The end of the 20th century was a fascinating time for American cinema. The directors, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, David Fincher, Bryan Singer, Todd Solondz, Paul Thomas Anderson, M. Night Shyamalan, Spike Jonze and Alexander Payne all emerged and began to make a serious impact as filmmakers in this period, alongside talented Britons such as Sam Mendes and Stephen Daldry. Quentin Tarantino and the Australian Baz Luhrmann had only made their feature debuts a few years’ earlier. Into this heady mix came Sofia Coppola with her adaptation of Jeffery Eugenides’ novel, The Virgin Suicides in 1998. Viewed from the perspective of a quarter of a century on, the film, a moderate indie hit at the time, now looks like one of the most assured directorial debuts ever made.
The Virgin Suicides is the story of the Lisbon girls, the five blonde, beautiful daughters of a strict Catholic family (their parents are played by Kathleen Turner and James Woods) living in the leafy, sunny suburbs of Grosse Point, Michigan. It is set in the 1970s, the decade of Sofia Coppola’s own childhood, a period roughly as distant from the year this was released, 1998, as the year 1998 is now from the present day. It is also the story of the local boys who watch the Lisbons’ unfolding tragedy from afar. We never get to know these boys well in the film. One of them, voiced by the actor, Giovanni Ribisi serves as the film’s narrator.
Of the Lisbon girls, we mostly get to know, Lux: a girl with an oddly bohemian Christian name for someone from such an apparently conservative family. Lux is played by Kirsten Dunst, then still a few years’ away from her success opposite Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy although even then was, as she remains today, the most well-known of the actresses to play any of the Lisbon daughters. Lux embarks on a brief affair with local teenage stud, Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). This proves to be a mistake. We later meet the adult Trip (now played by Michael Paré) who, twenty years on, never seems to have got over the experience.
As we live in an age of trigger warnings, it seems only fair to point out that the title, The Virgin Suicides is almost entirely accurate in reflecting the film’s subject matter. Despite this, I have personally never found it to be especially gloomy or harrowing. It is beautifully filmed and has a nostalgic dream-like quality fuelled by its soundtrack provided by the then-fashionable French electronic music duo, Air.
Before 1998, Sofia Coppola was best-known not only for being the daughter of filmmaking legend, Francis Ford Coppola but also for her awkward acting as Mary Corleone in 1990’s The Godfather Part III, replacing Winona Ryder at the last minute in her father’s movie. Although her performance was uneven, critical anger over this apparent nepotism saw her unfairly pilloried with many using her as a scapegoat for a belated sequel that was disappointing anyway. Happily, since 1998, she has become the acclaimed director of a total of seven films. By far her biggest hit was her second movie, Lost in Translation (2002). The film transformed Bill Murray’s career and made Scarlett Johansson a star.
The Virgin Suicides
Studio Canal
Available on Blu-Ray, DVD and for the first time in the UK on 4K UHD & digital on 13 March 2023.
At some point after Stargate but before the Star Wars prequels came Starship Troopers. The most underrated science fiction film of the 1990s made landfall across Earth in 1998. Would you like to know more? Join Chris Hallam as he goes on a bug hunt…
BASIC INSECT
A war correspondent in full futuristic military uniform reports straight to camera from a battle scene. His location is on one of the bug meteors in the Klendathu system, whose deadly inhabitants, the giant insectoid Arachnids have been launching a series of devastating attacks on the Earth.
“It is an ugly planet! A Bug Planet! A planet hostile to life…” he states before he is brutally attacked mid-rant by one of the Arachnids. He does not last long. As if personally insulted by his harsh words about its home world, the monster proceeds to tear him apart in full view of the camera
“Keep moving! Get out of here NOW!” a passing mobile infantryman – in fact, our hero Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) warns the cameraman – and thus in true B-movie style, us. Soon afterwards, another soldier and the cameraman are also attacked by the same creature. So, begins 1997’s science fiction romp, Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven and based on Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same name.
MAN VS BROOD
It’s a familiar story. Boy meets girl. Boy joins the Federal Service, where despite the opposition of his wealthy parents, he becomes a ‘Roughneck’ i.e. an infantry man. The girl becomes an ace space pilot, but living an entirely separate life, soon breaks up with the boy.
