray twins' minions after the escape has been successfully effected.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, he didn't have much difficulty busting out of prison and more or less just wandered away from a small working party on the moors to the place where the getaway car was waiting for him.

A young fella called Teddy is assigned to watch Frank until the Krays show up and decide what to do with him, but he proves wholly inadequate against the psychopathic nut-job that is Frank 'The Mad Axeman' Mitchell. Poor Teddy's in way over his head.

Mitchell has enormous physical strength and is a big hairy brute of a man but he has the mental capacity of a teenage boy. A dangerous child, so, and if you've seen THE OMEN, lol, you'll know exactly how dangerous some children can be...

The Krays arrange for three prostitutes to come to the flat so that Frank can choose one to have sex with. Frank chooses. The girl leaves in an ambulance. The Krays, menacingly played by Marc Pickering (Reggie) and Nathanjohn Carter (Ronnie), decide to call in a professional nightclub hostess who can 'handle' a man like Frank Mitchell. Does such a woman exist? Yes, and her name is Lisa Prescott...

Lisa is played by the gorgeous Rita Simons, who joined the cast of EASTENDERS in 2007 as feisty bleached blonde Roxy Mitchell. She and her sister Ronnie (played by Samantha Janus) were nieces or something to Peggy Mitchell, the grande dame of the show and the uncrowned Queen of the Queen Vic. I always preferred Roxy to Ronnie. She had balls, lol, and was beautiful with it.

She's no less beautiful here as she carefully 'plays' the awful Frank Mitchell like he's a violin. 'I'm 'ere for you, right 'ere, I am 'ere 'cause I wanna be.' She leads the brutish but strangely child-like Frank around by the nose, until he catches her out in a little white lie. Then poor Lisa, hardened nightclub hostess or no hardened nightclub hostess, finds out what the real Frank Mitchell is like...

In the meantime, Reggie is going through a painful separation from his wife Frances. She's leaving him, and he doesn't seem to want that. Ronnie, a homosexual, is involved with a rather sleazy peer of the realm known as Lord Boothby, played by Guy Henry. They're seen here as preparing to engage in sexual three-ways with a handsome young male waiter at a nightclub.

Leslie Grantham, best known for playing Dirty Den in EASTENDERS, where he was married to Angie Watts and fathered Sharon Watts, is great here in what was to be the final role before his death. He plays Police Inspector Leonard 'Nipper' Read who's made it his 'life's mission' to bring down the Kray twins.

I also liked Christopher Ellison, formerly DCI Frank Burnside from ITV police series THE BILL, as Albert Donaghue, the twins' minion, and Nicholas Ball as Harry Webster their hitman. Nicholas Ball (another former EASTENDERS cast member) starred in THE HOUSE THAT BLED TO DEATH in 1980 as part of the HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR TV series. He was very handsome, in a kind of David Essex way, back in the day. What would they need a hitman in THE KRAYS: DEAD MAN WALKING for, by the way? Well, I'm not letting the cat out of the bag, lol. That'd be telling, and I never tell.

Darren Day also appears here as the very unfortunate Don, y'know, Lenny's Dad, Lenny wot 'as the stall, innit? I love Ronnie's response to Don's pitiful bleating:'Is that what you're doing, Don? Are you questioning whether we're gentlemen?' Poor Don nearly poops himself on the spot, and I don't think he was in any mood to drink that scalding hot tea...!

I'm not sure but I think that Ronnie is possibly the more dangerous and unpredictable of the twins. He wears glasses and he comes across as quite mild-mannered at first but then you see him going medieval on someone's ass and you just think, that bloke's fucking mental...! When he loses it, he really loses it, know what I mean? You'd be scared to death of him.

The one complaint I might have, although it's not really a complaint as I found it quite funny, is that no-one but the Kray twins themselves are dressed in the appropriate period costumes. Don looks like he came straight from home in his modern-day clothes.

The two lads have the black coats with the lovely velvety bits on the collar but everyone else is sporting modern clobber, modern hair and make-up and even, in one case, modern plastic surgery, at the very least some collagen for the lips.

One bird in particular looks like she's auditioning for a Kim Kardashian-lookalike contest. And no, it's not one-time Page Three Stunna Linda Lusardi as Frank's Mum. The ravishing Linda looks like she hasn't aged a day in twenty-odd years.

I considered going into the booby business myself once, you know, a long time ago. Decided against it in favour of being a writer. At the pace I'm going (snails' pace!), it might actually have been quicker to get 'em out for the lads...

THE KRAYS: DEAD MAN WALKING is out now on home entertainment release from 4Digital Media through SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

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DUNKIRK. (2017) ANOTHER WEIGHTY WARTIME DRAMA REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-09T13:52:00.000+01:00

DUNKIRK. (2017) WRITTEN, CO-PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN. STARRING MARK RYLANCE, TOM GLYNN-CARNEY, BARRY KEOGHAN, KENNETH BRANAGH, CILLIAN MURPHY AND TOM HARDY.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'400,000 men couldn't get home. So home came for them.'

This movie actually seems to follow on directly from where DARKEST HOUR leaves off, although DUNKIRK came out first. DARKEST HOUR (2017) tells the story of Winston Churchill's early years as Prime Minister of Britain, culminating in the terrible and dispiriting events leading up to what we now know as the Evacuation of Dunkirk.

DUNKIRK (2017) tells that exact story, as the 1958 film of the same name also did. I'll be honest and say that I prefer the original 1958 film. It's got all the heart and soul that Christopher Nolan's film is lacking.

The 2017 version is technically proficient and has all the facts in place but it's as cold as a witch's tit, if you'll excuse my vernacular. I know it's been billed as one of the greatest war films ever made but it's only factually accurate, that's all. Where's the love? Where's the bloody dialogue, come to that, the spoken interaction between the characters?

Christopher Nolan himself has obviously heard these accusations levelled at himself because he replies by saying: "The empathy for the characters has nothing to do with their story. I did not want to go through the dialogue, tell the story of my characters... The problem is not who they are, who they pretend to be or where they come from. The only question I was interested in was: Will they get out of it? Will they be killed by the next bomb while trying to join the mole? Or will they be crushed by a boat while crossing?" Christopher Nolan.

Well, I'm sorry but I disagree, Mr. Nolan. I hope I'm not alone in saying that I need to know just a little bit, even, about a character before I can commit to caring about his safety and well-being. It's kind of the equivalent of jumping into bed with someone on only five minutes' acquaintance. Fun, maybe, but how deep- excuse the pun- can you really be going?

I tuned out completely during the airborne bits because not only was I not aware of a back story for the characters but I couldn't even see their faces in the flying goggles. They had names like Farrier and Collins but so what? I didn't know them from a hole in the sand on Dunkirk Beach.

It was hopeless to try to connect with them so in the end I just left it and waited for the bits on the civilian yacht, which were the best bits by far because they had a human face. I could connect and empathise with these characters because I at least had an idea of what their deal was.

My favourite bits were the bits on the civilian yacht, as I said. I loved the character of Mister Dawson. When the call goes out in Britain for civilian boats to cross the channel to France to help evacuate as many soldiers as possible from Dunkirk- they're trapped there like sitting ducks while the German Army closes in around them- he and his teenage son Peter answer that call immediately.

They're bringing with them a young Sea Cadet called George. George is played by Barry Keoghan, a young Irish actor whom I once met in person at a screening of his film MAMMAL, in which he co-stars with Australian actress Rachel Griffiths (MURIEL'S WEDDING, BLOW).

Anyway, George has always been told, or at least he feels, that he'll never amount to anything. He's proud as Punch to be accompanying the two Dawsons, father and son, on their mission, one of the bravest missions ever accomplished by civilians in wartime. Even by just coming this far with them, he's already achieved something major in my book.

I can't imagine our current generation, the Instagram generation, responding to a call such as the one sent out by Winston Churchill in 1940, can you? They'd raise a lot of awareness of

the cause on social media and they'd change their profile pictures to the relevant country's flag but as to actually doing anything, well, I don't know.

At the very most, they might muster an online petition or even a wee protest march but anything else, anything that involved the rolling-up of sleeves and the putting of noses to the grindstone, well, you could probably forget about it. That thought makes me very, very sad. It looks like Grampa Simpson from THE SIMPSONS was right. Maybe theirs was the best generation.

Anyway, Mister Dawson, Peter and George very quickly get to do some good by picking up a shell-shocked soldier whose ship was wrecked by the Germans. Played by Cillian Murphy, he's billed only as the 'Shivering Soldier.' He's thrilled to bits to be rescued but, when he discovers that the little sea-craft is headed back towards Dunkirk, the very hell-hole he's just escaped from, he goes bananas.

I'm not going back there, he tells Mister Dawson. Nothing on God's green Earth could induce me to go back there. Mister Dawson replies sympathetically but firmly: I'm sorry, son, but we've got a job to do. We've GOT to go back. A terrible impasse has been reached...

The land bits were very confusing as well, mainly because all the young dark-haired lads looked the same. I recognised Harry Styles from boyband ONE DIRECTION as a young dark-haired lad who doesn't want to give a place on a possible rescue boat to a 'bloody Frog,' even though the French were on the same side as the British in that war. You're mean, Harry Styles. I hope it took forever to get that oil out of your lovely boyband hair...!

Kenneth Branagh was quite nice and sympathetic as a posh naval officer called Commander Bolton. When the little civilian ships are coming and he's asked what he sees through the binoculars and a big cheesy grin spreads slowly over his face and he says just one word, 'Home,' it's hard not to be pleased for him, for all of them. A few more moments like that and we might have gotten ourselves a decent little film. Take note, film-makers. Take note.

There wasn't even a single shot of a soldier gazing moon-faced at a tattered photograph of a girlfriend, childhood dog, motorbike or any other type of loved one. No-one wrote any letters or postcards home either during the interminable waiting period, waiting endlessly to be rescued, and no-one, absolutely no-one, wrote so much as a line of poetry for future generations of school-children to puzzle over while scratching their little noggins in bemusement, tongues peeping out from the corners of their mouths, ink-stained from chewing their pens in befuddlement.

I'll never forget the sub-plot in the original 1958 DUNKIRK movie in which Richard Attenborough plays a British chap called John Holden. During the Phoney War, the bits leading up to Dunkirk, he's making quite a nice tidy profit from his factory, which manufactures buckles to be used in the war.

Not only that, but his work, which he's managed to convince the authorities is 'essential' to the War Effort, has gotten him nicely out of having to enlist in the Army. You can imagine some of his fellow Englishmen jibing at him behind his back, calling him a draft-dodger and a coward.

But when he successfully makes it home from Dunkirk after answering Winnie's call like everyone else who did likewise, it's one of the warmest moments in the film. That's the kind of thing you remember forever. There were a lot of those moments in the 1958 DUNKIRK. I'm just saying, is all...!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

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DARKEST HOUR. (2017) A WEIGHTY WARTIME DRAMA REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-08T14:24:00.000+01:00

DARKEST HOUR. (2017/18) DIRECTED BY JOE WRIGHT. STARRING GARY OLDMAN, KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, LILY JAMES AND RONALD PICKUP.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'He's just launched the English language and sent it into war.'

'Have you never seen the Prime Minister ride the Underground before?'

'Madam, I must warn you that I am coming out of the bath now in a state of nature...!'

One might easily be forgiven for thinking that Winston Churchill, from now on referred to here as Winnie to save my typing finger, lol, won the Second World War for the British on the power of speech alone. He was a great man for the old speeches.

We'll fight 'em on the beaches, in the fields, in the streets, on the lavvy, in the pantry, down the shops, behind the bins, round the side of the Bingo hall, down past the British Legion and outside the Odeon on half-price for pensioners and schoolies days. Anywhere we've a bally well mind to, in fact, and the devil take the hindmost.

He could speechify till the cows came home, could Winnie, and in DARKEST HOUR we get to study close-up this particular talent of his. It's the story of Churchill's early days as Prime Minister only, so if you're expecting the film to take you all the way to the end of the war to VE Day and maybe even beyond, you'll be disappointed.

It's not a biopic of Winnie either. When we meet him, he's already fully formed as the bald-ish, white-haired, portly cigar-chomping pin-striped and watch-chained old Panzer tank so familiar to us by now. It wouldn't surprise us at all if he'd emerged from his mother's womb thus garbed and already barking orders and making speeches.

The Opposition Labour party has just demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Neville 'Peace In Our Time' Chamberlain, wonderfully played here by lovely old actor Ronald Pickup. He's not aggressive enough to take on the full might of the Nazi party. The only Prime Minister the Labour Opposition will accept in his place is Winnie, much to the disgust and alarm of the King and Winnie's fellow Conservative Party politicians.

They all seem to uniformly loathe him as untrustworthy and a loose cannon with a bad reputation carried over from the First World War. (He'd overseen the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.) He's also got a reputation for being brusque and shouty and he doesn't suffer fools lightly. Well, should he have to, lol...?

The King is, by his own admission, afraid of Winnie, who's said to have 'a hundred new ideas a day, only four of which are any good.' Well, I think four good new ideas a day is pretty bloody decent going actually. If I only had one good new idea in a day, or even in a week, I'd consider myself to be doing pretty well...!

Anyway, Winnie is plunged into power at the height of Hitler's successes in World War Two. Countries all over Europe are falling like dominoes under the heel of the mighty jackboot and the government of England is genuinely afraid that England will be invaded soon and, not only invaded, but conquered as well. It's a horrible thought.

Politicians all around Winnie, like Chamberlain and Halifax, are all for negotiating a peace treaty with Hitler, of all people, using Mussolini's Italian Ambassador Giuseppe Bastianini as an intermediary. This is a terrible idea, as Mussolini is Hitler's staunch ally at this stage of the war and would hardly be impartial, would he? Winnie says bollocks to all that, in any case.

He thinks seriously about changing his mind, however, when the situation in France becomes critical. 300,000 British soldiers are trapped at Dunkirk and Calais in France and the mighty Wehrmacht is coming for them. There'll be a mass slaughter if they, the British government, don't get their men out of there fast.

Unknown to Winnie and the rest of the British public at this point, one of the most spectacular wartime rescues ever is about to be effected at Dunkirk. In the meantime, though, the troops there are sent a telegram saying that they will not be evacuated. If this bit is bleak and grim beyond words for the viewer to endure, just think how the poor soldiers must feel.

No help is forthcoming from their own country, their own government that's sworn to protect them, and they just have to make do as best they can? They're on their own, in other words? Flaming Nora. How perfectly bloody terrifying.

Winnie gives his official driver the slip one day and takes the London Underground to Westminster, chatting to the ordinary people of Britain as he does so and eliciting their opinions on whether Britain should capitulate to the Nazi Juggernaut or go on fighting to the death to keep the filthy Hun- excuse my French!- out of good old Blighty for now and for ever.

He goes back to Parliament completely enervated and re-inspired by the simple honesty of Joe and Josephine Bloggs. (Although the bit on the subway is a bit mushy and even, dare I say, unbelievable.) There will be absolutely, positively no surrender. Britain will not bow to the fearsome might of the Nazi war machine and that's bloody well that. End of story.

He gets the whole of Parliament all riled up and on his side, willing to fight to the death. That's all well and good though, but what about the poor lads still stranded in Dunkirk? Don't worry about those guys. Winnie's got a cunning plan. It's all hands to the pump now...

Gary Oldman, who played Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's stunning 1992 adaptation of Bram Stoker's book, undergoes an Academy Award-winning transformation to play Churchill here. A few tweaks to the costume and make-up and he could have played Alfred Hitchcock as well!

I wasn't thrilled about the way the film-makers seemed to be portraying Winnie as a laughable buffoon in the beginning. This film is called DARKEST HOUR and is supposed to be showing us Winnie's- and Britain's- reactions to the bleakest period of World War Two, when Hitler was winning all around him and threats of a British invasion were very real.

Still, he's not a buffoon for long. Once he's out of those bloody pyjamas and dressed in his street clothes and behind his desk at Westminster yelling orders at frightened, scuttling employees, Britain's favourite bulldog has all the teeth you could wish for.

His wife Clementine, played here by Kristin Scott Thomas, is very supportive of him, even to the point of knowing that she and her children will always have to play second fiddle to Daddy's Very Important Work. Britain Comes First, as I suppose she has to during this, her 'darkest hour.'

Lily James, who's just portrayed the writer Juliet Ashton in wartime romantic drama THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY, is pretty much a non-entity in the film as Winnie's whey-faced secretary Miss Layton. You can expect to be seeing a lot more of her in the future, though, as she seems to have replaced Kiera Knightley as the go-to whey-faced English girl in period dramas.

The saddest bit in the film, apart from the Dunkirk bit, is the way that Winnie turned to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for help over the telephone and FDR more or less replied with, 'um, sorry, Winnie, but it's, um, kind of not our problem and besides, we don't really have the equipment but, um, if there's anything else we can do- crackle, crackle- Winnie, you're breaking up there, I can't hear you and I've got to go anyway, Ellie's just brought in my dinner, crackle crackle, goodbye!' Just you wait till Pearl Harbour, mate. Just you wait.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

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SECOND SIGHT FILMS PRESENTS: CIAO! MANHATTAN. (1972) 'IT' GIRL EDIE SEDGWICK'S CULT SWANSONG REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-06T19:42:00.000+01:00

CIAO! MANHATTAN. (1972) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JOHN PALMER AND DAVID WEISMAN. STARRING EDIE SEDGWICK, PAUL AMERICA AND ROGER VADIM.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'Wedged between dark comic tragedy and documentary, there is magic flowing throughout... captures the vibe of the early Warhol Factory days better than any other.'

WeAreCult

'A snapshot of the post-Woodstock pre-punk era and a document of one life that was swept up and shelled out by the massive cultural revolution of the '60s.'

BoxOfficeProphets.com

'I got hooked on speed at the Factory, and then I had my little interlude with heroin, you know, to get off speed.'

'Speed is the ultimate, all-time high.'

The phrase 'troubled production' doesn't even begin to describe the making of this movie. Filming got underway in 1967 but the film didn't see the light of day- or the dark of a movie theatre- until 1972, after its gorgeous leading lady had passed away due to an accidental overdose of drugs.

Poor Edie Sedgwick had had problems with drugs for a long time. She was a beautiful- and, some say, talented- actress, model and rich socialite who was close friends with iconic artist, director and producer Andy Warhol in the 'Sixties.

She was a frequent visitor to The Factory, the name given to Andy's famous New York art studio where he entertained various intellectuals, celebrities, drag queens, writers, artists, bohemian types and people he liked. It was quite the cultural salon. I daresay a lot of drugs were consumed here but please don't quote me on that. I wasn't there, lol.

Edie was one of a number of people whom Warhol, the King of Pop Art, regularly used in his movies and promoted as his 'superstars.' (Like John Waters and his stable of 'Dreamlanders,' innit?) Edie starred in several of Andy's films, although his films often just had a limited release because they didn't particularly appeal to the mainstream masses. Limited appeal, limited release, I guess, if that's not too bitchy...!

Still, his oeuvres helped to make her immortal as the legend of 'Sixties counter-culture she is today. You could even say that she had her 'fifteen minutes of fame,' a phrase coined by Warhol himself, through him.

Her story of drug addiction- lovingly nurtured at the Factory- and the terrible excesses of celebrity make her a sad figure to some, though. She's the perfect example of what it means to have- and do- too much, too soon. Too much, too young.

It's not nice to see a beautiful young woman throw it all away like that, and for what? The thrill of taking a few stupid pills and washing them down with booze just to get off your face for a few hours. We all want to escape from our dreary lives but some of us really want to escape.

CIAO! MANHATTAN has a cult following because it's the last film that Edie Sedgwick, the original IT Girl and 1965's GIRL OF THE YEAR, ever made. I'm not going to lie to you guys. Yes, it's a famous film, semi-autobiographical and semi-documentary, but it's kind of a mess.

It's like a load of films got mixed up in the editing room and the editors had to put them all back together but they fucked it up, and now we're left with a mish-mash of patchwork that looks like somebody's dog had it for dinner.

Some bits, the colour bits where Edie is acting the part of Susan Superstar, a drug-addicted actress/model who's going down the tubes at a rate of knots, are great. The other bits, the bits

about some dude called Mr. Verdecchio, were utterly incomprehensible and uninteresting to me so I'll do what I always do in cases like this and pretend that those bits don't exist, lol. Instead, I'll concentrate on the bits I liked. I'm a woman. I can do flighty stuff like this if I want to.

So, the Susan Superstar bits. This hillbilly guy from the sticks called Butch- he looks like a young Keanu Reeves- is driving along the freeway one day when a topless girl, high on drugs, comes out of nowhere and begs a lift. Have all Butch's birthdays and Christmases come together? You might think so but Butch behaves like the perfect gentleman.

He delivers the semi-conscious girl to her home without taking advantage of her, though it's obvious that she's a genuine beauty. Her home is a mansion where she lives with her middle-aged harridan of a mother who's made her money in the pie business and a sort of 'carer' called Geoffrey, a total hippy with floppy blonde hair and glasses.

The irony of it all is that Geoffrey the carer doesn't care a hoot and is eager to leave his position as general dogsbody to bossy-mother-and-impossible-daughter as fast as is humanly possible. As soon as Butch appears on the scene, Geoffrey is already eyeing him up as a possible replacement for the position of Susan's minder.

Mom orders the two lads to take the insensible Susan to her 'room.' Susan 'lives' (if you can call it 'living') down one end of a massive swimming pool that's been emptied of water and has had a tent erected over Susan's part. She eats very little, boozes a lot and exists on a daily cocktail of prescription drugs- for her mental illnesses and illegal drug abuse- sanctioned by her mother and her doctors.

She's out of it most of the time and she doesn't know day from night most days. She reminisces to Butch, a captive- and horny- audience, about her wild, carefree days as a celebrity and model in New York. She really misses those fabulous whirlwind days and nights of non-stop-partying and sometimes she even imagines- or should that be hallucinates- that she's back there. It's very, very sad to witness, and Butch witnesses it all.

Interspersed between real-life footage of Andy Warhol and the Factory gang are Susan's admissions to Butch that her father was a violent abuser who's 'been trying to fuck me since I was nine.' Her brother 'Blimpy' committed suicide when he was twelve. We see her doctor-a psychiatrist?- taking advantage of her when she comes to his office.

Susan is horribly damaged, bruised, fragile. She is a broken person. She has Permanent Brain Damage from all the drugs she's taken and she's probably only taken them because she was so ill-used and abused as a child. Never underestimate the power of a shitty childhood to fuck a person up good and proper.

When Butch eventually manages to have the longed-for sex with Susan, making her late for her psychiatrist's appointment into the bargain, he realises in a staggering moment of true perception that 'she doesn't really want ME, she just wants somebody to hold onto.' For a hillbilly hick from the sticks, this is quite an insightful deduction.

The fragile Susan just wants someone to love her. The celebrity she attained as a model and glamour girl gave her what she needed for a while but it's an empty, hollow kind of adoration. It can't compare to having the backing of a loving family or a loving husband or partner or even the unconditional love of your own child.

There's a yawning great hole inside Susan. It should be filled with love, contentment and self-esteem but it's not, so she fills it with drugs and booze instead, and also with sex, with men who desire her for her fabulous looks and body but they don't give a toss about her as a person. It's obvious that if Susan keeps going on the way she is, she'll be dead before she's thirty.

Edie Sedgwick's own background of eating disorders- she was painfully thin and suffered from anorexia- and the suicide of one of her older brothers and the suspected suicide of another was as troubled and disturbing as the fictional Susan's.

A controlling, abusive father and one or more abortions only added fuel to this emotional

fire. The story of the fictional Susan and the real-life Edie can only have one conjoined ending. With all due respect to both ladies, it doesn't take a genius...

CIAO! MANHATTAN is available to buy now on Blu-Ray from SECOND SIGHT FILMS.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

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STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS: THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY. (2018) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-05T21:17:00.000+01:00

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY. (2018) BASED ON THE 2008 BOOK BY MARY ANN SHAFFER AND ANNIE BARROWS. DIRECTED BY MIKE NEWELL.

STARRING LILY JAMES, MICHIEL HUISMAN, GLEN POWELL, MATTHEW GOODE, JESSICA BROWN FINDLAY, KATHERINE PARKINSON, BRONAGH GALLAGHER, TOM COURTENAY AND PENELOPE WILTON.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

There's an interesting but sad story behind the writing of the charming book on which this wartime film is based. The American author who penned it, Mary Ann Shaffer, fell ill before she could complete the book so she asked her niece Annie Barrows, a writer also, to help her to finish it.

Mary Ann Shaffer passed away in 2008, but not before finding out that this, her only novel, was to be published in thirteen countries. Publishers loved this book. There was pretty much no way that it wouldn't get published, from the looks of it.

Here's what happens in the film, which sadly Mary Ann Shaffer would never see but I think she'd like it. It's a little bit different to her book, which I'm mid-way through reading at the moment, but not in a way that would alter the basic storyline appreciably or anything.

It's London in 1946, a London that's still recovering from the worst war in the history of the world. The book publishing business seems to be still thriving, however, as people desperately seek a bit of escapism in the aftermath of such a long and dreary war with so many privations and restrictions on things.

Author Juliet Ashton became a national heroine during the war with her regular newspaper column entitled 'IZZY BICKERSTAFF GOES TO WAR,' which her publishers have now turned into a successful best-selling book.

Her publisher Sidney Stark naturally wants her to do a book tour and book signings and book readings and all things relating to the tedious business of promoting and selling a bloody book, which normally Juliet would be well up for but these days she's somewhat distracted.

Not so much by her dashing fiancé, American millionaire Markham Reynolds, who keeps chucking the entire contents of a florist's shop at her, but by some letters she's been receiving from the people of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands between the French and English coasts.

A shared interest in the writings of essayist and poet Charles Lamb has caused Juliet and a pig-farmer called Dawsey Adams from the island of Guernsey to somehow find each other. He's a member of the titular GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY, the name and concept of which enchants Juliet to the point where she wants to find out everything she can about the Society and its circle of eccentric members.

The Society was formed during the Occupation of Guernsey by- guess who?!- the Germans in World War Two. What did the Germans want with the tiny island of Guernsey, you might ask? Well, it was kind of a two-fingers-up-to-England type of thing. It made the Nazis feel good that they'd manage to capture a little bit of England, even if they could never quite manage to enslave good old Blighty herself in the same way.

They invaded Guernsey early on in the war, when things were still going their way and they thought they were the kings of the whole world. They pretty much made the lives of the inhabitants a misery, from what we hear in the film and read in the book, with their curfews, their confiscation of all the good food (including the pigs!) on the island for themselves and their banning of all gatherings of people on the island except legitimate ones, say, if you had a bird-watching society or something. Even then, if you didn't register it on the Nazi list of 'legitimate gatherings,' you'd be in big trouble. Jeez. Talk about tyranny.

The book in particular really makes fun of the Nazi love of ridiculous, excessive bureaucracy. Every animal born on the island during this period of Occupation had to be registered with the occupying German forces and birth certificates were issued to each individual piggy-wiggy that popped out of its mother's womb during this time.

This was mostly so that the islanders couldn't keep any juicy succulent animals back for themselves, but I suppose that the certificates would come in handy too for when the pigs decided to settle down and get married. That way everything would be nice and legal, lol. You didn't want any pigs being born on the wrong side of the blanket, as it were, and as for pigs-in-blankets, well...!

The Occupation years were cold, lonely hungry ones for the islanders, most of whose children had had to be evacuated to England in advance (but not by much!) of the Germans landing on the Guernsey shores.

The children were gone for five long years, and the islanders who wanted them shipped to safety received only about a day's notice of the actual evacuation procedure. How dreadful and yet how necessary at the same time, necessary to keep the young 'uns safe.

Eben Ramsey says in the film that he'll 'never forgive the Germans for making him miss out on five years of his grandson Eli's childhood.' You can hardly blame him. Imagine an island without children, just like that sad, too-quiet and joyless Kingdom in the movie CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was born both out of the loneliness of the islanders under a strict curfew who were discouraged from meeting with each other socially, and also out of the actual physical hunger they experienced during the Occupation.

There reached a point, in fact, when every animal on the island had been eaten and even the Germans themselves were starting to starve. I won't give away the exact details of the Society's birth but the story behind its exact conception is a warmly humorous and random one.

Anyway, the writer in Juliet, a sassy, feisty bright-as-a-button brunette, decides to hotfoot it over to Guernsey to attend one of the meetings of the Society. She's immediately attracted to Dawsey Adams, the pig-farmer, and they share a love of the same books, which bodes ill for her husband-to-be Markham Reynolds, the dominant American millionaire, with whom she has little in common.

Juliet meets Amelia Maugery, the Grande Dame of the Society, and Isola Pribby, an eccentric but warm-hearted and generous spinster of the parish who's never had any lover but Heathcliff. There's also the aforementioned Eben Ramsey, a lovely old gent who's been left to bring up his grandson Eli after both his parents died in the war.

Conspicuous by her absence is Elizabeth McKenna, the Society's founder and resident quick thinker and bright spark. She's 'off-island at the moment,' says Amelia Maugery self-consciously when Juliet inquires about her. 'Off-island?' You can say that again.

Elizabeth's left behind a beautiful little four-year-old daughter called Kit, a tiny blonde cherub who calls Dawsey Adams 'Daddy' but she doesn't look anything like Dawsey. There's a mystery here that Juliet is anxious to get to the bottom of while she's on Guernsey.

Will Juliet find out where the tragic Elizabeth has gone to and what happened to her? Will she discover Kit's true parentage? Will she write a book about the people of Guernsey who've opened their hearts and their homes to her? This is something she wants to do very much, now that the war is over and she's sick and tired of good old Izzy Bickerstaff.

Will she fall head-over-heels in love with the handsome, self-effacing, tousle-haired pig farmer known locally as Dawsey Adams and, if she does, what the bloody blue blazes will it signify for Markham Reynolds, the Yankee millionaire? Mark likes to party while Juliet likes a quiet night in with a mug of Horlicks and a good book. They'll never get on.

They're polar opposites but, on the other hand, don't opposites attract? I'm frightfully confused. Personally, I feel that a combining of Dawsey's diamond-in-the-rough good looks with Mark's money would altogether make for one delightful man. Almost the perfect husband, if you will.

I liked Bronagh Gallagher as the terrifyingly po-faced Charlotte Stimple, Juliet's boarding-house landlady when she first arrives on the island of Guernsey. Charlotte is narrow-minded, judgemental and pious, and from her we learn a lot about what the islanders (some of them anyway, the narrow-minded ones) think of the women they call 'Jerry-bags,' the Guernsey women who slept with or consorted with Nazis during the Occupation.

It seems like only the public stoning of these 'Jerry-bags' would appease the likes of the pinched-faced Charlotte Stimple, in whom the milk of human kindness has clearly been cut off at the mains. And compassion, empathy and understanding too, by the looks of things.

I forgot to tell you about the amazing network of security tunnels the Nazis built under the island which can still be seen today. Like everything else connected to the Nazis, however, they have a sad and troubling history. They were really built by the hundreds of 'Todt workers' or 'Death workers' the Nazis brought over from Germany to use as slave labour.

These workers were appallingly treated and many of them would have died during the building work from starvation, exhaustion and the physical abuse they received at the hands of their German masters. They were literally worked to death. This method of execution/extermination was the particular brainchild of Hitler's Reichsfuhrer, the bespectacled 'Heini' Himmler. A despicably nasty little plan from a nasty little man.

By the way, I'm not sure why the film is billed as a romantic mystery. It's a romance all right, but the only mystery involved is the whereabouts of Elizabeth and, from what we now know about the Nazis, there's not much of a mystery involved, sadly, only a cold and terrible inevitability.

I loved this film anyway, which made me aware for the first time of Guernsey's World War Two history and the Occupation. Just like Mary Ann Shaffer first became fascinated by the Channel Isles after reading a book called 'JERSEY UNDER THE JACKBOOT,' this film will probably be responsible for introducing a wealth of brand-new readers to Guernsey, its history and its distinctly promising possibilities as a touristy destination.

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY is out now on Digital Download, Blu-Ray and DVD from STUDIOCANAL. There'll probably be loads of copies of the book floating around now as movie tie-ins as well. There's a deliciously romantic love story in there in addition to the fascinating history piece about the Occupation of Guernsey, so you could say that there's something here for everyone. Oh, and there are also pigs. Let's not forget the pigs...!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

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101 FILMS PRESENTS: PAUL VERHOEVEN'S 'BLACK BOOK.' (2006) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-04T18:55:00.000+01:00

BLACK BOOK. (ZWARTBOEK) (2006) DIRECTED AND CO-WRITTEN BY PAUL 'BASIC INSTINCT' VERHOEVEN. STARRING CARICE VAN HOUTEN, SEBASTIAN KOCH, THOM HOFFMAN, HALINA REIJN, CHRISTIAN BERKEL, MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS AND WALDEMAR KOBUS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Tour Guide over the bus PA system: 'After lunch, we'll be visiting the place where Jesus performed his first healing miracle.'

'One day you're singing, the next day you're silenced.'

'Don't forget to light up the Fuhrer.'

'When will it end?'

This Dutch/German/English-language World War Two film is a big hit with me, although I'm starting to wonder if there really is only one Dutch actress in the whole world and that actress is Carice Van Houten. She's in bloody everything, lol.

She's in GAME OF THRONES, still the hottest TV show on the planet, and I saw her recently in a film called RACE (2013) as well, the story of black runner Jesse Owens taking a phenomenal four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

In RACE, she plays Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's pet director who filmed the Olympics and released the resulting movie under the name OLYMPIA. She also made a Nazi propaganda film called TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, in which she really captures the Nazi love of lavish, almost mystical spectacle as evidenced at the Nuremberg Rallies of 1933.

Anyway, in BLACK BOOK, Carice Van Houten plays a sparky, feisty, sexy sassy Dutch-Jewish singer called Rachel Stein. It's 1944 and the Nazis have occupied the Netherlands, as indeed they've occupied most places around them by now.

Holland, in fact, was where famous young diarist Anne Frank and her family hid in an attic for two years before being eventually found out by the Nazis and dragged off to different concentration camps. Rachel is in hiding too, in a farmhouse in the countryside. When it's bombed and the family living there is killed, Rachel has to move on.

An horrific tragedy occurs when Rachel tries to escape to Allied territory by boat with her family, her beloved parents and brother. (Her gentle, bespectacled Dad actually greatly resembles Otto Frank, Anne's father!) Rachel sees her family killed in front of her eyes by a forewarned Nazi patrol. Rachel is the only survivor.

An angry, hate-filled Rachel, fuelled by her desire for revenge against the men who killed her family, decides that there will be no more hiding or cowering in attics for her. She changes her name to Ellis de Vries and begins to work for the Dutch Resistance. Part of her job is to seduce a handsome senior Nazi officer, SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Ludwig Muntze. This is where the already compelling film gets really interesting.

Ellis dyes her hair blonde to disguise her Jewish heritage, and she even dyes her pubes to match, because she's apparently a 'perfectionist.' Yes, we see that bit, lol. It's funny. Muntze is a big burly devastatingly handsome mature man who is captivated by Ellis. She cleverly uses his love of stamp-collecting as well as her feminine wiles to get right under his skin and into his head.

They have sex and it becomes obvious that Muntze knows that Ellis is Jewish and trying to hide it but he doesn't care. How likely to happen was this, I wonder. A high-ranking Nazi officer having an affair with a Jewish woman in almost full view of his colleagues, in a country where everyone at that time was spying on everyone else, often for their own material gain?

Well, Muntze's wife and two children were killed by an Allied bomb so maybe he's lonely. (He's actually legitimately single now too, which is good news for Ellis.) Or maybe he's the one Nazi officer who didn't go along with Hitler's Final Solution. There might have been one, mightn't there?

By this time, late in 1944, it was becoming obvious to the Germans that they'd lost the war. Some of the major concentration camps, like Auschwitz, were wrapping up their Jew-killing programmes and attempting feebly to hide the evidence that such programmes had ever taken place there.

They blew up their crematoria and sent such prisoners as could walk on the infamous 'death marches' to other camps, maybe to ones inside the Reich itself. Other camps stepped up

their killing programmes at this time, like Ravensbruck, which I'm reading about at the moment in Sarah Helm's 'IF THIS IS A WOMAN: INSIDE RAVENSBRUCK: HITLER'S CONCENTRATION CAMP FOR WOMEN.' Great writing but a chilling and deeply saddening subject.

Clearly old Hitler knew by now that he was going down, as it were, and he wanted to take as many of his hated 'enemies' down with him as he could. It was still a very, very dangerous time to be a Jew in Nazi Germany or in any of the many countries occupied by Germany.

Some of Ellis's Resistance friends have been arrested by now and hauled away by the Gestapo for 'questioning,' which we know means being locked in the underground cells in the Gestapo building and taken out intermittently to be verbally abused and physically tortured.

There are some graphic scenes of such torture in the film, or at least the aftermath. There are also scenes of what happened to some Nazi collaborators after the war ended. The scene with the shower-of-shit in it is harrowing indeed, and ditto the scene where a woman is getting her head shaved in public because she was a so-called 'Nazi whore.' These were turbulent times indeed. Some non-Nazis may have also done some things at this time that they might have been ashamed of when they looked back on them.

The sex-and-champagne Nazi parties-slash-orgies where everyone sings drunkenly and women flash their tits are great fun to look at. They do seem to accurately represent some of the decadent times we've heard that the Nazis had while they were in power.

The evil gluttonous Franken, Muntze's deputy with the very small penis (yeah, we see it!), is a thick-lipped, corrupt and self-serving character with always an eye to the main chance. Ellis had better not cross him. He seems to have his beady little lecherous eye on her but she's Muntze's girl. For now...

There also seems to be a terrible scam afoot involving rich Jews like Rachel's/Ellis's parents, whereby such Jews pay someone through the nose for safe passage out of Holland to Allied territory. Their money is taken, their names are duly noted down in the little titular 'black book,' and the Jews then prepare to sail blithely off towards their safe new lives outside of Germany.

What happens next hardly bears thinking about. The owner of the little 'black book' tips off the Nazis, who swoop in and massacre the exiting Jews, who are fleeing with as much of their important portable property as they can carry. Furs, jewels, watches, clocks, books, fountain pens, even paintings, they're bringin' 'em. The Nazis then steal this handy portable property for themselves.

This is where there might be trouble for the Nazi thieves, though. It's not a crime at all to kill a Jew, or even, apparently, six million Jews if you've a mind to. What is a crime is keeping the spoils of such killings for yourself, when every Nazi soldier knows that such property must go to the Reich, all of it. Soldiers are not allowed to keep stuff back for personal gain or their personal use. That's an offence punishable sometimes by execution in certain cases.

Whoever's running this scam has got to get his- or her- comeuppance in the film, and not just from the Resistance either, but from their own precious Reich, which has made it abundantly clear on numerous occasions that all property confiscated from the Jews must be 'returned' to the Reich. As if the Reich had a God-given right to take even the gold fillings of the Jews they killed.

It looks to Ellis as if there's no-one she can really trust. Her Resistance chums are the ones who wanted her to 'screw' the handsome Muntze in the first place (and 'screw' him she did, royally with knobs on, lol), but now these same chums all seem to think that she's betrayed them and gone over to the Nazi side.

Is this true, or is Ellis as much a victim of Nazi tyranny as some of her Resistance friends, currently being horribly tortured in the grim cellars of the Gestapo building? And maybe there's someone in the Resistance whom she used to consider her friend but who no longer has her best interests at heart, maybe? A good square of chocolate ought to fix that. Always works for me, anyway!

I realise that you won't get that last bit unless you've seen the movie. Never mind. It's a smashing war film with Nazis, fleeing Jews, scruffy-looking but wholly committed and intense Resistance men and women and plenty of nice tits.

Well, about two pairs of tits really, let's say, and most of these are Carice Van Houten's perky little gems. What, you've seen her tits before, is it? Well, you know what, mate? Never look a pair of gift boobies in the mouth. It's the height of bad luck.

Available on Dual Format Blu-ray and DVD in August 2018 from 101 FILMS BLACK LABEL!

Starring: Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones), Sebastian Koch (Bridge of Spies), Thom Hoffman (Dogville) and Halina Reijn (Valkyrie).

101 Films presents Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (2006), title 004 on our Black Label. The first 3,000 copies of each title will come complete with a slipcase, and Limited Edition booklet.

Extras include new interviews with the director and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub.