Okay: admittedly this isn’t a familiar story. It doesn’t really matter. For this is just the beginning. Soon the lives of Johnny and Carmen (Denise Richards) are transformed by the devastating war which erupts between the humans and the Arachnids. The various entanglements between, say, Johnny and fellow Roughneck “Dizzy” (Dina Meyer) soon fade into insignificance as the film becomes increasingly focused on the devastating physical confrontations between man and alien.
Or perhaps we should say “person vs alien”? For despite being directed by Paul Verhoeven, the man who brought the world Basic Instinct and Showgirls, the society in Starship Troopers is refreshingly lacking in prejudice based on gender or, indeed, race. Only the fictional species of giant killer insectoid aliens are treated badly. And criminals. And cows.
This liberal attitude extends to a scene in which many of the cast (including Dina Meyer) stripped off in front of the camera, for a unisex shower scene. Somewhat apprehensive, the young cast reportedly only agreed to this, if director Paul Verhoeven agreed to get naked himself while filming. Verhoeven, then overweight and fast approaching sixty was happy to do so. Thankfully, no images recording Verhoeven’s gesture seem to exist.
Actress Denise Richards who played Johnny’s initial love interest Carmen was crucially absent from this scene: in fact, her character was elsewhere, and it would have made no sense for her to have been involved. This did not stop the film and others such as Wild Things (1998), Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) and the Bond film, The World Is Not Enough (1999) launching Richards’ career as a major film star and sex symbol of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Neil Patrick Harris – then, best known for his early 90s teenage TV role as Doogie Hauser MD – plays Carl, the gang’s slightly geeky friend, who ultimately turns out to be psychic. Harris would achieve stardom only later. Today, it is he and Richards not Van Dien, Meyer or even established characters like the late Rue ‘Blanche from Golden Girls’ McClanahan and Michael Ironside, who are easily the most famous people in the entire film.
Has Starship Troopers dated? “Hell! Yes Sir!” Some of the CGI inevitably looks less impressive now than it did at the time. And while fighting aliens in space is still very much the stuff of science fiction, a viewer today in the ae of Zoom, would be forgiven for not noticing that Carmen’s electronic conversations with her long distance boyfriend, Johnny, were anything unusual when the film was made in the 1990s.
None of these things matter. For at the end of the day, watching Starship Troopers remains an enjoyable experience. The scenes of warriors doing battle as vast hordes of Arachnids can be seen teeming over the horizon remain exhilarating, exciting, gory and fun.
The film is also immeasurably boosted by the series of short, sombrely narrated state propaganda films supposedly created by the ruling regime which appear throughout. Presented in the style of Allied Second World War newsreels, while also attempting to deploy internet type technology (the web was still young in 1997), these somehow manage to seem both old-fashioned and futuristic at the same time.
They are undeniably intentionally funny but also give us a taste of the kind of society, Johnny Rico and his friends have grown up in. It is a society which is comfortable with child soldiers and which (like the modern USA) is perhaps a little bit too relaxed about preventing its children from getting their hands on guns. It is a society in which criminals are flogged and executed not just publicly, but on live TV. It is a society in which children are urged to stamp on harmless domestic spiders by war-mad teachers driven into a frenzy by government propaganda. And as we learn early on in Johnny’s civics class, it is a society where citizenship and the right to vote are not awarded automatically, but have to be earned.
The human society in the film, Starship Troopers live in an Americanised fascist state.
The question is, is this what creator Robert A Heinlein would have wanted, either for a film based on one of his books or for human society itself?
THE STATE THEY’RE IN
One day, in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands of the early 1940s, one member of the occupying forces decided to play a cruel game to pass the time. He pointed his gun at a small boy. The boy was naturally terrified and had wet himself publicly before the Nazi stopped.
The boy was Paul Verhoeven. And he never forgot it.
More than fifty years later, he directed Starship Troopers, a film which seemed to confuse many reviewers. Some (for example, the late Jeff Vice) seemed to miss the fact that it was set in a fascist state completely. Others did recognise this, but assumed Verhoeven was endorsing fascism.
The celebrated critic Roger Ebert gave the film two out five. “Starship Troopers” is the most violent kiddie movie ever made. I call it a kiddie movie not to be insulting, but to be accurate,” he wrote, clearly deliberately insulting it. “(Verhoeven) wants to depict the world of the future as it might have been visualized in the mind of a kid reading Heinlein in 1956.” The book was actually first published in 1959. Scott Rosenberg, writing in Salon was disappointed for different reasons. It “lacks the courage of the book’s fascist conclusions.”