From internationally acclaimed director Paul Verhoeven (Soldier of Orange, Elle), Black Book (Zwartboek) is an epic and moving wartime tale, in which the distinctions between good and evil become blurred by human nature. Starring Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch, the film chronicles one woman’s fight for survival and revenge as the Second World War enters its final, bloody months.

Brand New Extras:

• The Book of Verhoeven: Paul Verhoeven on Black Book

• Diary of a Cinematographer: Karl Walter Lindenlaub on Black Book

• Limited Edition Booklet: Includes Return to the Homefront: Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book by Shelagh Rowan-Legg, and Black Book and Robocops: Scoring the Films of Paul Verhoeven by Charlie Brigden

Additional Extras:

• Interview with Carice van Houten (2006)

• Interview with Paul Verhoeven (2006)

• Original theatrical trailer

About 101 Films:

101 Films is one of the UK’s most successful independent film distributors, releasing new and catalogue films of every genre on Blu-Ray, DVD, VOD and TV. In addition to new cast-led titles starring, amongst others, Frank Grillo, Eve Hewson and Jemaine Clement, 101 Films recently announced their new ‘Black Label’ premium catalogue range; cult and classic films with brand new extras.

101 Films Black Label:

101 Films is committed to seeking out cult and catalogue films and giving them the best releases possible. With their Black Label, 101 Films is curating a numbered series of dual format limited editions, complete with original artwork and newly-commissioned extras. The Black Label is dedicated to fully doing justice to the very best cult and classic films from some of cinema’s most renowned directors, and unearthing hidden gems in luxury packages for the first time. The first 3,000 copies of each title will come complete with a slipcase, and include a booklet featuring newly written material.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

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http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

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https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

Film Review - The Seagull (2018)

2018-09-03T23:35:00.005+01:00

Anton Chekhov famously described his plays as comedies. But, as his work often features wealthy people languishing in rural Russia, suffering the tortures of unrequited love, it rather depends on your – and his – definition of comedy. The humour is there, certainly, but it’s not of the overt kind, more of a mixture of irony and tragi-comedy.

It’s a description that perfectly fits one of his most famous plays, The Seagull, which makes one of its few big screen appearances in a new adaptation under director Michael Mayer. Set on a country estate at the turn of the 20th century, it’s not so much a series of love – unrequited love, in the main – triangles as one big polygon d’amour. Successful, mature actress Irina (Annette Bening) arrives with her lover, author Boris (Corey Stoll) to visit her ailing brother, Sorin (Brian Dennehy). Her son, Konstantin (Billy Howle), also lives there, and is in love with local aspiring actress Nina (Saoirse Ronan). Except that the caretakers’ daughter, Masha (Elizabeth Moss) is in love with him and she’s the object of teacher Mikhail’s (Michael Zegan) constant affection. It all starts to unravel when Nina catches Boris’s eye and she falls passionately in love with him.

The cast is stellar and the performances are exactly as you would expect, sometimes more. They’re bookended by two of the finest screen actors of their generation, Bening and Ronan, yet they never share a scene together, more’s the pity. Bening’s actress is selfish, cruelly detached from a son who craves her attention and approval yet full of the insecurities that can afflict an older woman in relationship with a younger man. Ronan is as luminous as ever, fresh and irresistibly vibrant as the young Nina, shattered as the pitifully disillusioned older version of herself. And, as the man in between them, Corey Stoll shows he’s capable of much more than the tough action man roles he’s been saddled with of late.

As for the humour, it’s definitely there. It’s not necessarily of the laugh out loud variety, but the cast all capture the tone, that combination of world weary irony and the occasional word play that raises more than a few smiles. That’s not to overlook, however, the genuine pathos of those suffering the pangs of unrequited love, be it romantic or maternal. Elizabeth Moss in particular shines when it comes to this, a woman who knows that the object of her affection will never feel the same way and consoles herself in any way she can, even if it does nothing to ease her pain.

How you respond to The Seagull, however, is very much down to how you feel about Chekhov and, in truth, he’s not everybody’s cup of tea. If soul searching, ennui and romantic longings in a confined setting – and there are times, despite the expansive grounds of the estate, when the film looks very much stagebound – aren’t your thing, then you might find the verbal sparring and longing looks all a bit much. Nonetheless, Mayer keeps the film on the right side of the doldrums, thanks to brisk pacing and, of course, that wonderful cast.

Freda Cooper | ★★★ 1/2

SECOND SIGHT FILMS PRESENTS: TAKE SHELTER. (2011) LIMITED EDITION BOXSET OUT TOMORROW. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-02T14:37:00.000+01:00

TAKE SHELTER. (2011) DIRECTED BY JEFF NICHOLS. STARRING MICHAEL SHANNON, JESSICA CHASTAIN AND TOVA STEWART.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'Hollywood favourites Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain star in the highly acclaimed, mesmerising psychological thriller TAKE SHELTER, which is set for a deluxe UK Limited Edition Blu-Ray release courtesy of SECOND SIGHT.'

'There's a storm coming, and not a one-a-youse is prepared for it.'

Every now and then a film comes along that is practically perfect in every way. You can't find fault with it. It has no visible flaws. TAKE SHELTER is one of these rarities. Although it was made in 2011, I only saw it for the first time recently and it totally blew me away.

I've always had a soft spot for actor Michael Shannon anyway, ever since I saw him for the first time in 2002's Tom Cruise vehicle VANILLA SKY, in which he plays a security guard entrusted with the job of guarding a seemingly crazy Tom Cruise/David Aames who's been charged with the murder of his girlfriend.

Michael Shannon was always very much a lead actor waiting to happen, though, and in TAKE SHELTER he delivers what is commonly known as a 'powerhouse' of a performance as Curtis LaForche, a family man from Ohio who, on the surface of things, appears to have the perfect life.

Families in the movies often do present this enviable image of perfection at first sight, however, like the family in ONE HOUR PHOTO, in which comedian actor Robin Williams turns in a career-best straight performance as the man who witnesses one such family's spectacular fall from grace, and the family in FATAL ATTRACTION, in which Michael Douglas as Dan Gallagher makes the terrible mistake of allowing his one 'mistake' to follow him home.

There'd be great scope for a cinematic essay on this theme, wouldn't there, the theme of perfect-looking families that are anything but. I'm sure we could come up with a dozen more examples if we had more time.

Anyway, Curtis LaForche and his family live in a lovely house in Ohio. His well-paid job as the foreman at a drilling operation site allows his wife Samantha what we call the 'luxury' of being able to be a stay-at-home Mom to their deaf daughter Hannah.

As the stay-at-home mother to a special needs child myself, I can assure you that it's anything but 'luxurious,' lol. Unless you'd consider constantly leaving the house looking like a trash-pile because you're never allowed five minutes' peace to get ready 'luxurious.' Oh yeah, it's all high glamour, this job...!

Still, I have my writing to keep me going and Samantha has her needlework. She produces gorgeous little items like embroidered cushions and pillows to sell at her booth at a craft fair every Saturday morning, to which she can take her daughter Hannah along.

It's good that Samantha has something to do on Saturdays because her hubby Curtis has a weekend project to get busy with now too. He's building a storm shelter on their property or, more correctly, he's extending their existing storm shelter into a big old kick-ass tornado shelter with lighting and plumbing and a fully-stocked kitchen as well.

What's the deal with going overboard on the storm shelter, you might ask? What was wrong with the old shelter, and why isn't it sufficient? You might well ask. Curtis has recently been witness to strange weather patterns and bizarre bird behaviour that no-one else around him seems to notice. Strange, that, and worrying too.

In addition, Curtis has been having the most disturbing nightmares about an impending storm, the apocalyptic storm to end all apocalyptic storms, and these dreams feel very much like premonitions to Curtis.

In the dreams, Hannah is abducted from him by unknown forces, he himself is savagely

attacked by their own dog Red and even his wife Samantha is a threat to him. He feels physically sick and feverish when he wakes from these dreams, and once he even wets the bed.

When he wakes up from these nightmares, sweating and gasping for air, he always sits bolt upright in the bed to let us know that we've just been watching a dream sequence. I never do that myself when I wake up from a nightmare. I just lie in bed sniffling and snuffling under the covers, hoping fervently that the demons of my night-mind will go away soon so I can get back to sleep. It's nice and safe under the duvet. You lose that safety when you sit up.

Mind you, people in films are weird. They're always doing stuff in films that wouldn't be practical in real life, such as arranging to meet someone without naming a time, a place or even a bloody day. People are just supposed to be mind-readers, are they?

And people in films always slam down their laptops in a hurry without going through the specific process known as 'shutting down,' say when they've been caught masturbating to porn or something. If I did that to my computer, just slamming it down like that without going through 'shutting down,' it literally wouldn't talk to me again for a week.

Anyway, Curtis forces himself to go to a counsellor to talk about the dreams, something you can tell is very hard for him to do because he's normally the strong silent type. He even gets out books on mental illness from the library and studies up on them.

An over-reaction? You might think so, but Curtis has very strong reasons for doubting his sanity that are all tied up with his mother, who's still alive but fragile and residing in an assisted living facility. And in the meantime, he steps up his efforts to build the tornado shelter that serves as the only bulwark standing between Curtis's little family and the storm he's convinced is coming.

He becomes obsessed with building the shelter. He takes out a bank loan to finance its building without consulting Samantha, who freaks out completely because they've already got loans out and bills to repay.

I can certainly see her point. A loan like that that you can't repay could jeopardise the financial- and emotional- stability of the whole family. It's bad enough worrying about not being able to pay the mortgage repayments on your home without having to fret over home improvement loans as well.

They've also got to pay for Hannah's upcoming cochlear implant surgery, which might enable the little girl to hear again. This surgery is the most important thing in the world to Samantha right now, not the stupid tornado shelter which she sees as a ridiculous waste of time, effort and money. The marriage is falling apart due to Curtis's seemingly bizarre actions and his stubborn unwillingness- or inability- to communicate.

He borrows heavy machinery from his work to build his shelter, which costs him his job and his best friend Dewart. Everyone is worried about Curtis. His wife, his daughter, his boss, his best friend Dewart, Dewart's wife Nat, Curtis's doctor, everyone who knows him.

If the town didn't think that Curtis was crazy before, well, they sure will after after a certain mortifying Lions' Club supper in the town hall. Then one night, a storm comes. Curtis hurries his frightened little family down into the shelter...

So, is Curtis crazy as a loon or is there really an end-of-the-world type storm coming? Or is the whole thing all in his mind, the sypmtoms of a brain under severe stress? Is he showing signs of the terrible illness that claimed his mother's mind, or does he really have the gift of foresight that showed him the upcoming storm before it happened? Well, I'm not telling, but you'll love the answer.

The ending is just right. It's not a cop-out. It simply delivers, in a masterclass of pacing and understated acting, the pay-off it's been promising throughout the movie. This is the best movie I think I've seen all year. Y'all would be nuts not to watch it too.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• Limited Edition packaging (2000 units)

• Building The Shelter – A new interview with director Jeff Nichols

• 2011 Ebertfest Q&A with Jeff Nichols and Michael Shannon

• DP30 interview with Jeff Nichols, Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain

• Interview with Jeff Nichols at Cannes Film Festival

• 2011 Toronto Film Festival interviews with Jeff Nichols, Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain

• Behind-The-Scenes

• Deleted Scenes

• Limited 40 page perfect bound booklet with new writing by Michael Brooke and Film School Rejects interview

with Jeff Nichols by Jack Giroux

• English subtitles for the hearing impaired

Title: Take Shelter: Limited Edition Box Set Release Date: 3 September 2018

Cat.No.: 2NDBR4083 RRP: £24.99

Cert: 15 Running Time: 121 mins

Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain's 'Take Shelter' arrives on UK Blu-ray as a Deluxe Limited Edition Box-set on 3rd September 2018 courtesy of SECOND SIGHT FILMS!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

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sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS: THE LAST WITNESS. (2018) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-09-01T13:59:00.000+01:00

THE LAST WITNESS. (2018) BASED ON TRUE HISTORICAL EVENTS.

DIRECTED AND CO-WRITTEN BY PIOTR SZKOPIAK.

STARRING ALEX PETTYFER, WILL THORP, TALULAH RILEY, HENRY LLOYD-HUGHES, MICHAEL GAMBON, GWILYM LEE AND ROBERT WIECKIWICZ.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'Directed by BAFTA Award Nominee Piotr Szkopiak, THE LAST WITNESS is a political thriller based on the harrowing true events of the Katyn Massacre in Spring 1940.'

'THE LAST WITNESS is a fictional re-telling of a bloody and heart-breaking story by director Piotr Szkopiak, whose mother, Emilia Szkopiak, was deported to Siberia by the Soviets in 1940. In 1942, Emilia left the Soviet Union and eventually settled in England in 1947, where she continues to live to this day. Her father, Piotr Szkopiak's grandfather, Wojciech Stanislaw Wojcik, was executed in the Katyn Massacre.'

'ON DVD AND DIGITAL NOW FROM SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT!!!'

'England, 1947. The fight for the truth begins.'

The story of the Katyn Massacre, the basis for this film made by a man with a deeply personal connection to what happened, is a grim but fascinating one. You know the way that Poland was pretty much carved up, first by the Nazis and then by the Russisans, in World War Two?

They had their hated German overlords to contend with first (Germany's illegal occupation of Poland was the incident that sparked off World War Two; Britain and France had each forged alliances with Poland stating that they'd go to war with Germany if Germany attacked Poland), and then their equally loathed Soviet rulers, who invaded them about three weeks into the war. Poor Poland. I don't think anyone would deny that she had a really shitty time of it in that awful war.

Anyway, in the Spring of 1940, Stalin and a number of his high-ranking Soviets ordered the gruesome murder of up to 22,000 Polish soldiers and prisoners-of-war. The operation was to be top-secret and it ended up taking its name, the Katyn Massacre, from the forest in which the terrible mass graves were first found.

Why did this happen? To deprive Poland of its best and brightest, is the most likely answer, so that she'd never rise again as a viable power with the resources to boot out the Russians and give 'em a collective what-for as payback for the invasion.

Some of the murdered men had been college-educated and were amongst Poland's military and technical elite. Take these away, Stalin figured, and then Poland was much less likely to be a threat to the Soviet Union in the future.

Such sickening, selfish reasoning. These men had families who loved them, mothers, fathers, siblings, wives, children, pets, hopes, dreams, hobbies, things they were passionate about. How dared anyone decide that their lives could be snuffed out? No-one has that right.

The Katyn Massacre handed Joseph Goebbels, the kingpin of Hitler's well-oiled propaganda machine, a real gift. Look at what happens when the Russians really get going, he was able to tell people. Look what dreadful atrocities they're capable of committing. Now don't you see how right we Nazis were to warn you all about the horrors of Bolshevism?'

Good old Joey Goebbels. He must have been jizzing himself with excitement (excuse my language) at this unexpected boon handed to him all perfumed and gift-wrapped by the Russians. He probably danced a jig around his office when he heard the news, his poor club

foot notwithstanding.

Of course, the Russians rather predictably blamed the Nazis for the perpetration of the murders. Ironically, lol, this was the one crime Hitler's men hadn't actually committed. The cover-up on the part of the Russians went on for years.

It wasn't until 1990 that Russia, under President Mikhail Gorbachev, finally admitted openly that their own Secret Police were responsible for the mass killings. They expressed regret and declared a worldwide Katyn Massacre Memorial Day. Was this enough vindication for the still grieving Poles? I don't actually know but, speaking personally, I wouldn't have thought so.

In the film THE LAST WITNESS (I totally forgot we were meant to be reviewing this, I was just enjoying the nice bit of history chat, lol), an English journalist called Stephen Underwood kind of accidentally uncovers the fantastical, almost unbelievable story of the Katyn Massacre and thinks it would make a terrific story for the newspaper he writes for.

He encounters resistance to his efforts to research and write the story every which way he turns, however. No-one wants this story to come out, least of all the British military. It's one of those situations where people say that 'no good can come of this story getting out now.' It's a story that's better off staying dead and buried, like the corpses of the murdered men, is what they're saying.

Underwood meets only brick walls and dead ends in his endeavours to uncover the truth about this shamefully hidden episode of World War Two history. That's until his own brother John, a captain in the Army, reluctantly tips him off about where in their archives can be found the file on the Massacre.

Stephen will soon have in his hot little hands concrete, incontrovertible proof of what occurred in the dark, dense murky depths of the Katyn Forest. Will the powers-that-be still continue to maintain their unrelenting silence on the matter?

Why would the British military want this story pulled from the public eye? Well, they didn't seemingly want to antagonise the Russians, their eventual allies in World War Two. Hitler and Stalin were pals at first, of course, until Hitler had the unspeakable effrontery to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.

Stalin reacted to this outrage like he'd been jabbed in the arse with a red-hot poker. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was no more. Torn-up, kaput, finito, wiped out, all washed-up. Cuddly old Uncle Joe (Stalin) and the Soviets were from then on on the side of the Allies.

In fact, it was Stalin's men who were the first to reach Berlin in April 1945, a ruined, gutted burning city where its ruler, Hitler, was hunkered down in his little bunker under the crumbling old Reich Chancellery.

Hitler at this time was busy feeding poison to his bow-wow Blondi and preparing to take his own life, after finally marrying his long-time mistress Eva Braun, of course. She'd waited long enough. She was not going into the piping hot hereafter with him without a ring on her finger at long last. I can't say I blame her, lol. It was the least he could do after all her years of being sidelined, watching Magda Goebbels taking her, Eva's, rightful place, beside Hitler at state functions.

Anyway, the British at this point needed the Russians and their mighty show of force against Hitler. They weren't going to go around accusing the Russians of committing a massacre that could just as easily be pinned on the nasty Nazis. Why would they? It wouldn't make any sense.

As to why they- the British- continued to cover up the Katyn Massacre after the war, well, one can only assume that it was a case of what we were discussing above a moment ago. Why bring all this stuff up now, in other words. What good would it do? Whom would it benefit? Let sleeping dogs lie. And they did let them lie, until they came bubbling to the surface in their own time, which sleeping dogs often do.

Alex Pettyfer as Stephen Underwood is terribly wooden in his role. He doesn't seem at all comfortable in it. I blame the ridiculous olde-timey moustache plastered to his upper lip and that awful cap he's made to wear in every scene. He looks like a total pillock, lol.

Ditto his married girlfriend Jeanette Mitchell, whose ridiculous amount of lipstick is all you can see when you look at her. It's her mouth we're meant to be noticing, not the amount of lippy she has on, lol. As it is, she looks a bit mad with that big red gash in the middle of her somewhat drippy face. Less is more, dear. Less is invariably more.

I loved Will Thorp as Colonel Janusz Pietrowski, the Liaison Officer responsible for helping the Polish troops under British command to be re-settled. He'd like nothing better than for the truth about the Katyn Massacre to come out and be broadcast across the world, but he feels like there are too many people against such revelations for it to ever happen.

Then Stephen Underwood comes into the picture. At first, he's only after a story. After meeting with Michael Loboda, however, the titular 'last witness' to the Katyn Massacre who knows that someone is trying to murder him the way they've offed all the other witnesses to the crime, he genuinely wants the truth to be told.

Will Thorp, by the way, played a chap called Chris Gray in long-running British soap opera CORONATION STREET. He also starred in forty-eight episodes of medical soap opera CASUALTY, playing a fella called Woody. I don't normally go for blonde men but this one looks hot in his uniform, all tired and surly and stubbly and moody and broody. Put it this way, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for leaving his stethoscope inside me after an appendectomy. I surely wouldn't.

'ON DVD AND DIGITAL NOW FROM SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT!!!'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

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SECOND SIGHT FILMS PRESENTS BURT REYNOLDS IN 'THE LAST MOVIE STAR.' (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-29T17:20:00.000+01:00

THE LAST MOVIE STAR. (2017) DIRECTED BY ADAM RIFKIN. LIL'S HORROR ARTWORK BY CLIVE BARKER. STARRING BURT REYNOLDS, CHEVY CHASE AND ARIEL WINTER.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

A gently heartbreaking reflection on bad decisions, lost love and late-life revelations’
Film Journal International

‘Strong performances…
A sweet, solid film’
Film Threat

I'm picking up some old asshole for my brother.'

'Gradation, dynamism and nuance... sounds like a law firm!'

'What a shit-hole.......... I guarantee you Clint (Eastwood) didn't stay in this shit-hole.'

'It must be really liberating to be able to live your life not giving a shit about anyone else.'

'Are you always this much of an asshole or is it just to lowly paeans like us?'

This is the kind of film that would normally have me in floods of tears, and you too, if I'm not much mistaken, lol. An ancient movie star from the Golden- well, maybe Silver- Age of Hollywood who hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that he's old, like, really really old, revisits his past. It helps him, miraculously, to come to terms with everything he'd been fighting and railing against.

In addition, a troubled young girl's life is turned around overnight in tandem with the movie star's. Suddenly she completely doesn't mind that her bastard of a boyfriend has been cheating on her with some skank who puts the incriminating pictures of her nudie self up on Instagram straight after all the sex. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now. I know women, I am a woman, and this would never happen. No woman would be okay with this after just one chat with an old man, I don't care how bloody inspiring he is.

Like I said, I'd normally be sobbing my eyes out at stuff like this but everything in this film feels a bit too contrived for my liking. Let's start at the beginning, a very good place to start, as I believe a slightly famous someone once said.

Burt Reynolds plays Vic Edwards, the titular ageing movie star and 'Box-office King of 1975.' Burt's eighty-two in real life and now looks terribly frail. Vic made his name in Westerns and action movies after being a stuntman for a bit and we're shown several clips of Burt's actual old movies as if they're Vic's, films like SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and the excellent DELIVERANCE, in which Burt plays an action man who gets way more action than he can ultimately handle on an ill-fated boys' weekend away.

The rather cynical film-makers make sure we know that this film is a tear-jerker by starting the movie at the vets' office, where Vic is having to put his old faithful dog Squanto to sleep. Okay, that bit's sad. 'We'll give you a minute to say goodbye.'

Then, just to emphasise the point that Vic is old but still has trouble remembering it, we see him being completely blanked at the supermarket by a stunning young hottie and then being sad over it.

The rest of his time he spends at the mall- such an old people place!- eyeing up the younger women in the yoga class and discussing the obituaries with his equally old pal Sonny, who's played by a still recognisable living legend, Chevy Chase from the NATIONAL LAMPOON movies.

Then one day, something out of the ordinary does happen. Vic gets an invitation to a film festival in Nashville, the country music capital of the world, where a retrospective of his work is being held. He's also being given a Lifetime Achievement Award. So far so good, huh?

He flies to Nashville expecting the festival to be like Cannes. It isn't. It's being held in the back room of a downbeat bar. Vic's rude and obnoxious, not to mention ungrateful, to the organisers of the festival, a young lad and his mates who've saved their dollars and cents all year to put on this little festival.

They're huge fans of Vic's films and he throws their love and loyalty back in their faces. He says the one thing that's pretty much guaranteed to hurt film fans badly. He calls them 'just a bunch-a losers watching movies in the basement,' a sort of preconceived notion about us film nerds that's only sometimes true. And so what if we watch movies in the basement? Ya gotta watch 'em somewhere. What does it matter where and how dare Vic be so rude?

Vic, who has also proven himself by now to be a sexist pig ('No, I banged her brains out, but the rumours that we were dating were just bullshit') storms out of the festival in a huff. We know that, for the film to end well, he'll have to realise the error of his ways and come back and grovel big-time to the film fans who've been gracious enough to invite him to Nashville and put him up in a motel which, by the way, he bitches about 'cause it's not the Ritz.

I think the main problem with the film is Burt's twenty-year-old co-star, Ariel Winter, who plays the smart younger sister Alex in American sitcom MODERN FAMILY. Here she plays the sister of Doug, the young festival organiser who, incidentally, looks like a young Jack Black. Doug tells his unwilling sister, Lil, that she's got to be Vic's chauffeur and personal assistant for the duration of the festival. She reluctantly agrees.

You can just see the film-makers sitting down saying, now, what's the funniest way to present this Lil as the exact opposite of what Vic would expect in a chauffeur-cum-PA at a 'prestigious' film festival?

I know, let's have her turn up at the airport in an old banger of a car wearing hardly any clothes, screeching 'you fucking asshole' repeatedly into her phone at some bloke who's jerking her around! This is gonna be sweet. And so the character of the dreadful, foul-mouthed, tattooed and pierced Lil, with her goddamn ass-cheeks literally hanging out of her tight denim cut-offs like she's touting for some kinda business, is born.

I'm not kidding you, it's probably the worst case of screechy over-acting I've ever seen. And of course Vic is an old fogey, the film-makers are thinking, so let's have Lil and the rest of the festival peeps bombard him with as many social media terms as can fit through the eye of a needle! What a marvellous idea. His old-person bewilderment will neatly highlight the difference between the two generations and it'll be really funny and clever.

Except it's not. It just feels horribly contrived, like we're being manipulated into feeling certain emotions but the manipulation's not powerful enough to make us feel 'em sincerely. There's an episode of THE SIMPSONS about an old Western movie star called Buck McCoy (voiced by Dennis DUEL Weaver), which makes me cry buckets every time I see it. Sure, it's a cartoon, but the humour, the pathos, the aching nostalgia and the love of movies are all there, present and correct. I don't think THE LAST MOVIE STAR ever quite reaches these heights.

They give Lil the illness of depression as well, which the doctors are trying to cure with a cocktail of different modern medicines, and it feels like the sole purpose of all this is to make Vic think, hell, kids sure didn't need all these different drugs and have all these fancy-pants illnesses back in MY day...! I surely am flabbergasted by the litany of names of medicines this crazy bitch young'un is shooting at me rapid-fire. I'd better go have me a nice lie-down.

One funny thing about Vic's schmaltzy trip down Memory Lane is when he takes the confused old lady with Alzheimers' out of the nursing home and shows her the river where he once proposed to her. He kisses her and I'm thinking, what if they have sex and afterwards she says, well, thanks for the ride, sonny, but who the fuck ARE ya again...?' It's all a bit mad.

It's pretty obvious that the purpose of the film is to teach Vic a lesson. This lesson: 'I thought I was too good for this little film festival, but as it turns out, it's too good for me.' They show clips of Vic (Burt old) taking to his characters in SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and DELIVERANCE (Burt young) and sighing heavily and saying things like, where did the gosh-darned time go...?

Well, that's the question we're all asking, lol. I should have been in floods of tears by now but I wasn't. Thinking there might be something badly wrong with my emotional reactors, I waited for the credits to roll and then I went straight onto YouTube and watched Johnny Cash singing HURT. The tears flowed like Niagara Falls. Now that's how you make people feel for an older person looking back on their lives. That's how you do it.

Burt Reynolds is 'The Last Movie Star,' on-demand and on digital download on 20 August 2018 courtesy of SECOND SIGHT FILMS!!!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

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https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

THE CRITERION COLLECTION PRESENTS THE SUPER-COOL, SUPER-NOSTALGIC 'SMITHEREENS.' (1982) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-28T15:56:00.000+01:00

SMITHEREENS. (1982) DIRECTED BY SUSAN SEIDELMAN. STARRING SUSAN BERMAN, BRAD RIJN, COOKIE MUELLER AND RICHARD HELL.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I loved this film beyond words. It's billed as 'an unfaded snapshot of a bygone era,' the era being early 'Eighties New York's East Village when New York's East Village was culturally still the coolest, hippest most happening place in the world to live in.

So many people today are still desperately nostalgic for that era or else they wish they'd been around to live through it first-hand. Everything was just way cool back then, even poverty, homelessness and drug-use, if you can believe what you see in films like SMITHEREENS.

The lead character has the unlikely name of Wren, and she looks like she's just walked out of the pop music video for the Cyndi Lauper song, 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.' Cheap (stolen!) sunglasses, fishnet tights, leopard-print skirts and red converse trainers characterise Wren's fresh 'n' funky psychedelic look, under all of which she looks remarkably like a young Ruby Wax.

She's the creation of Susan Seidelman the director's, who was just a wee film school graduate when she made the movie. On her own admission, Susan ran around the streets of New York with her camera, shooting places and people she thought looked cool, with nary a thought of a permit in mind, lol.

Well, it would probably only have stultified her creativity to have gone down to the Town Hall to seek permission to shoot here, there and anywhere. Fuck it, man, this was New York in the 'Eighties, it's all good, it's all cool...! She says you couldn't do that now and you probably couldn't. Too much poxy bureaucracy and red tape.

Anyway, we first meet Wren when she's papering the underground subway with pictures of her face wearing a fierce expression. Who's this girl, the picture asks? Well, who is she indeed? She's a nobody who wants to be a somebody, but doing what? Believe it or not, she doesn't really know herself what it is she wants to be known for.

Does she sing, dance, act, model, write, paint, compose music? She doesn't really do any of these things. She tries to hang around with guys who sing in bands in the hope that some of their 'fame' rubs off on her. Most of them recognise her for the hard-up hanger-on she is and so she doesn't have much luck in getting famous this way. It's pretty sad, all this, sad as in pitiful.

Wren has a poorly-paid job at a copy shop, where she no doubt printed off the flyers of her face while her boss's back was turned, lol. Early on in the film, she gets locked out of her apartment for the non-payment of her rent. She has a married white trash sister who's not much use to her and Wren's adamant that she's not going home to 'Mom.' That's that then, so.

She's feisty and gobby and she puts a brave face on everything, but only to save face. She'd rather cut her own tongue out than admit that she's flat-broke and has nowhere to stay. She always tries to make out that she has a million places to be and a million people to see but it's all just an act.

Everything with Wren is all bullshit, like, she's always 'just about' to get paid or she's got some money coming 'tomorrow' or 'real soon' but she's not fooling anyone. Everyone can see that she's brassic and down on her luck and no-one wants to get 'infected' by her bad luck. People always seem to think that that kind of thing is contagious, don't they? They avoid people who are down on their luck like they've got the plague or something, as if bad luck is 'catching.'

Wren sort of ricochets back and forth between two guys throughout the film. Paul is a nice young fella who came to New York in his psychedelic van for probably the same reasons that all young people come to the big city from the sticks.

He's cute but he's as poor as a church mouse and he lives and sleeps in his van, his only possession worth any money. After meeting Wren on the subway the day she's putting up the flyers with her mugshot on them, he falls for her in a big way and is thrilled when she condescends to sleep in his van on the nights when she can't find anywhere else to kip.

Wren's so-called 'friends' are all tired of her mooching and couch-surfing and sponging off them and they gradually cut her off altogether, leaving her in a very vulnerable position. It's not their fault, they have their own bills and rent to pay and no-one likes a moocher, but still, it's sad to see Wren being cold-shouldered wherever she goes, getting doors literally slammed in her face.

Eric is a handsome but moody punk-rock singer who was mildly famous once and hopes to be again, but for now he's just another has-been like all the rest of the has-beans. Wren idolises him for his 'status' as a once-famous punk-rock singer and she wants to get with him.

Yeah, sure, he'll allow her to sleep with him in his fabulously cool New York loft, where there's a motorbike and a self-harming junkie in the bathroom and a ton of booze in the bath, but he

certainly won't commit to anything else. That'd be, like, too heavy, man.

There's a stunning blonde girl who hangs around with Eric a lot but it's clearly not a happy relationship. You'd think that two exceptionally good-looking people in a relationship together would be as happy as Larry from morning till night but noooooooo, these two act like they can't stand each other and Wren takes advantage of their time apart to try and inveigle herself with Eric, who looks out for no-one but Eric, if you get me.

So guess which guy Wren ultimately chooses, the nice decent guy who'll treat her right or the up-himself asshole who uses people to further his own career? Yeah, right, she picks the nice guy, naturellement. Women all love a nice guy.

Yep, women want nothing more than to be respected by their life partner and treated like a useful, productive person in their own right. Now please excuse me while I run to the loo as I appear to have wet myself laughing, lol.

Everyone in the movie, but most of all Wren, talks ad nauseam about 'going to LA, man,' which they all obviously see as the Holy Grail for people like Wren who just want to get 'famous,' even if, like Wren, they have no discernible talent.

Wren is a nice enough girl who could make something of herself if she tried but first she needs to get this idea of being 'famous' for doing nothing out of her thick skull. It's not the be-all and end-all in life.

Does she really want to end up like that user of people, Eric? Well, of course, Eric is super-hot and Wren probably thinks that being 'cool' like Eric would be the bee's knees but Wren is deluded. She's got fame on the brain but it's not all it's cracked up to be. I mean, Eric had a taste of it but does Eric look happy to you? Exactly, lol.

Susan Seidelman the director, who incidentally went on to direct Madonna and Rosanna Arquette in DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, thinks that the girls of today who try to get famous using Instagram or reality television shows are just the Wrens of today.

Imagine Wren on Instagram! She'd flood the Internet with daft piccies of herself. If she even had a talent she could try to capitalise on, but she doesn't even try to find out what her talent is. Being 'famous for being famous' is about the saddest thing I can think of.

Am I being judgemental? Well, maybe. But I do feel deeply sorry for Wren and all the girls who would've gotten 'lost' in the same way, getting swallowed up by the big city they thought was going to have the streets paved with gold just for their benefit, God bless 'em.

It's a rude, cold awakening that Wren is in for, Wren and all the others like her. But Paul with the van's got a blanket she's welcome to share. Let's hope she makes the right choice.

A few quick random snippets before I go. Richard Hell, who plays the lover-god that is Eric, used to be in an important punk-rock band called RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS. That's an odd name. I think I'd get tired trying to pronounce it.

Cookie Mueller, who plays Karen, the horror movie character, and who sadly died of AIDS at the tragically young age of forty, was one of John Waters's 'Dreamlanders,' or stable of regular characters.

And finally, Chris Noth, who's probably best known for playing 'Mr. Big' in SEX AND THE CITY, briefly portrays a transexual prostitute in SMITHEREENS. I'd be prepared to bet big money that you didn't know that...!

SMITHEREENS is available to buy now on Blu-Ray from the CRITERION COLLECTION.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

CULTFILMS PRESENTS: FEDERICO FELLINI'S 'I VITELLONI.' (1953) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-26T16:40:00.000+01:00

FEDERICO FELLINI'S 'I VITELLONI.' (1953) DIRECTED BY/SCREENPLAY AND STORY BY FEDERICO FELLINI.

STARRING FRANCO INTERLENGHI, ALBERTO SORDI, FRANCO FABRIZI, LEOPOLDO TRIESTE AND RICCARDO FELLINI.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'The Godfather of such iconic films as MEAN STREETS, AMERICAN GRAFFITI and DINER, Fellini's masterpiece I VITELLONI arrives in Dual Format Edition, including its first ever UK Blu-Ray version alongside the DVD, and digitally on all UK platforms including Amazon, courtesy of CultFilms. Hard to find, this pivotal piece of cinema arrives in stunningly restored HD on 27^th August 2018.

The original slacker film that spawned an entire genre, I VITELLONI (loosely translated as 'The Young Bucks') is the story of a group of five long-time male friends who are still coming of age in their thirties. Mostly unemployed and too old to be kids, they struggle with their uncertainties about settling down in their Italian seaside town...'

'If they don't find her, I'll kill myself.'

'You won't kill yourself. You're too much of a coward.'

'We always talked about leaving but only one of us, early one morning without telling anyone, actually left.'

'I treated you like a brother and you behaved like a scoundrel.'

'Look, I was just fooling around.'

'He who cares not for art cares not for life.'

As the promotional material above states, this is the story of five Italian lads in their late twenties, early thirties, who have yet to find their purpose in life. Mostly unemployed, still living with their parents- for shame!- and mostly still single and in no rush to settle down, they're a bit sad really. They'll probably never escape the little provincial coastal town they talk constantly of escaping.

Here in modern Ireland, we call peeps like that 'millenials.' They were born in and around the 'Nineties and/or the millenium, and they're the generation who grew up with Harry Potter and Pokemon and who may never own their own homes due to the lack here of affordable housing for regular people. Hence the need to continue living with Mom and Pops, who can now no longer look forward to a peaceful retirement because they can't get rid of their offspring.

Our millenials move from temporary job to temporary job, unlike their parents and grandparents who tended to get 'jobs for life;' if you were educated, then you'd go into 'the Bank' or the civil service and, if you weren't, then maybe factory work or a labouring job.

All that old way of life doesn't really exist any more. In a way, that's a good thing, as we've swept out a load of the old backwards way of thinking as well, but on the other hand it's sad for our millenials that they may never know the security that comes with owning your own home or being in a job that they can't sack you from, no matter how criminally inept you are at it, lol.

Anyway, the lads in Fellini's black-and-white picture remind me of the lads in the old movie MARTY, which I think was made around the same time. The lead character Marty, played by Ernest Borgnine, and his pals are all pretty much pushing forty and they still hang around with each other every Saturday night, mooching between the cinema and the pub and the pool-hall as if they were bored teenagers looking for thrills that simply didn't exist in their home town.

We see more of Fausto in Fellini's film than any of the other lads. I find it hard to call them men as they don't really act like men but more like 'callow youths.' When we first see Fausto, he's trying to skip town because he's gotten his girlfriend Sandra (great name, by the way!) pregnant and he doesn't want to face up to the consequences of same.

Fausto's Dad, a man of honour, forces him to marry Sandra, who's thrilled to have bagged the handsome Fausto, tall and dark with his film-star looks and Elvis quiff. She has her baby and then spends the rest of her married life- the part that we see of it- worrying about where Fausto is and what he's up to. His serial philandering causes her nothing but heartbreak.

Sandra's Dad finds Fausto a job in a shop that sells religious statuary and iconography and stuff like that, which he balls-es up by making a pass at his boss's middle-aged wife. Anything with a pulse, eh, Fausto?

If it walks and talks and has tits, hair and legs, Fausto will sleep with it. He's a selfish, unpleasant character who has a lot of growing up to do yet. And he may never do it. Some guys literally never develop a sense of responsibility towards the women they've made promises to and the babies they've created.

Fausto flirts shockingly with an attractive woman who's sitting to his right at the cinema, while his new bride Sandra is sitting innocently to his left. He even runs out of the cinema to follow the sexy broad home, leaving his wife standing bewildered outside the cinema later, waiting for Fausto like a fool.

Moraldo is Sandra's brother and Fausto's friend. He's cute to look at and a nice guy who would never behave as Fausto does, but he's weak and almost contemptible in this weakness. He knows that Fausto is behaving appalingly towards Sandra and their newborn baby son and he does nothing, even though he's Sandra's big brother and the child's Uncle.

He sees Fausto actively cheating on Sandra with a theatre showgirl and, instead of letting Fausto have it with both barrels, he contents himself with a few passive-aggressive remarks and dirty looks which Fausto blithely ignores. Moraldo has no balls, I'm sorry to say.

Alberto is unemployed too and cadges money for gambling off his sister Olga, who works. She's seeing a married man, something Alberto disapproves of greatly, but he's a big unemployed layabout who spends his days hanging out with his unemployed mates, so I hardly think he has the moral high ground here.

'Don't you dare make our mother cry,' he rather hypocritically warns Olga, but the Mother is just as likely to be upset by Alberto's aimlessness and lack of purpose in life as she is to be perturbed by Olga's love life. How dare he be so pious? The big loser.

Leopoldo is a playwright who hasn't sold any plays yet. It's quite funny when he thinks he's finally got a big important theatre actor to take an interest in his work but he nearly has a heart attack when he discovers that the actor, an old man, might just want to have sex with him down on the beach in the dark of night in the middle of a wind-and-rain-storm. Back to the drawing board, eh Leopoldo?

We don't know much about Riccardo, the last of the 'Young Bucks,' except that he cherishes a desire to sing and act. Also, he's actually played by one Riccardo Fellini, the brother of the director, who was a director of documentaries in his own right.

There's a lot of pathos in the sight of Alberto, dressed as a very unconvincing woman (Some Like It Hot, much?) the morning after the town's massive Carnivale, shouting after his sister Olga on the empty windblown street as she disappears into a car with her lover.

There's pathos too in the relationship between Moraldo and the little railway worker Guido, the ten-year-old boy who gets up for work at three in the morning. What is it that Moraldo finds appealing about the boy?

Don't worry, folks, it's not at all a paedophile thing. Maybe he's marvelling at the fact that the boy is so cheerfully accepting of his miserable lot. Maybe this young lad has more of a lust for life and responsibility than Moraldo has and it puts Moraldo to shame.

I love the empty town square on the morning after the Carnivale. There's a windswept bleakness about it that seems to fit with the tone of the last half hour of the film, when it looks like the placid, submissive blinkered little Sandra has finally woken up and smelled the coffee.