Let us be clear: there is no doubt whatsoever about Verhoeven’s anti-fascist intentions in the film. Nor is there any doubt that the society he and screenwriter Edward Neumeier conceived is sufficiently right-wing to be considered fascist. The military are completely dominant. There is little evidence of democracy. Corporal and capital punishment are in use. The characters’ uniforms sometimes look fascistic in design too. By the end of the film, Neil Patrick Harris practically looks like a member of the Gestapo.
The satirical elements in the film are intended to give the viewer pause for thought, drawing attention to similarities between the US and this ultra-right-wing state.
On the other hand, it is easy to see how some people might get confused regarding the film’s attitudes to fascism. For one thing, as mentioned, the very worst aspects of fascism: the extreme racism and persecution of minority groups do not seem to exist here. Unlike every other Far Right state everyone seems refreshingly progressive when it comes to gender and race. The girls and boys fight … and shower… side by side. Even though many of the girls suffer excruciating deaths as they are impaled by Arachnids at least, as they do so they can take comfort from the fact that they are doing so on equal terms with the chaps.
It also must be said that things do seem to function pretty well in the world of Starship Troopers. Everything seems to be almost perfectly set up to counter the Arachnid threat. One wonders if a more democratic, less military society would be so well prepared to combat an alien menace, particularly if they were more constrained by inhibitions over gender and race.
Actor Michael Ironside, played high school teacher turned Roughneck unit commander, Jean Rasczak recalls being puzzled by Verhoeven’s attitude.
“Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?” He asked. Verhoeven replied: “If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work, no one will listen to me.” He continued: “So, I’m going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it’s only good for killing fucking Bugs!”
HEINLEIN MANOUVRES
Many fans of the book had another objection to the film. They didn’t appreciate the implication that Heinlein was a fascist at all. It seems unlikely Heinlein would have appreciated that label either. However, he had died in 1988.
If the novel and film of Starship Troopers are very different, it is perhaps not surprising. The director hadn’t read the book.
“I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring,” Verhoeven admits. “It is really quiet a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier to tell me the story because I just couldn’t read the thing.”
Starship Troopers represented something of a turning point for Heinlein as he moved from juvenile to adult fiction. There are quite a few differences between the book and the film: there is a lot more technical detail about the troopers’ suits and Heinlein’s years of naval experience are clearly in evidence in the text. But there’s no getting away from politics: Heinlein was, in fact, motivated to write the novel after being inspired by his anger over the moderate Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to suspend nuclear testing in 1959. A leftist in his earlier days, by the 1950s, he was clearly firmly on the Right with many of his characters’ words clearly reflecting his own conservative outlook.
The words, “There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men,” seems like an early formulation of the National Rifle Association’s famously inane but resonant slogan, “guns don’t kill people: people do”. Heinlein is critical of the concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and clearly advocates the notion of citizenry and the right to vote are earned through service and combat. He clearly advocates flogging of juvenile delinquents, using a strange analogy about a puppy to illustrate his pointy. His character, Dubois says of the 20th century: “that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense…half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry.”
It is easy to forget he is writing in the relatively placid USA of the 1950s. Heinlein may not have literally been a fascist, but he certainly had tendencies in that direction. Had he lived to see it, he may not have liked the implication that the society in the film version was fascistic, but it seems unlikely he’d have disagreed with much about how the society functioned in the film.
On the plus side, the book shows few obvious signs of racism at all. This is reasonably unusual for an American book of the mid-20th century and very much to Robert A Heinlein’s credit.
THE RETURN OF RICO
The years rolled by. Robert Heinlein’s status as an author steadily increased. By the time of his death in 1988, the man behind Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was regularly ranked as one of the “Big Three” of English language science fiction authors alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. The year 1978, meanwhile, had seen a teenaged Sarah Brightman release the single, ‘I’m In Love With A Starship Trooper’ with Hot Gossip. The following year saw The VCs debut in British comic, 2000AD. Unlike the pop song and as he freely admitted, Gerry Finley-Day’s strip clearly owed a lot to Heinlein’s novel, Starship Troopers.
In the 1990s, a script entitled Bug Hunt At Outpost Nine began to circulate. The script was similar enough to Heinlein’s 1959 book that a decision was to buy the rights and adapt it directly. Paul Verhoeven, the man behind the original science fiction blockbusters, Robocop and Total Recall was hired to direct.