The coffee that is Fausto's disgusting serial philandering...

What does the future hold for the five lads? Maybe Fellini should have made a sequel, lol. I don't think he did, so we'll just have to content ourselves with I VITELLONI, the director's masterpiece. It's a superb film and well worth your time and hard-earned cash. Enjoy it with my royal blessing, lol.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

FABULOUS FILMS PRESENTS: EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY. (1998) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-25T14:57:00.000+01:00

EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY. (1998) DIRECTED BY ANDY TENNANT. BASED ON 'CINDERELLA' BY CHARLES PERRAULT. STARRING DREW BARRYMORE, DOUGRAY SCOTT, ANJELICA HUSTON, JUDY PARFITT, TIMOTHY WEST, MEGAN DODDS, MELANIE LYNSKEY, RICHARD O'BRIEN, PATRICK GODFREY AND JEANNE MOREAU.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a ballsier re-telling of the famous Cinderella fairytale story than some others you might have seen. Drew Barrymore plays the central Cinderella character, known here as Danielle de Barbarac, as more of a feminist and would-be social reformer than other Cinderellas, and she's actually quite spirited and good at it.

The story is set in sixteenth-century France instead of in some mythical faraway Kingdom, and some of the characters are named after various Kings, Queens and Princes of France, but they've been proven to be inaccurate as historical characters and are therefore just characters who happen to have the names of some long-dead members of French royalty, if you get me.

A word about Charles Perrault (1628-1703), the French author who wrote CINDERELLA. Apparently he was the Daddy of the fairytale genre with his oeuvres (d'you like that, it's French!) derived from folk tales. He was a huge influence on the Brothers Grimm, who came along about a century later.

Although I didn't know this until today, he actually wrote not only CINDERELLA but also LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD, PUSS IN BOOTS, BLUEBEARD and my favourite of all the fairytales, SLEEPING BEAUTY, which was adapted into a gorgeous ballet by Tchaikovsky.

Some historical characters appear in EVER AFTER too, like Leonardo Da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa and inventor of various wacky but ingenious contraptions, and the aforementioned Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jacob, by whom the film is book-ended.

Jeanne Moreau as the Grande Dame is telling the Brothers the story of Danielle de Barbarac, her great-great grandmother and therefore a real-life person who once lived her life and was not merely a mythical character in a fairytale, a character who never existed.

Danielle is a pretty little eight-year-old when her widowed Pops Auguste marries the haughty and cold-hearted Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, marvellously played by Angelica Huston. Her facial expressions are wonderful. She has more acting talent in one eyebrow, lol, than some actresses do in their entire repertoires.

She plays Rodmilla as, not an evil or wicked Step-mother exactly, but more as one who is simply supremely self-centred and thoughtless, who never bothers to put herself in the other person's shoes (or should that be glass slipper...?). She's also lazy and not used to 'doing' for herself.

She has a cold nature and only gives affection, although it seems more like savage criticism disguised as motherly concern, to her own daughters, Marguerite and Jacqueline. Marguerite is a proper little bitch-in-the-making who's never done a hand's turn for anyone other than herself in her entire life, while Jacqueline is much nicer, although she has to keep this side of her nature mostly a secret from her mother, who would take it as a sign of weakness.

Rodmilla comes out with a couple of great lines. 'Nothing is final until you're dead and, even then, I'm sure God negotiates.' And I love when, at one stage, it looks like she's actually going to comfort Danielle, she instead comes out with: 'Don't worry, dear. When things are bad, they can always get worse...!' Rodmilla is brilliant. Brilliantly bitchy. She's my favourite character here by miles.

Auguste, the idiot, pops his clogs almost immediately after marrying Rodmilla. This leaves Danielle in the care of her cold, self-serving Step-mother and the two sisters. A decade elapses and we see that Auguste's estate has fallen into decline and disrepair and Danielle has spent the last ten years slaving for Rodmilla & Co. Auguste would turn over in his grave if he could see what Danielle's been reduced to by her Awful Step-mother. Serves him right for dying, lol.

The handsome young Prince Henry (personally, I think he's as bland as plain bread) is head-over-heels in love with Danielle by now, but he doesn't know her as Danielle the lowly servant. He thinks she's the beautiful and titled noblewoman Nicole de Lancret (don't ask!) who runs away from him after every meeting, which greatly piques his male interest. Thrill of the chase, that's all they care about. Men, sigh.

They're like a dog chasing a car, the lot of 'em. The dog doesn't know what to do with the car when he eventually catches up to it, so he loses interest, just like a bloke when he finally 'bags' the chick he's been chasing. So men and dogs are quite alike then, you could say. Maybe someone should conduct a detailed study on the subject, lol, and mail it to whocares@gmail.com...

Dougray Scott (DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES) doesn't do half as good a job as the Handsome But Wimpy Prince as Chris Sarandon does as Prince Humperdinck in the excellent THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987). Mind you, Prince Humperdinck is deliciously evil and sneaky so maybe that gives him the edge in the Prince-ing stakes.

Dougray Scott's Prince Henry isn't evil, merely misguided. He's lived an aimless, comfy,

cosy, thoughtless life of privilege, ease and luxury in his parents' palace. He's never given a thought to the plight of his own servants or anyone else's. He doesn't have the social conscience and highly-developed sense of right and wrong that the feisty Danielle has. She has much to teach this self-centred young milksop...

Of course, when Rodmilla discovers that her kitchen-maid step-daughter Danielle's been making goo-goo eyes at the Prince of the Realm, whom Rodmilla's earmarked for her dreadful daughter Marguerite, there'll be skin and hair flying.

Rodmilla and Marguerite are the ultimate social climbers. Just because the dozey Prince, led by his royal Wee-Willy-Winkie like most of these so-called Handsome Fairytale Princes, has reacted favourably to Marguerite's appearance in the past has made both women think that Marguerite is a shoo-in to be the next Queen of France.

When they find out what's been going on clandestinely between the Prince and this mystery woman Nicole de Lancret, the shit will hit the fan royally. Will Cinderella/Danielle be compensated for her years of slavery under Rodmilla's régime, or will Marguerite pip her to the post? Ah come on, guys. You all know how the story ends. It's a fairytale, for Chrissakes.

I love Judy Parfitt as Queen Marie of France. Ms. Parfitt is also famous for playing Vera Donovan in the film adaptation of Stephen King's magnificent DOLORES CLAIBORNE. Vera is the titular Dolores Claiborne's hard-assed wealthy employer. Dolores is Vera's cleaning lady and all-round workhorse in whom Vera senses, if not exactly a kindred spirit, then at least a fellow woman worthy of respect.

When Dolores confides in the supercilious Vera that her no-good husband has been sexually molesting their daughter Selena, Vera gives Dolores the kind of advice that makes the other woman's jaw drop. 'Sometimes husbands die, Dolores, and leave their wives all their money.' But Dolores takes Vera's advice nonetheless, on one very special day when there's a total eclipse of the sun...

Anyway, you all had better enjoy these cutesy-pie versions of the CINDERELLA fairytale while you can. Future more politically correct versions will probably see the Cinderella character as an androgynous-looking person of interdeminate gender whose life partner is now a bisexual talking horse.

The Prince will be a lesbian female who teaches a class in self-awareness for amputees and the Wicked Step-mother will have morphed into the Mildly Critical Extended-Family-Member who's opened her heart- and her castle- to refugees from Outer Space. The traditional story we ladies loved to fantasise about when we were kids may never be the same again. Like I said, enjoy it while ye can.

Mind you, these fairytales are not exactly models of feminist writing, are they? Much as we love them, they teach us that women are helpless females who are either servants or lonely princesses, but either way they're nothing until some bloke has come along on his white horse to rescue them and take 'em away from their awful, worthless lives.

If all that way of thinking is going to change, then maybe the new fairytales should teach us that women can be their own rescuer from bad situations. Maybe I'll write that bloody book myself. 'BE YOUR OWN KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR.' Rescue yourself from whatever lousy goddamn prison life's got you chained up in. Don't steal my idea now. I'm putting you guys on your honour. Patent pending...

EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY is available to buy now in a lovely Dual Format Edition from the wonderful FABULOUS FILMS.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

Film Review - Alpha (2018)

2018-08-24T22:04:00.000+01:00

If one considers some of the absolute dreck released recently by Sony Pictures recently: The Emoji Movie, Jack and Jill, Pixels, Sausage Party, plus any of the recent, risible Adam Sandler vehicles, it’s actually something of a small miracle that Alpha exists. A relatively small-scale, quaint even, story about a cave boy and his dog, playing out in a fictional language, with what would seem like very little widespread commercial appeal. It’s not a balls-to-the-wall action piece or a comic book movie, it’s an attempt to do something a little bit different and Sony should be commended for that.

Set in Paleolithic Europe, a tribe of hunter-gatherers embark on their annual bison hunt, traversing across miles of inhospitable wilderness to track down the herd. While out on his first hunt, the son of the tribe chief becomes separated, lost and left, presumed dead. Attacked by a pack of wolves, the boy is forced to team up with an initially-hostile wolf to survive the elements and make it back to his tribe.

The chief concern here is that it’s a bit narratively obvious. Early lectures about the need to find inner courage seem to act as a prediction for the path of the protagonist, so watching it feels a little like joining the dots. Plot-wise there are no curve-balls or surprises worth a mention and everything seems to unfold in exactly the manner you’d predict, or fear, from about the first fifteen minutes.

On the plus side, it is home to some startling, and occasionally breathtaking, imagery. The vistas regularly look great and there are moments when the movie slows down and slips into a dream-like state of reflection as stars morph into figures and time seems to stand still. It’s in these occasional moments that the movie lifts itself into something more engaging and interesting than the narrative would have you believe. Ultimately, it’s pretty brave movie and a welcome attempt to provide something for younger viewers beyond the usual Saturday morning, hyperactive sensory Blitzkrieg, and for that it deserves applause, even it doesn’t always challenge the viewer narratively.

Chris Banks |★★★

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE PRESENTS: TOM JONES. (1963) A BAWDY 18TH CENTURY SEX COMEDY REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-22T13:47:00.000+01:00

TOM JONES. (1963) BASED ON THE NOVEL BY HENRY FIELDING.

DIRECTED BY TONY RICHARDSON. PRODUCED BY WOODFALL FILM PRODUCTIONS. DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WALTER LASSALLY.

STARRING ALBERT FINNEY, SUSANNAH YORK, HUGH GRIFFITH, DAME EDITH EVANS, GEORGE DEVINE, JOAN GREENWOOD, DIANE CILENTO, GEORGE A. COOPER, ROSALIND KNIGHT, JOYCE REDMAN, DAVID WARNER, JOHN MOFFATT AND PETER BULL.

NARRATED BY MICHEAL MAC LIAMMOIR.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

FILM NOT REMOTELY SUITABLE FOR VEGETARIANS. SORRY!

'Where is she? Where's Tom's pussy?'

'Tom, thou art as hearty a cock as any in the kingdom.'

What a glorious romp this is! It's like a Jilly Cooper bonkbuster set in the eighteenth century and committed to celluloid, and not a curly-headed Welsh crooner in sight. It has sex, dogs, horses, pigs, lusty serving wenches with heaving bosoms, fabulous costumes, settings and scenery and poor old Tom being caught in flagrante delicto every time he takes a woman into the scratcher. He's plagued with bad luck like that, is our Tom.

TOM JONES was made by the iconic Woodfall Film Productions (1959-1984), the company that produced such films as KES (1969), THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER (1962), A TASTE OF HONEY (1961) and LOOK BACK IN ANGER (1959).

TOM JONES is quite an important picture, not to mention portentous, because it heralded, not exactly the end of the black-and-white kitchen sink dramas that preceded it but, shall we say, a cessation of same for a bit. And what did it usher in instead? Why, the Swinging Sixties, of course, and in fantabulous Technicolor as well.

The films mentioned above can be found on the BFI Blu-Ray and DVD box-sets entitled WOODFALL: A REVOLUTION IN BRITISH CINEMA, which came out in June 2018. TOM JONES is on there too, but the BFI is releasing this particular film now as a stand-alone Blu-Ray film, complete with a ton of extra features.

In particular, it includes both the director's cut of the film and also the previously unavailable original theatrical cut, all one-hundred-and-twenty-eight minutes of if. So you'll be spoiled for choice, so you will, when you buy this little gem.

TOM JONES was big budget, full colour and a period piece or costume drama rather than the contemporary films we've noted above, based as it was on the whopping great novel of one Henry Fielding, THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES: A FOUNDLING.

Published in 1749- I think!- it's considered to be one of the first great English novels, along with the likes of Samuel Richardson's PAMELA and other similar works. It's so long it makes the Bible and the thickest Harry Potter tomes look like a couple of pamphlets, lol. You probably wouldn't get it read in one setting, unless you're accustomed to sit for three months at a time.

TOM JONES was therefore a bit of a departure from its norm for Woodfall Film Productions, and many of the people involved with it were terribly afraid that it would fail spectacularly.

Far from becoming a flop, however, it succeeded probably beyond the wildest dreams of the cast and crew and made a millionaire overnight of its star Albert Finney, who'd been given shares in it. Lucky Albert Finney, lol.

It also garnered no less than four Academy Awards, including Best Director for Tony Richardson, the co-founder of Woodfall Film Productions alongside playwright John Osborne, the writer of LOOK BACK IN ANGER, and another chap called Harry Saltzman.

The film has so much background to it, background inseparable from the development of

British cinema (you can't separate them, it'd be like trying to unpick the stitches from two conjoined tapestries), that it's not really possible to discuss it without going into at least some of it.

I think you all are well informed enough now, however, and we can safely move onto the plot of TOM JONES, a filthy dirty bed-hopping sex romp with added hoops and crinolines. You guys will love it...

Tom himself, played by the handsome Albert Finney (I used to confuse him with Richard Burton) of ERIN BROCKOVICH and ANNIE: THE MUSICAL fame, is a colourful character. A foundling left in the bed of the kindly Squire Allworthy, a man possessed of quite a sizeable endowment, Tom was brought up by the Squire as if he were that man's own son.

Tom grows up to be a ladies' man, a swordsman extraordinaire to whom the wimmins all flock because of his handsome face and well-put-together body. Disliked intensely by his father's toadies Square and Thwackum and also by his Aunt Bridget's son, a weed with the unlikely name of Blifil, Tom bears this dislike manfully and tries to forget his woes by having as much sex as he can manage, and that's a fair lot of sex.

We first see him with Molly Seagrim, an impoverished slut who tries to lay the blame for her scandalous unwed pregnancy at Tom's door. She's marvellously played by Diane Cilento (Miss Rose in THE WICKER MAN, wife to Sean JAMES BOND Connery and WICKER MAN scriptwriter Anthony Shaffer) who, with her long dark brown tresses, is a dead ringer for Hammer beauty Kate O'Mara. Now there's another sexy wench with a delightfully rounded bosom in a saucy, low-cut period costume.

The real love of Tom's life is Susannah York's character Sophie Western, a sweet-faced virginal blonde lacking somewhat in the sultry, sizzling sensuality of Molly Seagrim. She's the daughter of Squire Western, a brilliant character.

Squire Western (played by Hugh Griffith with absolute joyful gusto) thinks only of hunting, horses, dogs, booze and a bit of slap-and-tickle in the hay and, though he loves Sophie as his only child, he has no qualms about marrying her off to whomever he deems suitable at the time. He loves Tom almost as a son and wouldn't mind at all Tom's being his son-in-law, but Tom is perpetually in disgrace with Sophie for his shenani-goats with other women.

When Tom is disowned by his father due to the evil machinations of Blifil and the Toadies, a spell in London sees him get mixed up with a married woman called Mrs. Waters, a devious, manipulative self-serving society beauty by the name of Lady Bellaston, and Sophie's Cousin, the plummy-voiced Mrs. Fitzpatrick, played by excellent comic actress Rosalind Knight. ('Are you a professional Santa?' ABOUT A BOY: 2002.)

The issue of Tom's uncertain parentage comes up again and again. Will Tom ever find out who his real parents were? And will he ever reconcile with Squire Allworthy, the only real father whom he has ever known? Or will he just be hanged first and be damned? It's all to play for, readers.

Watch out for the following highlights: the slightly stomach-turning meat-and-fruit-eating 'foreplay' scene, the magnificent interiors, the divine harpsichord music and character actor George A. Cooper (DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM) donning a flaming red wig and a ridiculous Oirish accent to play- guess what?- a drunken violent Oirishman, to be sure to be sure. Sure that's not a thundering great cliché at all at all, sure 'tisn't. Stroke me clover say me name and kiss me I'm Oirish...

The Fourth Wall between viewer and film is broken numerous times as well. See if you can spot the breaches. I said breaches, not britches, lol, although there're plenty of nice snug-fitting britches on display here too. Tom himself has a mighty fine pair of pins.

I love when Tom gets all kitted out by the conniving Lady Bellaston (Joan Greenwood, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS) to be a proper gentleman and he ends up looking exactly like German rock star Falco in his video for ROCK ME AMADEUS, lol. It's a good look for him too. Suits you, Sir.

TOM JONES coming at last to Blu-Ray is probably the home entertainment release of the year. The film itself is marvel enough but the background to its being made and all the Woodfall stuff only serves to steep it even more thoroughly in the melting-pot of vintage British cinema. Buy it, watch it, love it, keep it forever. That's my advice to you guys today.

TOM JONES is out now on BLU-RAY from the BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE.

BFI releases are available from all good home entertainment retailers or by mail order from the BFI Shop. Tel: 020 7815 1350 or online at www.bfi.org.uk/shop

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS: JACKIE CHAN IN 'POLICE STORY.' (1985) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-21T12:17:00.001+01:00

POLICE STORY. (1985) DIRECTED BY JACKIE CHAN. STARRING JACKIE CHAN, BRIGITTE LIN AND MAGGIE CHEUNG. COUNTRY: HONG KONG. LANGUAGE: CANTONESE.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

'EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT to release JACKIE CHAN'S POLICE STORY & POLICE STORY 2, two of the finest action films ever made from cinema's reigning martial arts king, for the first time on Blu-Ray in the UK on 20^th August 2018, in a Limited Edition (3,000 copies) Hard-Cased Box-set.'

'Women are strange.'

Aw, this is an absolute treat. This is Jackie Chan at his finest and most legendary, this is. I don't normally care much for action films myself- the word 'action' itself puts me to sleep- but when it's good slick martial arts mixed with genuinely funny comedy, then I'll sit up and pay attention. POLICE STORY is vintage Chan and a cracking good watch to boot.

Chan plays a cop called Ka-Kui, a good young cop who's quickly coming to the attention of his superiors for his, well, good cop-ping, lol. The start of the film sees Ka-Kui and a load of other cops raiding a shanty-town for a drugs kingpin and his minions. They catch the druglord and his underlings but the village on the side of a hill is completely totalled.

Tough luck to all the peasants living there, huh? You can apply to the local police department for compensation but, um, it'll take months, if not years, to go through so to be honest, well, of course, it's up to the individual but all I'm saying is, well, I wouldn't bother. Ahem. Clears throat self-consciously and leaves...

While the case against the druglord is going through the courts, Ka-Kui is given the job of protecting a female hostile witness called Selina Fong, formerly secretary to the druglord. She's feisty and doesn't see why she needs protecting from her former employer. Well, she's being a bit naive there, if you ask me.

She obviously doesn't realise that, if she's been privy to information that might incriminate the crime boss, she immediately becomes very, very dispensable. Surplus to requirements. Liable to snuff it at any moment, in other words, and that's where Ka-Kui comes into the picture.

As The Bodyguard, lol, but absolutely no-one will sing in this film, I promise you. Unless it's the crimelord's underlings 'singing like a canary,' Mob slang for snitching your big fat ass off to the cops. Right about before you sleep with the fishes while wearing a made-to-measure concrete overcoat, lovingly constructed for you by the Mafia of whatever country you're in.

Ka-Kui's annoyed about the assignment at first as he and Selina Fong have already clashed swords on the day of the big crime boss take-down. Which is to say, she spat in his face and he lamped her one in the kisser by way of a thankee kindly, ma'am, and may I please have another? Bodes well for their future relationship as protector and protectee, doesn't it?