TOTAL FREEFALL
Although not a flop, Starship Troopers underperformed at the box office. Had it been a success, it might well have become a major movie franchise. This may yet happen there is serious talk of a reboot and a script has been written. As it is, there are sequels (see the box out) but none made it to US cinema screens.
As it is, 25 years on the film looks better now than it did at the time. It’s true the acting is sometimes ropey – witness Denise Richards’ sudden dramatic recovery from apparent serious injury in the film’s closing scenes – but the film’s depiction of a militaristic American national security state anticipates the struggles of the next decade (the US not fighting Arachnids but Iraqis) and the arguably fascistic tendencies of the Trump Administration (2017-21).
As Paul Verhoeven says: “It’s a very right-wing book. And with the movie we tried, and I think at least partially succeeded, in commenting on that at the same time. It would be eat your cake and have it. All the way through we were fighting with the fascism, the ultra-militarism. All the way through I wanted the audience to be asking, ‘Are these people crazy?’
BOX OUT: HEROES, MARAUDERS AND TRAITORS..
At last! All those spin-offs and sequels in full…
Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles (1998-1999): A 36-part CGI animated TV series. Paul Verhoeven was executive producer and featuring characters (although not the voices) from the film such as Johnny and Dizzy. Ended after being beset with Bugs…er… I mean production problems.
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004). TV film sequel scripted by the original film’s screenwriter Edward Neumeier (who also wrote Robocop). Richard Burgi, later of Desperate Housewives stars as Captain V.J Dax. Two-word review: it’s bad.
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008) Casper Van Dien returns as Rico in this straight to DVD effort directed by Neumeier. Perhaps slightly better than Hero of the Federation, but not by much.
Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017) Japanese computer animated films. Surprisingly, Van Dien and Dina Meyer both reprise their roles from the 1997 film in the second of these, Traitors of Mars.
DCI Cassie Stewart and DI Sunny Khan (Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar) are back, doing what they do best: investigating unresolved murder cases from the past. Last time, it was the discovery of the remains of a teenage girl on a building site just off the M1 which brought a group of middle-aged onetime Millennium partygoers under suspicion. This time, it’s the discovery of the headless corpse of a Millwall fan in a freezer which threatens to provide an unwelcome trip down memory lane for a new bunch of suspects. But who are they? All have secrets in their past and now appear to have moved on. An old ‘Marathon’ chocolate bar wrapper (from just before the unpopular decision was made to rename the brand ‘Snickers’) is just one of a number of clues suggesting the crime was committed back in 1990. But who is ultimately responsible for the death?
Could it be the slightly chippy Ram Sidhu (Phaldut Sharma) currently preoccupied with his wife’s pregnancy? Or Liz Baildon (Susan Lynch) who seems to have the elderly mother from hell (Sheila Hancock?) Or doting dad and family man, Dean Barton (Andy Nyman), committed to charity work but involved in some dodgy business dealings on the side? Or seemingly perfectly settled Peak District dwelling family therapist, Fiona Grayson (Liz White, somehow perfect in the role despite technically being about ten years’ too young for it?)
As usual, the joy of Unforgotten stems from seeing these often seemingly perfect modern lives slowly unravel as more and more mysteries about past events and the characters involved are slowly revealed. There is also, as before, the wonderful central relationship between Walker and Bhaskar’s characters. With Sunny now relatively settled as he moves in with his girlfriend, it is Cassie, who this time, finds herself under strain on all sides with both a dad with dementia (Peter Egan) and a boyfriend (Alastair Mackenzie) potentially on the move. Keen to retire after the traumatic climax to the previous case, Cassie is forced to work on this one final stressful case in order to qualify for her full police pension.
As perfectly realised and beautifully acted as before, Chris Lang’s Unforgotten remains the finest British crime drama on TV today.
The 1950s was undoubtedly a classic period in the career of character actor, Alastair Sim. This film sees him playing Hawkins, a watchmaker who also operates as an assassin. Early scenes demonstrate how Hawkins has often adopted a variety of ingenious disguises before successfully blowing up his victims. His main target here is an adulterous politician Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley) who he tracks to a hotel, The Green Man of the title.
It isn’t long before things take a farcical turn as a vacuum cleaner salesman curiously called William Blake (a young George Cole) and a local beauty (Jill Adams) get drawn into proceedings. With Terry-Thomas playing a philandering cad called Charles Boughtflower and a trio of elderly female musicians also becoming involved, Hawkins’ carefully laid out plans soon descend into chaos.
Although hardly groundbreaking, The Green Man is pleasantly enjoyable fare, packed with familiar faces recognisable to anyone…
The 1950s was undoubtedly a classic period in the career of character actor, Alastair Sim. This film sees him playing Hawkins, a watchmaker who also operates as an assassin. Early scenes demonstrate how Hawkins has often adopted a variety of ingenious disguises before successfully blowing up his victims. His main target here is an adulterous politician Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley) who he tracks to a hotel, The Green Man of the title.
It isn’t long before things take a farcical turn as a vacuum cleaner salesman curiously called William Blake (a young George Cole) and a local beauty (Jill Adams) get drawn into proceedings. With Terry-Thomas playing a philandering cad called Charles Boughtflower and a trio of elderly female musicians also becoming involved, Hawkins’ carefully laid out plans soon descend into chaos.
Although hardly groundbreaking, The Green Man is pleasantly enjoyable fare, packed with familiar faces recognisable to anyone who enjoys post-war British cinema. Can you spot Michael Ripper, Dora Bryan and Arthur Lowe?
And unlike Sim’s hapless assassin, this is a comedy which rarely misses its target.
Vintage Classics
Studio Canal
Directed by: Robert Day
Starring: Alastair Sim, George Cole, Terry-Thomas, Jill Adams, Raymond Huntley
Starring: Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine, James Corden, Catherine Keener Directed By: John Carney. Running Time: 104 minutes. UK Release Date: November 10, 2014 . Certificate: 15. Your Rating: 4 out of 5
Gretta (Knightley) is young, English and has some talent as a musician. She also has a good comedy sidekick/friend in Steve (James Corden). But her dreams of musical success in New York lie in tatters. After her recent break-up with boyfriend and collaborator Dave (Levine), she is bound for the next flight home.
Dan (Ruffalo), meanwhile, is middle-aged and seems to be on the way down after both a successful producing career and his marriage come to an end. He happens to see Gretta performing at an open mic session on her last night in town. Could this meeting be exactly what these two lost souls need?
Admittedly, this film from Once director John Carney sounds predictable as hell on paper and to some extent, this is true. But Ruffalo is great, making a potentially sleazy character likeable. Knightly can sing and has some nice scenes bonding with Dan’s teenage daughter. There are no real villains here – even Gretta’s ex has redeeming qualities and yes, this is relentlessly feelgood. But it’s not stupid either. So what’s wrong with that?
There is a “making of” featurette and some music videos on the DVD/Blu-ray. Haters of James Corden or Keira Knightley (and, yes, such people do exist) will want to steer clear and the music might repel some. But everyone else should find this an uplifting and rewarding musical treat.
Overall Verdict: The Hulk and Anna Karenina: together at last and unleashed on New York.
Special Features: The Making of Begin Again Featurette, Music Videos
Starring: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aiden Gillen, Dylan Moran, Domhnall Gleeson
Directed By: John Michael McDonagh. Running Time: 100 minutes. UK DVD Release Date: August 11, 2014. Certificate: 15
Your Rating: 5 out of 5
Review: Father James (Gleeson) is a priest. Once driven to alcoholism by the death of his wife, he appears to have found solace in his vocation, living a peaceful existence with his dog in an apparently serene Irish coastal village.
Or at least that would be the case if the villagers ever left him alone. Chris O’Dowd’s local butcher Jack, for example, has serious marital problems, his wife “sharing” him with another man. Then there’s the local millionaire Michael, played by Dylan Moran. Prone to alcoholism and urinating on priceless Holbein portraits, he is just one of the village’s many eccentrics whose grievances range from sexual frustration to an elderly American man (M. Emmett Walsh) who wants Father James to shoot him to death
Things get more personal, however, when the priest’s daughter (Reilly) turns up after a suicide attempt and Father James soon finds himself and his church subject to a series of threats and outright attacks from foes known and unknown.
Initially, it appears we might be in for a tale of whimsy and humour with the populace resembling the eccentric Craggy Islanders of Father Ted. But McDonagh (director of the lighter although similarly excellent The Guard, also starring Gleeson) makes it clear we’re in for a much darker adventure from the very first scene. There is humour here, yes. But all the characters seem deeply troubled, often by unspecified problems in their past. Moran’s Michael clearly has serious problems while some such as the doctor played by Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen seem to be positively evil. Although a genuinely good man himself, Father James soon faces the wrath of a very angry community reflecting an Ireland still scarred by the after-effects of the numerous real-life scandals concerning paedophile priests.