Remember this exchange between Homer Simpson from THE SIMPSONS and his teacher at the Bodyguard Academy? Homer's training to be Mayor Quimby's bodyguard but ends up 'bodyguarding' Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker from STAR WARS) as well:

Teacher, in strong Texas accent: 'When you're a bodyguard, your loyalty is to your protectee, not to your family, not to your country and not to Moo-hamed.'

Homer, looking worried: 'Not even during Ramadan?'

Teacher: 'Shut your sass-hole, boy!'

Minding Selina Fong (the new Driving Miss Daisy, perhaps?) is a nuisance for Ka-Kui but at least there's never a dull moment. After her apartment proves 'unsafe' for her to stay at after an 'attack' by an unknown 'assailsant,' Ka-Kui brings the frightened woman back to his own flat for safe-keeping.

Here, the sight of Selina Fong in her underwear, topped off by Ka-Kui's own jacket which he lent her to stop her from freezing her nips off in the night air, is too much for Ka-Kui's girlfriend May. His surprise birthday party- it's a surprise all right!- ends with Ka-Kui getting his birthday cake mashed into his face by a distraught May.

Other mishaps include the hapless Ka-Kui playing to an entire court-full of people what he thinks is a tape of evidence he's collected from Selina Fong, but which the listeners take to be a badly-made sex-tape of Ka-Kui trying ineptly to have jiggy-jiggy with the undoubtedly fit Ms. Fong.

Till the end of time, Ka-Kui can claim she sat on a cactus and that that's why she shrieked in distaste but the mirth-convulsed court will always only believe the evidence of its own ears. Even the judge himself is wetting himself laughing. Poor Ka-Kui. Nothing ever goes right for him, lol.

My own favourite funny bit in POLICE STORY, Jackie Chan's personal favourite of all his own action films, is when Ka-Kui steps in a giant pat of cow-shite and then 'unintentionally' breaks into a flawless moonwalk trying to rid his trainers of the foul-smelling excrement.

Like me, Riverdancing like crazy while trying to shake my Grandmother's vicious terrier off my foot whenever I went to visit her when I was a nipper. He used to go for me like I was keeping cats under my jumper or something. Little bastard was called Tiny as well. I never could understand why he was called by such a cutesy name, unless it was out of some kind of irony.

I also love when Ka-Kui's trying to field several telephone calls at once down at the cop-shop and ends up getting in a hopeless muddle of crossed lines. I wonder if the cow that was raped ever plucked up the courage to leave his (or her) domestic abuser. Sounded like a very sad story, did that.

The magnificent and extremely dangerous set-pieces culminate in the trashing of a shopping mall that will leave you breathless. They even show one particularly good bit- Jackie Chan descending a rope of exploding electrical lights- from three different angles just to get the most out of it. These are some of the most spectacular action scenes you'll ever see.

I wonder if they had to get 'em all right first time, these stunts, because if they didn't, would they have had to re-build all the glass cases and everything else that got smashed in the process of each stunt? I think Jackie Chan did all his own stunts here which, if it's true, it's breath-taking, much like the stunts. No wonder he's known as one of the finest action movie heroes of all time.

There's not a whole lot of specific martial arts in the film, ie., shots of Jackie Chan kicking a guy repeatedly in the face, so fast that it looks like it's been speeded-up by the film-makers, while a load of his enemies dance around them both, politely waiting their turn to fight Mr. Chan because everyone knows that in martial arts you can feasibly only deal with one enemy at a time.

No, it's mostly shooting here and 'Pew pew! Pew pew!' and car chases and people crashing through doors and windows and things, but it's all still done with love and style and panache, not to mention Jackie Chan's trademark self-deprecatory humour. He's got a terrifically mobile, expressive face that lends itself perfectly to this kind of slapstick, knockabout humour.

Don't get me wrong, like, he's handsome too. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for boiling the kettle, peeling the foil lid off of the noodles carton, pouring in the boiled water, mixing it with the contents and then allowing it to stand for a few minutes before consuming. For eating noodles, I mean. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating noodles. Lol. My bad.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

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ALTITUDE FILMS PRESENTS: 'FANGED UP.' (2017) A T'RIFFIC BRITISH HORROR COMEDY REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-20T12:03:00.001+01:00

FANGED UP. (2017) DIRECTED BY CHRISTIAN JAMES. WRITTEN BY NICK NEVERN, DANIEL O'REILLY AND DAN PALMER. STARRING DANIEL O'REILLY, DANIELLE HAROLD, STU BENNETT, VAS BLACKWOOD, LAUREN SOCHA, EWEN MACINTOSH, SUE GRAHAM, STEPHEN MARCUS AND STEPHEN BERKOFF.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Shifty: 'I'm gay.'

Jimmy: 'What, in 'ere? You must be like a kid in a candy shop in 'ere!'

Shifty: 'Not really. I don't find child molesters, rapists and murderers attractive.'

Jimmy: 'Wanna bite of me apple?'
Katie: 'I'd rather pop your cherry...!'

'You guys aren't prisoners. You're breakfast, lunch... and dinner...'

This English comedy horror film is a bit of a hoot. While it's not exactly lining up to be the next CITIZEN KANE, it's still good gory fun and anyway, it never promises to be the next CITIZEN KANE. I suggest, therefore, that we forget all about CITIZEN KANE and its many dazzling attributes for now and concentrate on FANGED UP, a jolly nifty little film in its own right.

It's the story of a complete and utter twat-with-a-heart called Jimmy Ragsdale, a self-styled Jack The Lad who ends up banged up (or should that be 'fanged up...?') for the weekend after being involved in a hoo-ha at a nightclub, a hoo-ha which he himself causes, lol.

He's up before the beak (the magistrate) on Monday morning but, for the weekend, he's stuck in the hellish Stokeville Prison. (STOKER-ville would have been better, I wonder why they didn't do that?) Here, he meets the strange cast of characters that people the fearsome jail.

Jimmy, aka Spaghetti Dick (don't ask!), is put in a cell with gigantic Russian Mafia hit-man Victor, who shows him the ropes as he's- Jimmy- a newbie to prison life. Victor's advice re staying safe in the nick is not exactly new advice. Single out the biggest, toughest-looking inmate in the canteen and punch him good and hard in the kisser. We've all heard this before, haven't we?

Jimmy's attempt to follow Victor's advice goes horribly right and he makes a friend for life in the big black muscle-man Shifty, who has a soft spot for hedgehogs. He wants to save 'em. Aw, how sweet. Shifty, Victor and Jimmy are now good mates, prison bezzies who'll stick together through thick and thin. That's good, because you need friends when you're in the nick, even if you're only there for the weekend.

Jimmy is flabbergasted when he discovers that his beautiful blonde ex-girlfriend Katie Makepeace (what a lovely girly name!) is here in Stokeville Prison too, working as the resident doctor. She looks lovely in her white-coat-and-stethoscope combo.

It all ended disastrously between the two of them so Katie's not exactly 'frilled,' (pronounced as the Londoners pronounce it!) to see the randy Jimmy, who's always trying to- how to put this delicately- 'get some.' She might be glad of him before the movie's out, though. I mean for the moral support now, not for the sex, lol. Curb your filthy minds, you lot.

Katie is secretly working undercover to find out what happened to the previous doctor who worked in the prison. Apparently, this Dr. Wallace fella just disappeared into thin air, and doctors don't do that normally. Except on the days they have the old golf, that is. Katie, and now Jimmy as well, whom she takes into her confidence, also wonder why inmates who are invited to Governor Payne's office after dinner, supposedly for a 'sorbet,' never return.

And why do all the inmates, without exception and Jimmy included, have the same blood type and no next-of-kin whatsoever, so that no-one will miss them if they suddenly do a Dr. Wallace? Ms. Renfield the warden looks like she's been dug up and some of the guards and prisoners are going around with staring eyes and fangs with blood dripping down their stubbly chins.

It looks to Jimmy and Katie that there might be an outbreak of vampirism taking place in Stokeville Prison (no shit, Sherlock!) and that the situation might be coming to some sort of a head. A mysterious cloaked figure by the name of Reeves agrees with them and the intrepid quintet- Jimmy, Katie, Victor, Shifty and now Reeves- set off in some trepidation to get to the nub of things.

The writing is very funny and clever in places and the friend with whom I watched the film was thrilled with the reference to Katie's 'Harry Potter' glasses and also the numerous references to Pokemon, even some obscure Pokemon which convinced her that the writers are great fans of

Satoshi Tajiri's extremely lucrative little creations.

Jimmy himself is the funniest character. Beneath his Jack The Lad exterior is a lonely virgin (yes, virgin, lol!) who'd love to find a real lasting love someday, preferably with the gorgeous Katie for whom, it would appear, he's still holding a teeny-weeny torchy-worchy, lol.

There might just be time for love after they sort out the vampires that are marauding through the prison, determined to feast on the weak and turn the strong into vampires themselves. There just might, might might be time for love. That's if the rather butch and terrifying Ms. Renfield and her boss, the eccentric and vampyric Governor Payne, don't get to Jimmy and Katie first, and it's a big 'if...'

Buckets of blood are spilled in this gory romp that doesn't take itself too seriously. Jimmy, Katie, Victor and Shifty are all very likeable characters and we care about what happens to them. That's very important in a film, but some directors seem to forget about it and give us characters that we wouldn't like if it was International Love Day and you got a hamper of fancy crap for each one you stick an 'I wuv you' sticker on.

The film-makers obviously love their horror, including but not limited to the UNIVERSAl Big Three, Dracula, Frankenstein and presumably the dear old Wolfman as well. I invested in Jimmy and Katie and the lads emotionally and I reaped the rewards. Hopefully you guys will too. (PS, these are spiritual and emotional rewards I'm talking about, by the way, lads, not a cash prize...!)

FANGED UP is out now on DIGITAL HD and DVD courtesy of ALTITUDE FILMS.

ABOUT ALTITUDE FILMS:

Formed by OPTIMUM RELEASING founder Will Clarke in 2012, the ALTITUDE Film Entertainment team embodies the creative passion of British film through their work encompassing production, finance, international sales and UK distribution.

Working with both existing and emerging talent, their diverse recent releases include Academy Award Best Picture winner MOONLIGHT, BLACK PANTHER director Ryan Coogler's debut FRUITVALE STATION, and magical anime fantasy MARY AND THE WITCH'S FLOWER.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

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THE SOSKA SISTERS PRESENT: AMERICAN MARY. (2012) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-19T17:07:00.001+01:00

AMERICAN MARY. (2012) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JEN AND SYLVIA SOSKA. STARRING KATHERINE ISABELLE, JEN AND SYLVIA SOSKA AND THEIR FATHER MARIUS, TRISTAN RISK, ANTONIO CUPO, DAVID LOVGREN AND JOHN EMMET TRACY.

This is a steamy, slinky, sexy, sassy, slutty stylish piece of horror work from the Soska Sisters, a pair of Canadian film-maker twin sisters often known as the Twisted Twins. Although I haven't yet seen their film DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK, I certainly hope that the catchy title earned for the Sisters the plaudits they deserved.

AMERICAN MARY is the story of a young Stateside medical student and aspiring surgeon called Mary Mason, whom we first see in her flat suturing up a turkey from the supermarket as practice for college. She's beautiful, feisty and determined to succeed in her chosen field.

Like most students, Mary is stoney-broke and hasn't a clue how she's going to make the rent on her flat or pay the phone bill to get her phone switched back on by the stingy phone people. Like a lot of female students are doing these days to make ends meet, Mary considers working in the sex industry. Not as a prostitute, though. Things aren't that bad. Yet.

She dresses in her sexiest undies- she has a figure to die for- and wraps the whole package in her little black PVC coat and takes it to a nearby sleazy club, intending to try for work as a stripper/dancer. The club-owner is enchanted by Mary's appearance, but in the end Mary doesn't start work there as a stripper. Something else crops up instead. Something more lucrative and a million times bloodier...

Billy the club-owner offers Mary five grand- that's five thousand bucks- to use her surgical skills to patch up a bloke who's bleeding to death in the club for some reason. Obviously some illegal goings-on have been happening there, don't ask questions, lol. Mary does a good job and runs home afterwards with the dosh, frightened to death by what she's done. But this is only the beginning of Mary's surgical career...

Her illegal but successful surgery at the club attracts the attention of what's known as the body modification community, people who have elective cosmetic surgeries performed on themselves that sometimes regular doctors won't condone, sanction or perform.

For this reason, it's a partially underground community and a 'surgeon' like Mary, who'll perform any surgical procedure at all for money with no questions asked, is worth her weight in gold. Tristan Risk as Beatress Johnson, a stripper who's had her face altered to look like sexy cartoon figure Betty Boop, is Mary's 'in' to the community, which is positively clamouring for her hush-hush services.

I nearly died of fright when I did a bit of research into body modification. Did you know that you can have devil horns 'implanted' into your head so that it looks like you have real horns growing out of your head? When I discovered that you cut a piece of skin in your forehead, 'pop' the 'implants' in under the skin and then just stitch up the lot, I turned cold and tried very hard not to vomit.

Just because I personally wouldn't be able to stomach body modification surgery for myself doesn't mean that it's not okay for the people who want it or feel they need it for themselves. I'm a wuss who doesn't even have her ears pierced so I'm obviously not the kind of person who'd be up for what sometimes amounts to the mutilation of the human body.

For example, the woman who wants Mary to remove her nipples and sew up her vulva so that she looks like a human doll kind of gave me the willies a bit. The woman's boyfriend wasn't exactly thrilled about it either. Maybe he liked her nipples and her vulva the way they were, lol...!

Anyway, Mary needs some 'examples' of her 'work' to show the body modification people, all prospective customers after all, that she can do the kind of jobs they want. After Mary is brutally raped by her horrible and abusive college professor at a party, it looks to Mary like this asshole has just 'volunteered' his services as Mary's guinea-pig and 'model.' He's going to have a whole lot of 'work' done to him in the near future. Let's hope he's happy with his new 'look' because he's going to be stuck with it...

Body horror is not my favourite genre of horror- I love haunted house movies and possession films- but there's no doubt that it has the power to shock. And turn the stomach. Our bodies are ourselves, after all, and when you hurt, mutilate or otherwise 'modify' someone's body without their consent, it hits them where it really hurts. You're hitting out right at the heart of them, sometimes literally. Yes, I'm personally extremely squeamish about this type of thing but it certainly grabs your attention. Tongue-splitting in particular makes me come over all faint.

The DVD I have of AMERICAN MARY, sometimes known as BLOODY MARY (wrongly, I think!), has extra features on it which show the Soska Sisters being very popular with the audience at the launch of the film at the Film Four FRIGHTEST in the UK.

Well, they're sexy twins, wearing miniscule little barely-there black PVC outfits, who make films about extreme sex and horror. What's not to like? The mostly male horror fans lapped them up like they were the sugar on a bag of doughnuts.

The Sisters both came across as lovely and friendly as well and genuinely grateful for all the love and attention they were getting, which was nice to see. I'm going to see if I can find DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK from somewhere and watch that too.

AMERICAN MARY is a great place to start if you're new to the work of the Soska Sisters like I was. I may not watch it again myself though. Any film that makes my nipples and vulva literally quiver with terror when I watch it, well, it's probably sufficient just to see it the once.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

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THE BFI PRESENTS JEAN COCTEAU'S 'LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE.' (1946) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-18T16:27:00.000+01:00

LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE/BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. (1946) DIRECTED BY JEAN COCTEAU. SCREENPLAY BY JEAN COCTEAU. BASED ON 'BEAUTY AND THE BEAST' BY JEAN-MARIE LE PRINCE DE BEAUMONT. STARRING JEAN MARAIS AND JOSETTE DAY.

The Beast: 'You're stroking me as if I were an animal.'

Beauty: 'But you ARE an animal, my Beast.'

This French language drama is the most gorgeous of films. It's been likened to a magical, beautiful dream, a fabulous collection of unforgettable visual imagery in which Beauty's tears even turn to sparkly diamonds, like Lady Gaga's when she appears in an episode of THE SIMPSONS. Show-off, lol.

It's a re-telling of the old fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast, in which a beautiful but impoverished young woman, who is also pure of heart, becomes the reluctant object of affection of the titular Beast. You guys probably know the story already, but we'll recap it briefly for the benefit of those who don't.

It was one of my favourite of all the fairy tales. I always particularly loved the ones with beautiful princesses in them, like CINDERELLA or RAPUNZEL, in which young women fair of face but short in spondoolicks were rescued from their shitty lives by handsome rich princes who owned castles and riches and shit.

Wishful thinking, much? You could keep your Little Red Riding Hoods and your Little Red Hens and even your Enormous Turnips, I was that princess with the ridiculously long hair trapped in the tower by the evil old witch, waiting for my knight in shining armour to come along on his snowy-white charger and take me away from it all.

It's hardly very pro-feminist, is it? Women should be encouraged to be their own knight in shining armour, to rescue themselves from the shit situations they find themselves in. Still, maybe we all need a little escapism in our dreary lives and that's where fairy tales come in.

Okay, so Beauty's father in the film- and in the fairy tale also, this is more or less a straightforward adaptation of the fairy tale- is a merchant who's gone from rich to poor, then back to rich again briefly and finally back to poor again. That'll teach him to dream big, snigger. Anyway, let's not trouble our romantic minds with piffling matters of economics and trade and such-like.

It's when he's coming home from a failed business trip that a storm compels the Dad to spend the night at what he thinks is an empty mansion. He's served delicious food and drink by invisible servants (spooky!) and is made comfortable for the night in front of a roaring fire.

It's the following morning that he falls afoul of the formidable owner of this mysterious mansion. He unleashes the wrath of the Beast (who looks like a cross between The Cowardly Lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ, Oddbod in CARRY ON SCREAMING and Puss-In-Boots) when he picks one of the Beast's roses in the garden for Beauty at home.

The Beast threatens to kill the merchant for the theft of the rose. The only way the merchant can get out of being killed is to send one of his daughters to the Beast's mansion in his place to live as the Beast's Queen. Beauty is the only one of his three daughters to actually give a shit about her old man, so she's the one who comes to live chez Beast, albeit with some trepidation.

She needn't have worried. The big hairy Beast treats her with the utmost respect. He's head-over-heels in love with Beauty, who wasn't called Beauty for being ugly. The ravishing young blonde woman is lavished with jewels and all sorts of finery by the Beast, who proposes marriage to her every night as well and gets refused each time because Beauty is still holding out hope that, one day, her Prince will come. Little does she know, heh-heh-heh.

Personally, I think she should accept one of the Beast's many proposals. Sure, he's a giant hairy man-beast with animalistic urges and a bloodlust he can't control but he's a total gimp for Beauty. He's very probably a sexual masochist as well, the kind who'd ask her if he can kiss her tootsies or have her walk on his back with her stiletto-heeled shoes. Eeuw, lol.

Beauty can have anything in the world she wants from the Beast in the way of material possessions and, I imagine, if she had a list of enemies she wanted offed as well, the Beast would oblige her. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

All your mean old exes boiled in oil, haha, and all you had to do was say the word. Hang on. Let me just fantasise about that for one blissful minute. Ah yes, that's the stuff. All right, I'm okay again. Let's press on.

The notion of a beautiful but loving woman being held captive by a hideous monster who worships her, or professes to, is not a new one. The Phantom of the Opera imprisons Christine in his underground cavern many fathoms beneath the Paris Opera House.

I don't think Christine ever loves the Phantom. Not unnaturally, she is repulsed by his physical appearance but, being a compassionate woman at heart, she feels terrible pity for this lonely outsider. I'm afraid that that's the best you can hope for if you're the dreaded 'opera ghost.'

Yep, a wee bit of pity sex and she keeps her eyes tightly squeezed shut the whole way through the act. Charming. Still, pity sex is better than nothing, isn't it? Some of my exes would never have had any sex at all if it weren't for pity sex.

Likewise anyway, Lucy Harker gives herself to Nosferatu, who's not exactly a looker with his bald skull and sticky-out bat-ears, only to save the town from the evil doings of the Vampyre. She doesn't do it out of love or even a fondness for Nosferatu and surely he knows that, but as long as he's getting what he wants, he doesn't care. He just keeps on worshipping at the shrine of that long, swan-like white neck.

It's also not the first time in a fairy tale that a parent has to forfeit his daughter to a hideous creature with supernatural powers, just for committing some trifling offence. Rapunzel's Pops has to offer up his first-born child, which turns out to be Rapunzel, to a cruel old witch just because he nicks a few of her mouldy old lettuces for his preggers wife. Jeez. I wonder what she'd have demanded for a whole bleedin' cabbage.