This is a superb film which benefits from all the cast truly giving their all even to the tiniest role.
Overall Verdict:
Another darkly humorous instant classic from the hugely talented John Michael McDonagh.
Renee Bennett (Amy Schumer) struggles in life. Working in the basement of an office block, running the website of a major cosmetics firm, she aspires to apply for the position of receptionist. But, crucially she lacks confidence. She is in fact perfectly attractive but being slightly overweight she feels anxious about her own appearance, a feeling re-enforced by the large number of models who are cast in the film alongside her.
She’s so big that she actually breaks the exercise bike she’s pedalling on in the gym. This sequence is played for laughs but completely fails to amuse. For one thing, the accident – were it real – looks quite painful. For another, Renee immediately walks out humiliated, as if it’s her own fault. Although it’s quite possible she might feel like this, nobody challenges this view in the film: clearly the accident was her own fault. She was too fat to go on an exercise bike. Stupid girl! In reality, she’s nowhere near overweight enough to have broken a fully functioning exercise bike. She should be suing them.
Later on, guess what? The same thing happens again. It’s still not funny, but this time has plot implications. Having just watched the sequence in the fairground from the 1988 film, ‘Big’, Renee has desperately wished under a fountain, not to be “big” (quite the opposite) but to be beautiful. Now, soon after, thoroughly concussed after her second accident, she becomes convinced she’s very beautiful. In fact, no magical transformation has occurred. She’s physically exactly the same.
The film really isn’t very funny at all. That said, it is mildly amusing seeing Renee convinced she has been suddenly radically transformed. For a while anyway. She grows confident enough to land her dream job and make a big impression on the boss of the cosmetics firm (Michelle Williams – atypically annoying in a sub-Marilyn Monroe performance). She also lands a boyfriend – a genuinely nice guy (Scovel) – although a surprisingly ordinary one in the circumstances. She ultimately ends up getting too snobby and alienating her friends (Bryant and Philipps).
Amy Schumer is a major name in comedy these days and one senses I Feel Pretty has good intentions behind it. But the film misdirects its fire somehow (Schumer didn’t write it) and, crucially, for a comedy, it just isn’t funny.
Worst of all: it doesn’t even have the song, I Feel Pretty, in it.
The penguins are back. And this time, they’re mad as hell…
Thirteen years ago, the United States went penguin-crazy as the documentary film, March of the Penguins (La Marche de l’Empereur) waddled to considerable box office success. It was a nicely made film and many people undeniably have a soft spot for these particular flightless birds. Despite this, many Britons were probably baffled by the film’s success which inevitably spread to the UK too. It is easy for us to forget that the US does not have high quality nature documentaries on TV fairly regularly. We have, in many ways, been spoilt by the licence fee and David Attenborough. We don’t know how lucky we are sometimes.
The film produced some odd side effects, however, with many eccentric American conservatives bending over backwards to find reassurance in right-wing lessons which they imagined the film had taught them as if it turned out an episode of Pingu had been secretly written by Ayn Rand. It is surprising that they were not put off by the fact the film was French, the French nation being held in even lower than usual regard by the US at the time after they’d sensibly avoided the Iraq War which both the US and UK had foolishly become embroiled in. The film’s success also led to a spate of slightly bizarre penguin-themed animations: Happy Feet, Happy Feet Two and Surf’s Up (although the last two of these flopped at the box office).
For various reasons, this sequel seems unlikely to set the world alight in quite the same way. It’s pretty similar to the first film. It looks nice. The English language version is again narrated by Morgan Freeman. The penguins are praised for their “good manners” as they walk along neatly. They do walk along neatly. It is nothing to do with “manners” though. That’s a human quality. It’s that sort of standard.
This was shown on a TV channel in the US, here it’s gone straight to DVD/Blu-ray. But don’t be fooled: if you saw March of the Penguins, rest assured: this is every bit as boring as the original. I pretty much forgot I’d ever seen it even before I finished watching it.
Thirty-something couple, Max and Annie Davis (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) like games. Nothing weird, just simple quiz games, or perhaps charades or Pictionary, usually with a group of friends once a week at their house. Ultra-competitive, the couple first met during a particularly exhilarating quiz session while Gary even managed to incorporate his successful marriage proposal into one of their ‘Game Nights’.