Anyway, do you wonder what happens to Beauty and the Beast at the end of their story? Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) doesn't deviate from the traditional ending of the fairy tale so the 'happy ever after' finale won't exactly come as a huge surprise to y'all.

It's still well worth watching the film to see how he does it, though. Diana's Pavilion is the setting for the final scenes of the movie and I defy you not to be moved by the grand climax. Rather perversely, we women always cry at happy endings. I love a good bawl followed by a really good blow. Into a tissue, that is. Blowing my schnozz. I blow my nose into a Kleenex. Don't be so mucky-minded, you lot...!

Again, I'm not entirely sure that the moral of the story is a good message to be imparting to the women of today. Put up with your ugly bloke and he'll turn into a handsome Prince and set you up for life in his castle? Whatever happened to independent women? And Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves? Don't you make a liar out of The Eurythmics, Jean Cocteau. Just don't you do it.

The film is seventy-two years young this year and it still has the power to leave you feeling like you've just woken up from a beautiful dream when the credits roll. Stupid alarm clock. Ruin my sleep, would you? Just give me five more minutes, I beg you. Just five more minutes...

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is available to buy now from the British Film Institute.

BFI releases are available from all good home entertainment retailers or by mail order from the BFI Shop Tel: 020 7815 1350 or online at www.bfi.org.uk/shop

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

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JURASSIC WORLD 2: FALLEN KINGDOM. (2018) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-17T18:02:00.000+01:00

JURASSIC WORLD 2: FALLEN KINGDOM. (2018) BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY MICHAEL CRICHTON. DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES.

DIRECTED BY J.A. BAYONA. WRITTEN BY DEREK CONNOLLY AND COLIN TREVORROW.

STARRING CHRIS PRATT, BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD, JEFF GOLDBLUM, RAFE SPALL, GERALDINE CHAPLIN, JAMES CROMWELL, TOBY JONES AND BD WONG.

I've watched the JURASSIC PARK movies and loved them since 1993 when they first exploded onto the big screen in a massacre of torn flesh and amputated limbs. I'll never forget Laura Dern in the first film grabbing gratefully onto some bloke's arm when she's being pursued by the dinos, only to discover that the arm is literally all that's left of the guy, whoever he was.

And remember when she turns Sam Neill's head around when he's in the car, so that he can see the Brontosauruses roaming free in John Hammond's Park, just like they did a bazillion years ago? Then there was Sam Neill freaking out old Mr. Hammond's snotty little grandkids by pretending to be getting fried by the electric fence. Serves 'em right, heh-heh-heh.

In JURASSIC PARK 2, there's the little boy who tells his sleepy, disbelieving parents that 'there's a dinosaur in the garden' and, in JURASSIC PARK 3, I always remember that scene where the boy who's been missing is crossing the fog-wreathed bridge and hears a rattly kind of noise. 'Mom?' he says hesitantly, just before the biggest, freakiest pterydactyl comes out of the mist. It may not be his Mom, but it's one big mutha just the same...

JURASSIC WORLD, which came out in 2015, was perfectly worthy of joining the canon of superb movies. It was a welcome return to the big screen of the franchise that reminded us all of exactly why we all love dinosaurs so much as kids and are fascinated by them even as adults.

Do you remember the story of the first JURASSIC WORLD movie? In a nutshell, the career-driven Claire Dearing, Auntie to two young lads she barely knows because she's so busy breaking through the glass ceiling, invites her nephews to her place of work, billionaire Simon Masrani's Dinosaur Park, much developed since old Mr. Hammond's time.

Is it a bad time to be finally inviting the nephews to her workplace? You could say that, as the park's newest attraction, the gigantic mutant Indominus Rex, has just escaped and is chowing down on the staff of JURASSIC WORLD as if they're snacks at a free buffet.

Naughty Indominus Rex, lol, forgetting your manners like that. Use a napkin to wipe your mouth when you eat the staff at JURASSIC WORLD. It's not nice to be dribbling bits of Park Ranger down your chin in front of company...!

Sadly, the mopey, cellphone-checking nephews remain uneaten, thanks to the manly efforts of Chris Pratt's 'velociraptor-whisperer,' a hunk-and-a-half called Owen Grady whom Aunt Claire dated once but they broke up because he was an unambitious slob. By the end of JURASSIC WORLD, though, they're back in each others' arms, for good this time.

Or is it? For good, I mean. Well, the start of JURASSIC WORLD 2: FALLEN KINGDOM sees them broken up once more. Guess why? Go on, you'll never guess. It's because Owen is an unambitious slob, tsk tsk, content to live in his trailer and going from trailer-to-pub and back again, shooting some pool and drinking some beer along the way.

Okay, so they may no longer be a couple in the romantic sense but they do need to team up once more in this film for the sake of the dinos they both love. They're hired to oversee the removal of the dinosaurs from the ill-fated Isla Nublar- the dormant volcano on the island is dormant no more- to a place of sanctuary owned by a billionaire called Sir Benjamin Lockwood.

This utterly dreary and boring Lockwood fella is completely new to us, but the film-makers expect us to believe that he's been old John Hammond's partner in the dino business from the get-go. Hmmmmm.

I frankly was left kind of cold by the ineffectual Lockwood and his annoying 'grand-daughter'

Maisie, who is not what she appears to be. Big deal, huh? I could have done without the pair of them but I suppose the sanctuary had to be owned by someone.

Mr. Lockwood's unscrupulous underling Eli Mills, however, is secretly selling the dinos to foreign businessmen who want to 'weaponize' them and use them as, well, weapons, against their enemies. Like a breed of super-soldier, with very sharp teeth and tails that can kill with one deadly swipe. Mills made no more of an impression on me than his employer Sir Benjy, I'm afraid.

Aunt Claire, who's not required to do 'Auntie' duty this time around because her bored nephews are thankfully nowhere to be seen, appeals to Owen to help her rescue the dinos, including Blue, his favourite of the 'raptors he trained from a baby in the first film and still loves.

Aunt Claire is now a proper dino activist, by the way, and is no longer clawing her way up the corporate ladder. She's even founded a Dinosaur Protection Group. Her new status as an advocate for Dino Rights is indicated by her long loose ponytail and softer look overall than the rigorously disciplined one she previously sported in JURASSIC WORLD.

The dinosaurs are top-notch once more and the dino action as flawless as always. It's the humans who kind of let the side down this time around. There's not as much chemistry between Aunt Claire and Owen this time as there was before, and Chris Pratt somehow isn't as cool as he is in the first film. He's a bit more of a bumbling oaf this time around, unlike in the first film when he was coolness personified. A little softer and mushier round the edges this time, somehow. Still gorgeous, though.

There's not much humour in this second film either and there's a real shortage of funny one-liners like we've had in the other films. Remember Jeff THE FLY Goldblum commenting in the first film while gazing spellbound at a mountain of dino excrement: 'That's one big heap of shit...?' I still remember how the whole cinema laughed at that line. It was the bemusement in his delivery that did it.

There's nothing like that in JURASSIC WORLD 2: FALLEN KINGDOM. It's a much darker film, with some distressing scenes involving the dinosaurs that will depress the hell out of you if you're in any way sensitive to the plight of animals, even ones that have been extinct for a trillion years.

A silver-haired Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm, the sexy scientist from the previous films, bookends the film with his dire pronouncements of doom upon the human race if something isn't done about the dinosaur population. He was never too keen on being eaten by a dinosaur, if you'll remember, any more than Sam Neill was.

Now, the dinosaurs are off Isla Nublar (I still get a nostalgia thrill whenever I see these words come up on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen) and roaming free on the mainland. Containing them will be a major problem.

Jeff Goldblum's character, Ian Malcolm, foresees chaos and carnage, fierce and bloody carnage. I just want to know if they can mate and reproduce, the dinos, that is. That'd be wild, wouldn't it? If they do, Ian Malcolm will be the first in the queue to say I told you so.

I'll tell you what should happen in the next film. Aunt Claire and Owen should stay together this time and have a child of two or three by the time we meet them again. If they're to stay true to the plot of this 2018 film, they should have adopted Maisie, grand-daughter to the billionaire Benjamin Lockwood, by then, but I rather hope they don't.

Send Maisie and her dull grandfather Benjamin Lockwood back to the murky underworld from which they've come, please. If every film in the franchise is required by law to have a billionaire in it, bring back Simon Masrani from the dead. Now there was a billionaire who knew how to enjoy his dough.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

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THE MEG. (2018) IN CINEMAS NOW. REVIEW BY- AND A POSITIVE VERDICT FROM- SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-15T12:55:00.000+01:00

THE MEG. (2018) DIRECTED BY JOHN TURTELTAUB.

BASED ON THE BOOK 'MEG: A NOVEL OF DEEP TERROR' BY STEVE ALTEN.

STARRING JASON STATHAM, LI BINGBING, WINSTON CHAO, RAINN WILSON, CLIFF CURTIS, RUBY ROSE, JESSICA MCNAMEE, PAGE KENNEDY, ROBERT TAYLOR, MASI OKA, OLAFUR DARRI OLAFSSON, SHUYA SOPHIA CAI AND ONE HELL OF A BIG-ASS SHARK.

'There's something down here.'

(No shit, Sherlock! Have you checked out the name of the movie yet???)

'Man versus meg isn't a fight. It's a slaughter.'

Ooooooh-er. Jason Statham is a big ride. I never realised it before but seeing him on the big screen as the lead role here was a bit of an eye-opener, lol. With his shaved head, stubbly visage and magnificent physique, he stole the show for me, edging over the finish line even ahead of the shark, the titular 'Meg' or 'Megalodon.'

Jason plays a chap called Jonas Taylor, another 'J' name, obviously, who quit the undersea rescue business five years ago when a submarine he was on got hit by something huge, an unidentified mass (I wonder what it could have been, snigger), and he- Jonas- saved nearly his entire crew. Sadly though, a couple-a guys bought it down there in the deep blue sea, through no fault of Jonas's.

Jonas couldn't stand the guilt, though, the guilt of having failed to save that last couple of crew members, and he subsequently retired to nearby Thailand to drink beer and cultivate his stubble. It seems like no-one notices when you don't wear the tutu, but everyone does when it's wrapped snugly and incriminatingly around your person.

That's a Milhouse joke from THE SIMPSONS there, to help us to better understand poor Jonas's desperate position. The guys he saved are as nothing, apparently, next to the guys he didn't save.

As if poor Jonas wasn't flagellating himself enough over this, and believe me he is, there are still some crew members- Dr. Heller, for one- who hold his 'failures' against him. So unfair, sigh. I totally feel for him. I'd like to totally feel him an' all, lol.

Anyway, Jonas is the first guy they call on when a similar incident happens to a bunch of people who've been sent down in a piddly flimsy submersible in to the Mariannas Trench. This is apparently the deepest part of the world's ocean and it's still not been entirely explored. How spooky is that?

Seriously, isn't that an utterly terrifying thought? It's been said that we Earthlings know more about Outer Space than we do about our oceans. I'd almost believe it. There could be literally anything down there and, in this film, there is...

The undersea craft has been sent down into the world's deepest oceanic trench by the undersea research station two hundred miles off the coast of China known as 'Mana One.' It's owned by a mildly obnoxious billionaire called Jack Morris who looks like a guy I know. Has the same asshole personality and beard as well, lol. Jerk.

As luck- or the script!- would have it, Jonas's beautiful ex-wife Lori is on board this ill-fated seacraft that's been bumped and banged by something enormous that they haven't yet been able to identify. So naturally, he can't refuse to come to the rescue of the stranded craft.

Well, he could refuse if he really wanted to (most guys would jump at the chance to have the ex-missus nom-nom-nommed by a prehistoric monster), but Jonas still likes Lori- likes, not loves!- and he wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her. Most guys, as I said, probably would leave their ex-wives to be eaten by the Meg, but not Jonas. You see, he's got a little thing called principles...

The staff at Mana One are like a happy little family. There's Dr. Minway Zhang, the gentle Chinese professor who runs the show, and his daughter Su-yin, Jonas's new love interest. If Jonas chooses to be with Su-yin, he will have to be Step-Daddy to Su-yin's precocious eight-year-old daughter Mei-ying ('Eight-year-olds hear everything!), who could run this flippin' research station single-handedly if she had to. Probably because of all the hours she's allowed to roam through its lonely corridors unsupervised with nothing to do, tsk tsk.

The rest of the crew are mostly pretty cool. Toshi is the super-clever Japanese guy we all feel a fondness for because he touchingly dashes off a scribbled letter to his wife when he thinks he's going to die. DJ is the one black guy and the comic relief who keeps reminding us that being eaten by a giant prehistoric shark is nowhere in his job description. Mac is really cute and looks like an Asian Jimmy Nail. I swear to God, check him out. Separated at birth, much?

Jaxx is the cool tattooed girl (she looks like a short-haired Angelina Jolie, a major compliment) who designed the sea-craft that's now trapped under the sea and irritatingly being poked by a gigantic living mass of something as yet unidentified, but Jonas is pretty sure he knows what it is.

What else could it be but the monster that deliberately bumped into his own craft five years ago? Dr. Heller doesn't believe there was a monster, and Jonas is not exactly thrilled skinny to see his old enemy once more here on Mana One. Dr. Heller, I mean. Dr. Heller is his old enemy.

The Wall is a huge beardy bespectacled computer geek guy who is the living image of the huge beardy bespectacled computer geek guy who helped the deceased Bill Paxton to explore the remains of the sunken ship the TITANIC in James Cameron's TITANIC back in 1997. If he's the same guy, he hasn't aged a day. If he's not, well, he's the spitting image of him.

And what about Meg? She's the one we've all really come to see. Well, she's big all right, bigger than the shark in JAWS but nowhere near as well-defined. That's a real fake shark, if you get me, whereas the Meg, short for Megalodon, the biggest shark- the biggest anything- to ever live on Earth, is naturally computer-generated and a little blurry around the edges.

For most of the movie, we only see little bits of it at a time, which is kind of unsatisfying. Especially to someone like myself who believes that there's no such thing as too big when it comes to sharks and penises. Or should that be penii? I never know for sure. Save us, Online Grammar Doctor...!

It's not the best shark I've ever seen but it's not the worst either. The worst was the one in SHARK EXORCIST, which I reviewed here recently for the Fourth of July. The best sharks, of course, are Bruce the Shark from JAWS and also the shark in JAWS 2. Was he called Bruce as well? Answers on a postcard, please!

I would have liked to have seen the Meg appear a bit earlier in the film- we have to wait about fifty minutes for a proper sighting- and for a bit longer at a time but overall, it wasn't too bad. I enjoyed the film and I'll definitely go to any sequels.

So, does Jonas get to redeem himself by saving a shitload of people in the world's deepest oceanic trench? Does he find love again with the smart-as-paint but deadly dull Su-yin? (Her acting is as wooden as a book-case made in shop class as a Father's Day gift.)

Will he get saddled with Su-yin's genius daughter Mei-ying into the bargain? Almost certainly, yes, if he decides to go for Su-yin. Unless they can ship the know-it-all kid off to some kind of boarding-school for the criminally intelligent, heh-heh-heh.

There were a few rather lame one-liners in the film that the audience, lazy lot that they were, failed utterly to react to. I liked the bit with the kids in the banana-boats. It seemed to me to be a loving tribute to JAWS 4, my favourite JAWS after the original JAWS and JAWS 2. People who don't know any better are always saying that JAWS 4 isn't worthy of being included in the JAWS canon but I love it. It's JAWS 3 that stinks to high heaven...!

There are a couple of funny lines about the film's plot on Wikipedia that I thought you might like to hear about. Firstly, it says that Jack Morris the billionaire drops the bombs on the Meg 'to avoid any lawsuits the shark might bring against him...!' Can you imagine it? 'The Meg versus Jack Morris and the state of wherever will now come to order...!'

Secondly, it also says somewhere in its synopsis of the plot that Jonas Taylor 'severely damages his submersible.' Is that what they're calling it now? I'll pop round there straightaway and put it in a wee splint. That and some special rub-in ointment, say, ten times a day ought to do the trick...!

And as for the Meg herself, the toothsome star of the show, will she survive to see a sequel? Well, I hope so. As long as Jason Statham, bald, stubbly, well-built and oh-so-virile-looking, can return as the guy who saves everyone and gets the girl.

And even if the Meg gets blown to pieces ('Smile, you son of a bitch!'), well, the Mariannas Trench is good and deep. Powerfully deep. If they dig a little deeper, these film-makers, you never know what they might find.

PS, my son has just informed me that Jason Statham is the star of a film called THE TRANSPORTER, obviously the story of the trials and tribulations of a bus conductor. I'm off now to see if I can find it anywhere. It sounds utterly riveting.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

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http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

FABULOUS FILMS PRESENTS: THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS. (1988) REVIEW BY SANDRA 'YOU WOULDN'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M ANGRY' HARRIS.

2018-08-13T17:14:00.000+01:00

THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS. (1988) DIRECTED BY BILL BIXBY. STARRING BILL BIXBY, LOU FERRIGNO, JACK COLVIN AND ERIC ALLAN KRAMER AS THE MIGHTY THOR.

OMG, do you guys remember THE INCREDIBLE HULK, the television series from the 'Eighties? Sure ya do! Bill Bixby plays mild-mannered scientist David Banner who transforms into this gigantic and ferocious green creature every time he loses his temper, and it's all because a lousy scientific experiment he's doing goes tits-up in a bad way, lol.

I knew there was no point to my doing stupid Science in secondary school. I knew stupid Science would only lead to trouble for someone someday unless it was abolished, haha. And it leads to more than his fair share of trouble for poor old David Banner.

He might be minding his own business in a bar, drinking a beer while wearing a lovely mild-mannered sweater and tight beige or cream 'Eighties slacks, and some asshole would spill a drink over him and then start chatting up some broad who doesn't want to be chatted up.

Then the fun would start. A seriously pissed-off David Banner would start to change into the Hulk, magnificently played by the uber-muscly Lou Ferrigno. His eyes would change colour and start madly staring and then there'd be this mad intense music and suddenly David Banner's nice shirt or sweater and jeans would start bursting off of his now green skin. 'Cause the Hulk is green, see.

Then it'd be all 'Rarr! Rarr! Rarr!' as the Incredible Hulk, bare-chested and wearing the remnants of David Banner's tattered pants, would pick up the offending asshole and throw him across the bar and out into the car park where he'd shit himself copiously in fright, excuse my French, before scrambling away to some kind of safety.

The tattered pants are actually sentient, believe it or not, imbued with the power to always know where exactly to stop ripping. As in, the Hulk is never left with his crucial bits immodestly uncovered. The pants tear only so far and then they stop. What do you take them for, mere pants or something? These pants know when enough is enough, by Jove.

Anyone, the broad-slash-damsel-in-distress would stand there in the bar, wide-eyed in fear but also admiration for the giant green man with the fantastic big diddies on him that bounce up and down once the Hulk starts running, which he always does when he hears the inevitable police sirens. Away he runs, the Incredible Hulk, away from the scene of justice-having-been-done, so that the cops don't rumble his 'incredible' secret. See what I did there...?

Then you'd see a half-nekkid David Banner, back to himself once more, sneaking a checked shirt in his exact size off some lady's washing-line but, get this! He's an honest bloke, see, and he always pins a couple-a five-dollar bills on the clothes-line as payment so that Mary-Beth or whoever it is can buy a replacement shirt for Harvey or Harv Junior, who's getting to be near as big and ungrateful as his alcoholic Pa, the little cuss.

David Banner would always keep on the move, always travelling to a different town or different city in each episode in search of a cure for his terrible affliction. People think he's dead so he has to assume a new identity in every episode, while keeping the name David and a surname that starts with a 'B.'

So, he might be David Bannion, see, or David Barrington or David Bellamy. Anything so long as it's a B. It's a wonder that they didn't run out of surnames beginning with B on the show. I do like the sound of that David Bellamy chap, he sounds lovely and cultured. I could go to an art exhibition at a fancy gallery with a guy like that. He might even call me after we had all the sex.

David has a wee romance in every episode with a new lady friend but, of course, to avoid putting this dame in danger or allowing her to discover his terrible secret, he has to high-tail it out of town at the end of every episode. 'Bye-'bye, pretty lady. If I've gotten you pregnant, it's your own problem, lol.