The only awkward point about this arrangement is Gary, their next-door neighbour. An intense and socially maladjusted cop, Gary (Jesse Plemons) is more the ex-husband of a friend than a friend in his own right and with his marriage now a thing of the past, Max and Annie are not particularly keen to invite him over.
The other fly in the ointment is Brooks (Kyle Chandler), Max’s rich, successful and similarly competitive brother. Brooks’ occasional visits have a way of getting under Max’s skin. Indeed, it is during a special “Game Night” apparently initially organised by Brooks, that Brooks is kidnapped. Here the fun begins: is the “kidnapping” just part of a game or has Brooks been genuinely abducted after getting involved in some shady business dealings? And, more to the point, if, as seems likely, Brooks is in genuine trouble, will Max and Annie and his four game-obsessed friends ever realise what’s going on?
Game Night is a good, lightweight piece of evening entertainment boosted by a strong cast which includes TV’s Catastrophe star, Sharon Horgan and a wonderfully intense turn from Plemons as cop next door, Gary. There are lots of fun film references – Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury play a couple under strain after she blurts out that she once had sex with a celebrity whose name she won’t reveal – and Rachel McAdams and Billy Magnussen particularly demonstrates again their real comic flair, the latter as Ryan, the least intelligent person in the film.
At one point, it is revealed, Max’s stresses about Brooks are hampering his attempts to help Annie conceive: an unnecessary element in what is essentially a far fetched escapist comedy. This aspect also makes Max and Annie seem even more like Chandler and Monica Bing in the later episodes of TV’s Friends.
But in general, this is an enjoyable, forgettable diversion: a welcome Saturday night alternative to your own game of choice, be it Risk, Scrabble or ‘Naked’ Twister.
Blu-ray: Out now
Released by: Warner Bros Home Entertainment
Bonus features:
Gag Reel
An Unforgettable Evening: Making Game Night Featurette
It’s often tempting to speculate what might have happened had Al Gore won the 2000 presidential elections instead of George W. Bush. Until we remember: he actually did.
Cheated out of the presidency by voting irregularities in Florida and a conservative supreme court, Gore (a politician with long standing environmental interests) then addressed the issue of climate change in the 2006 documentary hit An Inconvenient Truth.
Eleven years on, this follow-up perhaps inevitably has slightly less of the impact of the first film. But it’s still a good message to be getting out there, partly because the most convincing counter-argument the Right have thus far come up with seems to be little better than “how can global warming exist when it’s occasionally slightly cold in parts of my house?”
And partly because the Trump administration’s blinkered attitude to climate chain makes Bush look like Captain Planet in comparison.
Cate Blanchett plays Carol, a middle-aged, middle-class American housewife who in the middle of the twentieth century finds herself in the middle of a messy marital breakdown slap bang in the middle of the festive season. Indeed, Carol is in the throes of her Christmas shopping, when she runs into Therese (Mara), a young assistant in a department store. From the outset, it is clear the two have a strong mutual interest in each other, one which extends way beyond the specifications of the model railway set Carol is purchasing for her young daughter. Even today, with different social mores and the existence of mobile phones, such a relationship would encounter a number of obstacles along the way. It is, of course, even more difficult in 1952.
Director Todd Haynes has already demonstrated his faculty for recapturing the feel of the Douglas Sirk films of the 1950s, in 2002’s Far From Heaven. Here the brilliant performances by the two leads brilliantly bring Patricia Highsmith’s little known novel, The Price Of Salt, to life. This is much slower paced than the more thriller-orientated Highsmith adaptations Strangers On A Train, The Talented Mr Ripley (which also featured Blanchett) and The Two Faces Of January but is all the better for it.
Special Features:
Interviews
Behind the Scenes featurette
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy Directed By: Todd Haynes Running Time: 118 mins
Starring: David Thewlis, Miranda Richardson, Ken Stott, Sophie Rundle, Kyle Soller
It’s 1912 and all is well with the world. The Titanic is about to set sail and there most definitely isn’t about to be a global world war in two years, as the well-to-do Birling family settle down for a dinner to celebrate the engagement of their daughter. The only trouble is someone claiming to be a police inspector (Thewlis) is at the door with news of a death. He is about to blow the complacent world of the Birlings and their selfish “everyone for themselves” philosophy apart forever.
The victim is a local girl: one Eva Smith, a working-class factory worker who has committed suicide. The tragedy initially appears to have no connection to the Birlings at all. Or does it? We soon learn gradually that every member of the family has, in their own way known Eva and through their actions, somehow contributed to her death. The Birlings soon learn that their actions have consequences, not just in this case, but in a wider world on the brink of being torn apart by two world wars and a global depression.
But, there are further questions too. Who exactly is Inspector Goole? And is he really what he claims to be?
Screened earlier this month, this is an excellent BBC version of J.B. Priestley’s classic Attlee-era, socialist play. All the cast, particularly David Thewlis are superb and the introduction of flashbacks invigorates proceedings immeasurably, bringing the action vividly to life.
Bonus features include one short introduction to the play and one longer one.
Starring: Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Alastair Sim, Janette Scott, Dennis Price, Peter Jones
Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) is, by his own admission, a failure. Though he runs his own small office, he proves totally incapable of keeping his newfound girlfriend (Janette Scott) away from the bounder-ish intentions of Raymond Delaunay (Terry-Thomas). After he is conned further into buying a ridiculously clapped-out car, Palfrey decides to take action, travelling to the College of Lifemanship headed by one Dr. Potter (Sim) in Yeovil.
There is plenty to charm here in this film, an adaptation of Stephen Potter’s now largely forgotten Gamesmanship books. Terry-Thomas is on career-best form, peaking during a game of tennis, while the remaining cast (all except Scott, are sadly now deceased) are as reliable as they are familiar to the audience as they must have been to each other. John Le Mesurier, Hattie Jacques and Irene Handl make up the numbers, as does future sitcom writer Jeremy Lloyd (at thirty, playing a school student!)
The problem is indicated by the gentle subtitle, How to Win without Actually Cheating. Cheating would actually be a whole lot more fun than what occurs here and frankly Palfrey’s transformation after the course is more akin to that enjoyed by someone who has just attended a self-assertiveness class than that of someone who has truly turned to the dark side.
The best of the bonus features is British comedy expert Graham McCann’s discussion of Terry-Thomas. For while Peter Bradshaw makes great claims for the film, during his interview, in truth, this is a gentle so-so comedy: pleasant, but little more.
Studio Canal release. Out: now.
Bonus features
Interview with Peter Bradshaw, Film Critic
Interview with Chris Potter, grandson of Stephen Potter
Interview with comedy author Graham McCann on Terry-Thomas
The premise behind Inside No. 9 is so thin that it barely amounts to a premise at all. Every story occurs inside a different “No.9” usually a house number although sometimes something else, for example, as in the first of this series, a railway carriage. That’s it. But from this, writers and performers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have found the perfect vehicle for their brilliantly judged macabre humour.
Anyone who has ever fancied travelling on a sleeper carriage may well be put off the idea forever by ‘La Couchette’. This first episode sees Shearsmith’s doctor increasingly disturbed by first, a flatulent drunk (Pemberton), then a noisy middle aged couple before finally a pair of randy young backpackers (Jack Whitehall and Jessica Gunning) discover something which changes the nature of the journey for everyone.
The ’12 Days of Christine’ starring Sheridan Smith is a more sober but hugely effective piece. As we see Christine’s life pass before her rapidly before our eyes from the night of her first meeting her future husband, through to marriage, motherhood and then divorce, an element of horror seems to be threatening to creep in. But the end, when it does come, packs an enormous emotional punch.
‘The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge’ is much funnier, sending up the real life insanity of the 17th century witch trials. Having taken only very minor performing roles in ‘The 12 Days of Christine’, Shearsmith and Pemberton return to the fore in this, the most ‘League of Gentlemen’-esque episode with veteran actor David Warner (The Exorcist, Time Bandits, Tron) also taking a role.
None of the episodes are weak although the quality perhaps does decline ever so slightly with ‘Cold Comfort’ set in the offices of a busy phone helpline and ‘Nana’s Party’ which suffers slightly from having barely any normal characters in it at all. Yet even these contain moments of excellence.
The series finale ‘Séance Time’ is brilliant, however. With some vaguely insightful behind the scenes featurettes for each episode, this is ultimately a superb series of comic anthologies. Let us hope there will be more.
Release date: May 4th 2015
Bonus features: Behind the Scenes Featurettes on Each Episode
Certificate: 15
Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Jack Whitehall, Sheridan Smith, Claire Skinner, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Alison Steadman, Jane Horrocks, David Warner
Chris Hallam's World View 