Shouldering his dreadful inner suffering along with his battered backpack, David Banner walks away sadly forever to the famous sad-walking-away-forever-music-from-THE INCREDIBLE HULK that's so special and iconic that it's been parodied numerous times by other shows, for example the utterly brilliant FAMILY GUY.

Of course, Michael Landon (Pa Ingalls from LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE) used to walk sadly away too in his bulky leather jacket at the end of each episode of his show HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, but for sadly-walking-away-forever, I'm telling you, no-one does it like David Banner.

He's got that market cornered so y'all might as well not even try it. If you want to do something different, you could try walking towards something in an upbeat manner at the beginning of a TV show. I don't know if that's ever been tried on a TV series.

Anyway, there's always this nosy detective in the show as well called Jack McGee who's always trying to uncover the truth about the Incredible Hulk. He thinks that this information will be the news story of the century and that he'll win a Pulitzer Prize for it and 'then he'll be successful in his mother's eyes,' a little joke from THE SIMPSONS there.

Of course, Snoopy Drawers always arrives at the scene of any Hulk-related carnage just in time to see the soles of the Hulk's feet as he runs away down the street, no doubt to find a quiet alley to change back into David Banner and pinch some strides off of the nearest clothes-line. That big news story will then just have to wait till the next episode.

The fantastic- or should I say fabulous- news is that FABULOUS FILMS are releasing a box-set of the three INCREDIBLE HULK feature-length made-for-TV films, made in 1988, 1989 and 1990 respectively.

The films are entitled THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS, THE TRIAL OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK (featuring a cameo from the MARVEL-lous Stan Lee!) and THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK. They'd better be kidding us with that last one there...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS sees David Banner's alter-ego teaming up with none other than the mighty Thor, hammer and all, from Norse mythology, to fight a bunch of really mean bad guys.

The baddies have kidnapped David's girlfriend-du-jour (she owns a big fancy beach house, he should keep this one for a bit!) and a giant Gamma Transponder (wasn't Chandler from FRIENDS in the transponding business?) that might have been the key to curing David of his affliction.

Did you notice that if you change the a in Gamma to an e, you have Gemma, the Gemma Transponder? If someone made a nice nifty range of mini-transponders, all called by girls' names, wouldn't they make the dinkiest little stocking-fillers for Christmas? Say, the Mona Transponder or the Betty Transponder or the Vonda-Sue Transponder. Don't they sound simply scrummy? Get the mini-transponder with your name on it and be the envy of all your snotty little chums this Christmas.

Anyway, together, the Incredible Hulk and the attractive blonde giant that is Thor are an unstoppable team. They kick major ass and the newspapers are having a field day as not one but two giants are being spotted around town now, tearing up the place, kicking baddies' asses and generally 'rarring' to beat the band while flexing colossal muscles for the camera.

All the stuff we love from the TV series are present and correct here in this film. 'Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.' Some asshole yanking David's chain. Funny stare-y eyes and mad intense 'changing into the Hulk' music then it's 'Rarr! Rarr!' and the Incredible Hulk tearing up the place and putting manners on the riff-raff while his pants remain impeccably in place, just like good pants should.

Then there's the change back into mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, sorry, I mean mild-mannered scientist David Banner, the clothesline substitution of two five-dollar bills for a pre-loved checked shirt (Mary-Beth just can't seem to shift the smell of Harv's sweat from his clothes, Harv Senior's gotta lotta quite serious dietary issues he refuses to discuss or even acknowledge, Mary-Beth's really quite worried) and then, the pièce de resistance, the sad-walking-away-forever-music we're all waiting to hear. There won't be a dry eye in the house by the time the credits finish rolling, especially if you're watching this for the first time since the 'Eighties.

A couple of excellent special features come with THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS. One is a wonderful or, should I say, MARVEL-lous interview with comic-book-and-superhero-royalty Stan Lee, who was looking amazingly well when the footage was shot.

The other interview is with Lou Ferrigno, who plays the Hulk to Bill Bixby's David Banner. This one is so poignant it had me and my kids in floods of tears. Lou Ferrigno is a lovely, deeply genuine man who suffered a lot in his youth because of his partial hearing loss.

The story of how he overcame his own disability to become Mr. Universe and a champion weight-lifter, body-builder, actor and personal trainer is so inspiring. Be your own best friend, he urges the viewers, and there's not much you can't achieve.

I was bawling my eyes out by the end of this interview. The two interviews are just wonderful- no, sorry, I blew it again, MARVEL-lous, lol. Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno are two of the nicest guys you could ever meet. They really do deserve their good fortune.

Bill Bixby: 1934-1993.

Lou Ferrigno: 1951- Present Day.

Stan Lee: 1922- Present Day.

FABULOUS FILMS: For the first time ever, all 3 Incredible Hulk TV movies in one collector’s edition box set. See Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby back in action in The Incredible Hulk Returns, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk and The Death of the Incredible Hulk. Filmed in 1988,1989 and 1990, the films were directed by David Banner himself a.k.a Bill Bixby.

All three films are also being released individually.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

FABULOUS FILMS PRESENTS: THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS and BACHELOR PARTY: A DOUBLE BILL OF WACKY ROM-COMS REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-12T16:02:00.000+01:00

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS. (1996) DIRECTED BY MICHAEL LEHMANN. STARRING JANEANE GAROFALO, UMA THURMAN, JAMIE FOXX AND BEN CHAPLIN.

BACHELOR PARTY. (1984) DIRECTED BY NEAL ISRAEL. STARRING TOM HANKS, TAWNY KITAEN, ADRIAN ZMED, WENDIE JO SPERBER AND WILLIAM TEPPER.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS is a film I'd be deeply ashamed for if it came out today. Even its main star Janeane Garofalo says it's anti-feminist. The film started life as a low-budget independent film but when the by-then big star Uma Thurman hopped on board, it became a big studio project with knobs on. And she ruins the film really, giving a genuinely uncomfortable-looking performance as a ditzy blonde who's so stupid, you can't even laugh at her. I was shocked by how awful her character is.

Let's have a look at the plot anyway. Janeane Garofalo plays Abby Barnes, a veterinarian radio DJ who hosts a phone-in show called THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS, where pet owners can call in with questions about their pets.

Abby is short and dark-haired, with a really beautiful face and sexy mouth. But Abby thinks she's ugly and she lacks confidence when it comes to love. But she's funny and smart and witty and she plays the violin marvellously and she adores her cat, who reciprocates. She's worried that she's going to grow old alone, however, and be ridiculed as some sort of spinsterish old maid crazy old cat lady type.

When Abby is asked out by Brian, an English photographer in America and caller to the show who's just acquired a huge dog called Hank, she tells a little white lie. She tells him she's 'five-foot-ten, blonde and thin,' while looking at a poster of her neighbour and friend Noelle (Uma Thurman) who models.

In what retrospectively occurs to Abby as a really bad move, she asks the straggly, stringy-haired blonde beanpole Noelle to attend the date in her place, pretending to be Abby. Brian, who's already fallen for the real Abby's voice on the radio show, falls head-over-heels in love with Noelle's looks.

Brian must be a moron himself, because he never questions that the moronic, practically illiterate Noelle can never converse wittily and intelligently with him in person the way she appears to be able to on the phone. But of course it's the real Abby he's been chatting to- and more!- on the phone and he just loves those conversations because they're- ahem!- so stimulating.

So, the girls ask themselves, who is Brian really in love with here? Is it Noelle's looks, Abby's charm, book-smarts and personality, or is it an amalgam of both? Either way, even a himbo like the wishy-washy Brian (a poor man's Hugh Grant) is going to be mighty pissed off when he discovers that these two broads have been playing him for a mug, however well-intentioned it all started out.

I would sincerely hope that the women of today would realise that Uma Thurman's character Noelle is not a good role-model. For one thing, she allows her horrible boyfriend Roy to physically and verbally abuse her, calling her a dumb bitch all the time and ridiculing and sabotaging her efforts to better herself, like when she tries and fails to become a newsreader.

She doesn't seem to have ever held a book before- she handles the one Brian gives her like it's an unexploded bomb- and she admits openly that she 'doesn't ever eat' so that she can 'look good on the outside.' Well, I think she looks like a walking, talking skeleton in a dress but hey, that's just my opinion.

It's also so aggravating that the gorgeous Abby, who has so much going for her, both

physically and personality-wise, thinks she's not as good as Noelle just because she's not a six-foot beanpole topped with a mop of stringy blonde hair. I wonder what the female author of the screenplay, Audrey Wells, herself a short dark American radio DJ, thinks about what Hollywood did to her script...?

'Hi, come on in, drugs to the right, hookers to the left!'

'Hey, listen up everyone! Have I had sex with anyone in this room?'

BACHELOR PARTY is sexist and offensive too, but at least it does exactly what it says on the tin and doesn't pretend to be something it's not. It's even really funny at times. Tom Hanks plays Rick Gassko, a school bus driver along the lines of Otto the school bus driver from THE SIMPSONS.

Rick is easy-going to the point of not really caring about anything seriously. He lives in a tip, has no plans to improve his situation and his rich future father-in-law loathes his guts, deeming him to be in no way good enough for his precious daughter Debbie.

The Dad is practically apoplectic when Rick and Debbie decide to get married and so is Cole, Debbie's rich, snobby and utterly unpleasant ex-boyfriend, whom the Dad incidentally thinks is the ideal choice for the beautiful toothsome Debbie. She has a fabulous tawny mane of hair to match her cute real-life name and any guy worth his salt would be thrilled to have her as his missus.

Of course, you can't have a wedding without a bridal shower for her and a bachelor party for him. Rick's party animal mates plan to throw him the biggest, wildest, bitching-est bachelor party that's ever been seen.

Debbie doesn't mind Rick's having a bachelor party- at least, she can't actively ban him from having one- but she's adamant that there must be no strippers or hookers and Rick absolutely must not have any sexual contact whatsoever with them if they are present.

Which is unfortunate for Debbie, because Rick's mates are planning on having strippers, hookers, drugs, a suicidal former school-friend, a real-life donkey, an Indian pimp, transexual prostitutes, assorted hangers-on and random passers-by at this legendary bachelor party of Rick's.

Rick really does love Debbie and he genuinely wants to be faithful to her, but he feels an understandable amount of loyalty towards his friends as well. They've been mates for years- they wear each others' underwear every Sunday night, for chrissakes- and so, if they want to throw him this bad-ass bachelor party, well then, he has a responsibility to enjoy it and get the most out of it.

Can he be the guest of honour at this truly out-of-control stag do and still be true to the gorgeous Debbie? It remains to be seen. Watch out for Debbie's genteel society Mom getting to grips with Nick the Dick (aka MEAT) in the male strip club and for the nasty Cole, the bachelor party saboteur, hanging out of a tenth-story hotel window in the altogether, much to the discomfort of the young couple apparently about to have sex for the first time. Though they couldn't possibly know it, their timing couldn't be worse, God bless 'em.

Tom Hanks is really cute as Rick and he gets some really good, snappy one-liners as well. Mind you, he always was a good actor. I loved him in PHILADELPHIA and also in cheesy rom-com SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, one of my guilty pleasure films.

BACHELOR PARTY would actually make a great film to whack in the old DVD machine during a modern-day stag do. And at least today's hubbies-to-be wouldn't have to view it on a projector/screen combo from the Stone Age...! Tom Hanks himself called the film 'a sloppy rock-and-roll comedy with tits in it.' The tits in it are many and varied. I believe that's all you really need for a good bachelor party. Job done, so.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS and BACHELOR PARTY are each available to buy now (separately!) in a lovely Dual Format Edition from FABULOUS FILMS LTD./FREMANTLE ENTERPRISES.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

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http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

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sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

STUDIOCANAL'S VINTAGE WORLD CINEMA PRESENTS JACQUES RIVETTE'S BANNED FILM: THE NUN. (1966) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

2018-08-11T16:00:00.000+01:00

THE NUN. (1966) DIRECTED BY JACQUES RIVETTE. BASED ON THE NOVEL 'LA RELIGIEUSE' BY DENIS DIDEROT. STARRING ANNA KARINA, MICHELINE PRESLE, FRANCINE BERGE, LISELOTTE PULVER AND CHRISTIANE LENIER.

FOR THE FIRST TIME ON

DVD, BLU-RAY AND EST 17 SEPTEMBER

COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL:

VINTAGE WORLD CINEMA EDITION!

This French language film by French New Wave director Jacques Rivette has a lot of back-story. It's based on the novel by prolific French philosopher, art critic and writer Denis Diderot, who was a prominent figure in the Enlightenment. (Note to self: google 'the Enlightenment...!')

Rivette first directed the story as a three-hour-long play, with Anna Karina, the wife of his contemporary and friend Jean-Luc Godard, as his leading lady. It ran for a month in 1963, was a financial flop but received good reviews, if you can understand how that works, the good reviews being especially for the beautiful leading lady.

In 1966, Rivette finally got to make his movie, which got itself banned for a time because of its unflattering depiction of religious life. Not to mention his portrayal of nuns themselves, from the lowliest novice to the Mother Superior, as superstitious, judgemental sex-mad harpies who aren't fit to flagellate themselves raw in the name of The Man Upstairs, as my dear old granny used to call him. She'd only ever talk in terrified whispers of The Man Below, lol.

Recently in UK cinemas for the first time since its original release in 1966, the film is two-and-a-quarter hours long- not much shorter than the play, so!- and it still watches somewhat like a play, albeit a gorgeous, sumptuous-looking one.

You can almost imagine the locations as being beautifully-decorated sets and the actors as reciting their lines on a stage. It's a bit stilted, yes, and, doesn't seem terribly realistic or believable at times (just like a play, lol!), but I still enjoyed it well enough, despite my initial disappointment on discovering exactly why it was banned.

Yes readers, when I realised I was watching a once-banned French film called THE NUN, I was expecting sexy lesbian nuns cavorting naked with each other and the visiting priests as if there were no tomorrow. Sex and whipping and sado-masochism and blasphemy and self-pleasuring with crucifixes to beat the band, in other words. Alas, except for some mild implied lesbianism, it's not that kind of film.

Neither is it in any way affiliated, I believe, with the James Wan film of the same name which is due for its cinematic release on September 7th of this year. It'll be a spin-off of THE CONJURING 2 and will be the fifth instalment overall of THE CONJURING franchise. I don't even care if it's good, bad or indifferent, I just really need to see another new one of these films!

Anyway, the 1966 film is the story of a beautiful young woman called Suzanne Simonin living in France in about the mid-1700s, who essentially has four mothers and no daddy. FOUR MOTHERS AND NO DADDY; couldn't you just imagine there being a shit romantic comedy in there somewhere starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston?

Let me explain. When we first meet Suzanne, she is being forced to enter the local convent to become a nun against her will. She causes such a public scene that her outraged, coldly furious parents are obliged to take her home, where she is locked up for several months until she agrees to join the convent as arranged, and for real this time. No messing about.

I don't blame Suzanne at all for not wanting to join the convent. She's adamant that she has no vocation whatsoever, and even the religious folks themselves agree that it's a mistake to enter this life unless you have one of these.

Suzanne presumably wants to laugh and love and live her life as a wife and mother like other girls her age get to do. She doesn't want to be walled up alive in the convent, devoting the next maybe seventy years of her life- nuns live really long, probably because they don't have any kids to give 'em prematurely grey hairs!- to a God she believes in but doesn't want to spend every minute of every day thinking about.

That seems totally fair to me. I mean, being forced into marriage is bad enough but at least most women do want to marry at some point and have children. Being forced into a convent, where you live for all time without sex or the love of a man or the joy- and hard work!- of having kiddies would be almost like a death sentence for some women. That's what it's like for Suzanne Simonin.

So why is it so all-fired imperative that Suzanne take the hated vows? Well, her parents have already married off two daughters with dowries and now they can't afford to give Suzanne the same treatment. Well, that's pretty shit but there's even more to it than that.

Suzanne's mother has a really nasty, unfair reason for wanting Suzanne locked away behind the convent walls but I won't let that slip, I think. It can be a surprise for you guys but just let me say that I think that Suzanne's mother is a cold, selfish unfeeling bitch who has no right to take it out on Suzanne for something Suzanne's not even bloody well responsible for.

A small dowry is cobbled together to give to the convent (oh, they have enough dosh for THAT then, do they, the tight feckers!) and, Bob's your Uncle, Suzanne is a nun for life. She will never stop railing against the unfairness of her incarceration and this will cause her many problems in the convent. If you're not there willingly, how could you possibly be expected to settle into the life?

Over the course of her enforced religious life, she will have three Mother Superiors, three of the mothers referred to in my little earlier description of the film. One will be kind and loving but unfortunately short-lived. One will be cold, cruel and punitive just like Suzanne's birth-mother and one will be oddly frivolous, mercurial in temperament and relentlessly horny for Suzanne's nubile young form. Don't get excited, lol, the most bare female flesh you get to see in the film is one glimpse of shoulder and that's that.

Suzanne will also encounter a horny-under-his-stern-exterior Father Confessor and a brothel madam, neither of whom would probably bother with Suzanne if she weren't drop-dead gorgeous and wearing a full face of make-up in every scene, lol.

I find it interesting that all the men to whom Suzanne appeals for help to get her out from under her hateful enforced vows give her a more than fair hearing and the benefit of the doubt on every occasion, despite the film's being set in an era when women were pretty much less than dirt beneath men's feet.

Those were the awful days, after all, when men in different countries were burning witches and torturing those females believed to be possessed by the devil. (Suzanne is believed by her nasty Mother Superior to be in need of a good exorcist at one point.)

I can only put Suzanne's extraordinary success in winning over the minds and hearts of the men in power in the film down to her fabulous beauty. These guys mightn't have been so quick to save a hideous old crone from the pointy instruments of the Inquisitor or Exorcist, that's all I'm saying. There aren't any Inquisitors in the film, by the way, so don't get your hopes up. I'm just saying that it was the era for that type of thing.

This is a bad era for women, though. A young girl at the mercy of and in the care of her parents, older brother, Uncle and Aunt or even husband could be deemed mad at any time and put away in an asylum for life or, as in Suzanne's case, the local convent, where her guardians would never have to be bothered by her again. It's a chilling, saddening thought. Ah well. Not to be a Debbie Downer or anything but such was ever woman's lot.

The film is lovely to look at, a good picture of the religious life in France at the time, if a bit slow-moving and frustrating at times. I was constantly wondering when we were gonna get to the good stuff, the banned bits, lol. If I'd known not to expect anything spectacular in that direction, I might have enjoyed the film a bit more.

As it is, I've done you guys a big favour by telling ye not to expect any naked raging orgies or whatnot. Now ye can relax into the film like I wasn't really able to. Don't say I never do anything for ye...!

FOR THE FIRST TIME ON

DVD, BLU-RAY AND EST 17 SEPTEMBER

COURTESY OF STUDIOCANAL:

VINTAGE WORLD CINEMA EDITION!

Jacques Rivette (1928 – 2016) was a French film director and film critic, known for his contributions to the French New Wave and the influential magazine (dubbed the ‘instrument of combat’ of the New Wave) Cahiers du Cinéma, of which he was editor throughout the first half of the 1960s. Extremely prolific throughout his career, Rivette made twenty-nine films, best known among them L’amour fou (1969), Out 1 (1971) and La Belle Noiseuse (1991).

About STUDIOCANAL

STUDIOCANAL, a 100% affiliate of Vivendi’s CANAL+ Group, is Europe’s leader in production, rights acquisition, distribution and international sales of feature films and TV series, operating directly in all three major European markets, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.

STUDIOCANAL owns one of the most important film libraries in the world, boasting 6,500 feature films, including the iconic Terminator 2, The Third Man, The Ealing Comedies, Mulholland Drive, Breathless and Belle de Jour.

VINTAGE WORLD CINEMA

Open your eyes to a new world of film with the Vintage World Cinema collection. Discover and enjoy classic, iconic films from around

the globe, all stunningly restored with brand new bonus content.

About Independent Cinema Office (ICO)

Independent Cinema Office (ICO) is the national organisation for development and support of independent film exhibition in the UK. We exist to bring a wider range of films to a wider range of audiences. Activities include training, film programming, distribution, advice and consultancy. Since 2003 ICO have booked 26,000 films, trained over 1000 professionals from 635 organisations, distributed 235 films and achieved audience figures of over 6 million.

www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor