alienlanes

Latest Reviews

2010-11-21T21:33:00.003Z

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Case 39 2 Stars
So-so horror film that follows a well-worn path about a child possessed by the Devil.

Creature 2¼ Stars
Cheap and cheerful 1985 b-movie rip-off of ‘Alien’.

Management 2¾ Stars
Likeable indie rom-com starring Jennifer Aniston.

Quatermass and the Pit *5* Stars
1958-9 BBC serial of the final part of the famous Nigel Kneale trilogy. Possibly the single greatest example of British science fiction.

Latest review posted on 21 November 2010

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Management

2010-11-21T21:19:00.005Z

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Rating 2¾

Written and directed by Steve Belber

Starring Jennifer Aniston (Sue Claussen), Steve Zahn (Mike Flux), Wood Harrelson (Jango), Fred Ward (Jerry Flux), Margo Martindale (Trish Flux) and James Hiroyuki Liao (Al)

Mike Flux, the night manager of his parents’ motel in Arizona, develops a crush on Sue Claussen, a passing visitor from Baltimore. He follows her back there and their relationship develops, but the road to true love is a rocky one and she leaves Baltimore for Washington State to get back together with an old boyfriend.

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‘Management’ is a low-key indie rom-com. It contains all the expected quirks of its genre, but despite a decidedly peculiar opening fifteen minutes or so, it gradually becomes a rather heartfelt story, thanks in no small part to a decent screenplay and some good performances. Certainly, Steve Zahn’s character Mike is initially rather creepy, almost a kind of comic Norman Bates, but it is possible to start to warm to him as the film progresses. Equally, the seemingly odd behaviour of Jennifer Aniston’s character Sue begins to make a little more sense as we learn that she is, like Mike, lonely and, in her own way, directionless.

The film received mixed reviews and has a 46% rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 94 reviews. It received a limited theatrical release and grossed $2.2 million. It probably deserves to be compared to Aniston’s excellent 2002 indie film ‘The Good Girl’.

Review posted on 21 November 2010

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Quatermass and the Pit (1958)

2010-11-21T15:11:00.011Z

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Rating *5*

Created and written by Nigel Kneale

Starring André Morell (Professor Bernard Quatermass), Cec Linder (Dr Matthew Roney), Antony Bushell (Colonel James Breen), John Stratton (Captain Potter), Christine Finn (Barbara Judd), Harold Goodwin (Corporal Gibson), Brian Worth (James Fullalove), Richard Shaw (Sladden), Hilda Barry (Mrs Anne Chilcot), Howell Davies (Mr Chilcot), Victor Platt (PC Ellis), Richard Dare (Private Secretary) and Michael Ripper (Sergeant)

A pre-human skull is discovered on building works in Hobbs Lane in Knightsbridge. Palaeontologist Dr Matthew Roney identifies it as a missing link, many thousands of years old, and obtains permission to carry out archaeological excavation of the site. However, when what appears to be a previously-unidentified unexploded World War II German missile is discovered, the site is closed off by an Army bomb disposal team. Roney asks his friend Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group to intercede on his behalf and they begin to piece together the terrible truth about the origins of the human species.

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When I was growing up, the 1967 Hammer Films version of ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ was one of my favourite films. I guess I would first have watched it as a teenager sometime in the early to mid-1970s. I remain very fond of it. Like the two earlier Quatermass films made by Hammer, it was a remake of a 1950s BBC serial. ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ was the final one in the trilogy, broadcast in six 30-minute segments between 22 December 1958 and 26 January 1959, most of it performed live.

‘Quatermass and the Pit’ is a wildly acknowledged classic, possibly the single greatest example of British science fiction. It was hugely influential, both in style and theme. Doctor Who is a very obvious example of the influence of the Quatermass trilogy, but it extends much wider than just that.

It might be a little bit dated and stagey now, but science fiction does not get any better or more intelligent than this. The quality of the surviving print is also superior to the first two instalments in the trilogy, ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ (1953) and ‘Quatermass II’ (1955).

Review posted on 21 November 2010

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Creature

2010-11-21T14:25:00.003Z

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Rating 2¼

Directed by William Malone

Written by William Malone and Alan Reed

Starring Stan Ivar (Mike Davison), Wendy Schaal (Beth Sladen), Lyman Ward (David Parkins), Robert Jaffe (Jon Fennel), Diane Salinger (Melanie Bryce), Annette McCarthy (Dr Wendy Oliver) and Klaus Kinski (Hans Rudy Hofner)

During exploration of the Saturn moon Titan, two American astronauts uncover the remains of an ancient civilisation and unwittingly release a terrifying alien creature. When a subsequent space mission to Titan discovers that a German space expedition beat them to it and then finds horribly mutilated bodies in the German spacecraft, they are plunged into a desperate fight for survival.

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‘Creature’ is a cheap and cheerful 1985 b-movie rip-off of ‘Alien’, directed and co-written by William Malone, who seems to specialise in such things. The acting is at best adequate, the direction stolid and mundane and the special effects primitive. However, it races along at a jaunty pace and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It also boasts a suitably inexplicable appearance by Klaus Kinski.

This is not a film to remember, but there is no reason why fans of slightly crummy sci-fi monster movies should not find something to enjoy here.

Review posted on 21 November 2010

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Case 39

2010-11-21T11:54:00.018Z

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Rating 2

Directed by Christian Alvert

Written by Ray Wright

Starring Renée Zellweger (Emily Jenkins), Jodelle Ferland (Lillith Sullivan), Ian McShane (Detective Mike Barren), Bradley Cooper (Douglas J Ames), Adrian Lester (Wayne), Cynthia Stevenson (Nancy), Alexander Conti (Diego Ramirez), Kerry O’Malley (Margaret Sullivan) and Callum Keith Rennie (Edward Sullivan)

Emily Jenkins is a social worker who already has 38 active cases, but is given two more to add to her impossible workload. She wearily picks up the first one and is fascinated by the case of 10-year-old Lillith Sullivan. After visiting the parents, she becomes convinced that Lillith is in real danger, but there is no evidence to allow her to act. However, she gives Lillith her cell phone number and after a terrified late night call she rushes to the Sullivan house, putting a call into her friend, the police detective Mike Barren. They break down the door and discover that the parents are attempting to roast their daughter alive in the oven. Emily is given temporary custody of Lillith while a suitable foster family is found for her, but she soon begins to realise that Lillith is not all that she seems.

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The German film director Christian Alvert came to the attention of Hollywood following his 2005 film ‘Antikörper’ (Antibodies). The science-fiction film ‘Pandorum’ was his first American venture to be released and that was followed by the horror film ‘Case 39’, which was filmed in late 2006 and originally due for release in February 2008. It was eventually released into New Zealand cinemas in August 2009, followed by numerous other markets around the world, but it was not until October 2010 that it limped out in America. Reaction to the film was generally negative and it has a 22% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 63 collected reviews. It had a production budget of $26 million and grossed a little over $28 million at the box office.

The film deals with a tried and tested horror theme that children are evil and often possessed by the Devil. The obvious influences here do not take too much guessing – ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Omen’. The film does need to be taken with a pinch of salt and does require a willing suspension of disbelief; not, oddly, because of the supernatural or horror element, but in response to more mundane moments in the plot. It beggars belief that Emily, the children’s social worker, would be permitted to become Lillith’s temporary carer and guardian. Perhaps even harder to believe is the manner in which Mike Barren, who had previously been seriously skeptical and concerned for Emily’s psychological health, so easily changes his mind and comes to believe her story, based on just one very indistinct and ambiguous phone call. This particular moment in the film and the scenes immediately after it seem rushed and yet the film generally rather drags and is a good 20 minutes too long. It runs out of steam long before the end. Having said this, there are some very effective individual scenes along the way and the film is not a complete dud.

I am not fond of Renée Zelleweger’s acting style and find her quite difficult to watch, but she is okay here as far as it goes. Jodelle Ferland is suitably creepy and unpleasant in the role of Lillith. It’s always nice to see Cynthia Stevenson in a film, although she has a small and a relatively inconsequential role.

Review posted 21 November 2010

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Doctor Who: Planet of Evil

2010-06-17T08:38:00.005+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Written by Louis Marks

Directed by David Maloney

Starring Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Frederick Jaeger (Sorenson), Ewen Solon (Vishinsky), Prentis Hancock (Salamar), Michael Wisher (Morelli), Graham Weston (De Haan), Louis Mahoney (Ponti), Terence Brook (Braun), Tony McEwan (Baldwin), Haydn Wood (O’Hara) and Melvyn Bedford (Reig)

The TARDIS responds to a distress call from Zeta Minor, the most distant planet in the known universe, where the Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane discover the apparently abandoned base of a geological expedition. A military ship has also answered the distress call and the Doctor and Sarah Jane become suspects for the unexplained deaths of several of the expedition crew. Only Professor Sorenson remains alive and the Doctor realises he has been tampering with antimatter in his bid to discover alternative sources of energy to save his people, whose Sun is dying.

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‘Planet of Evil’, a serial broadcast in four 25-minute episodes between 27 September and 18 October 1975, has always stuck in my memory. I am not sure why. Perhaps because it is clearly based on the classic 1956 film ‘Forbidden Planet’, a real favourite of mine, with a bit of ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ thrown into the mix. Maybe because this was one of the classic periods of Doctor Who, with the most popular and successful Doctor, Tom Baker, and one of the most popular companions, Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen.

Elisabeth Sladen played this role from ‘The Time Warrior’ at the start of the final season featuring the third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee, in December 1973, until ‘The Hand of Fear’ in October 1976, the second serial in Tom Baker’s third season. She made a subsequent appearance in ‘The Five Doctors’ in 1983 and in the aborted 1981 spin-off ‘K9 and Company’, before returning in 2006 for a guest appearance in ‘School Reunion’ in the revived series. This led to the successful spin-off ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’, which has so far run for three seasons, with two more confirmed by the BBC.

Is ‘Planet of Evil’ memorable? Well, I don’t think it ranks amongst the very best Doctor Who serials from the classic series, but I love nearly all Doctor Who and this is a minor gem, even if it does rather fizzle out in the final episode. It is not original by any stretch of the imagination, but it is constructed with some degree of flair. The message can perhaps best be summed up by something the Doctor says to Professor Sorenson: “You and I are scientists, Professor. We buy our privilege to experiment at the cost of total responsibility.” It is a theme that has been explored over the course of the series time and time again.

The sets are what they are and anyone with any knowledge of Doctor Who knows not to expect state-of-the-art special effects. The spacecraft is rather threadbare, to say the least, but the alien jungle landscape of the planet Zeta Minor is not entirely bereft of charm.

Tom Baker had an odd lazy approach to his acting, almost disinterested, which somehow seemed to work perfectly. It gave his Doctor a slightly disengaged air, often one of amused and slightly superior intellectual curiosity. I recall that he was sometimes compared to Harpo Marx and there is occasionally a degree of uninhibited anarchy about him.

‘Planet of Evil’ perhaps has not quite lived up to my memory of it all these years later, but I still enjoyed it very much.

Review posted 17 June 2010

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Doctor Who: The Lodger

2010-06-13T14:03:00.011+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Written by Gareth Roberts

Directed by Catherine Morshead

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), James Corden (Craig Owens), Daisy Haggard (Sophie), Owen Donovan (Steven), Babatunde Aleshe (Sean), Jem Wall (Michael) and Karen Seacombe (Sandra)

“All I have to do is pass myself off as an ordinary human being. Simple. What could possibly go wrong?”

The TARDIS arrives unplanned in Colchester, but when the Doctor steps out it immediately dematerialises, leaving him separated from his companion Amy. The Doctor turns up on the doorstep of Craig Owens, announcing that he is the new lodger and producing a small brown paper carrier bag full of money. Something very strange is happening upstairs that is preventing the TARDIS from materialising and the Doctor needs to find out what it is, but he is also not blind to Craig and his friend Sophie and the obvious unspoken feelings they have for one another.

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We arrive at episode eleven. The next two episodes will see the latest season reach its climax and be brought to a close, so ‘The Lodger’ might be described as the calm before the storm. This is an episode that perhaps could be equated to ‘Love and Monsters’ in season two of the revived series or ‘Blink’ in season three. From comments I have read, some fans are critical of ‘The Lodger’ because they say it is not Doctor Who. When the Doctor should be concentrating on the mysterious and disturbing events taking place upstairs, the disappearance and we assume death of innocent people, he is out playing football or fooling around at the office where Craig works. This I feel completely misses the point and assumes that Doctor Who is a soulless sci-fi series with no humour and no interest in people and the minutiae of human drama. ‘The Lodger’s is a comic diversion, the story of two people who are in love with one another but find it impossible to openly express their true feelings. The science fiction element, the strange events at the top of the stairs, is not entirely without relevance, but it is to some degree incidental.

‘The Lodger’ is an episode that, after one viewing, I think starts brightly, has countless funny and memorable moments, but perhaps does not quite add up to the sum of its parts. However, it’s affectionate and warm-hearted and benefits from a pitch-perfect performance by Matt Smith, who has proved himself to have exquisite comic timing. There are several references back to the “classic series”, a now familiar refrain in this fifth season of the revived show. When asked if he plays football, the Doctor says, “Football? Is that the one with the sticks?” It’s a funny line in itself, coming in an episode that coincides with the start of the 2010 World Cup, but also a clever reference back to the fifth Doctor, who is incidentally the favourite of executive producer and head writer Steven Moffitt.

From many of the comments I have read about this episode it does seem that I was not alone in being dubious of the involvement of James Corden, who would clearly seem to be a love or hate figure, perhaps more so after his recent childish spat with the actor Patrick Stewart. And like many others, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he gives a restrained and likeable performance as the sweet natured and lovelorn Craig.

I enjoyed ‘The Lodger’ very much and it might just become more of a favourite in the fullness of time. For now it was a pleasant diversion that does not count amongst the best episodes of this season.

‘The Lodger’ was written Gareth Roberts, who has written several other episodes of the series and many episodes of its spin-off show ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’. His previous work includes the soap operas ‘Emmerdale’ and ‘Brookside’, as well as the Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer revival of ‘Randall & Hopkirk Deceased’, which starred the longest serving and most successful Doctor of them all, Tom Baker, in a supporting role.

Review posted 13 June 2010

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Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor

2010-06-08T16:12:00.009+01:00

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Rating 3¾

Written by Richard Curtis

Directed by Jonny Cambell

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Tony Curran (Vincent Van Gogh), Bill Nighy (Dr Black), Nik Howden (Maurice), Sarah Counsell (Waitress) and Nik Howden (Mother)

The Doctor takes Amy to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to visit the Vincent Van Gogh collection. She mentions that he has taken her to many fabulous places recently and asks why he is treating her to such special attention, but he brushes aside her suspicious questioning. When the Doctor notices a malevolent face in Van Gogh’s painting of The Church at Auvers, he and Amy travel backwards in time in the TARDIS to find out what it was that Van Gogh had painted and discover that he is battling a giant invisible alien creature known as the Krafayis.

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I have been deliberately keeping myself as uninformed as possible about each new episode of Doctor Who, wanting to be surprised by developments in the continuing storyline. Sometimes I have failed, such as the last episode, when I inadvertently discovered in advance that something terrible was going to happen and guessed what it would be. All I knew about ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ in advance of watching it was what I had seen in the trailer at the end of the previous week’s episode and, subsequently, the knowledge that it was written by Richard Curtis, whose work, generally speaking, I am not a fan of. I assumed it would be a jokey throwaway, perhaps along the lines of ‘The Shakespeare Code’ in the third season of the revived series. I was not expecting what we actually got.

On the face of it, ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ is a typical Doctor Who episode. There are several self-referential allusions to the past. Not for the first time in this latest season, there is a visual reference to the first Doctor (William Hartnall). The character played by Bill Nighy, an art expert conducting a tour of the Van Gogh collection, can be related back to John Cleese and Eleanor Bron, the art snobs seen in the Louvre in the famous 1979 Doctor Who serial ‘City of Death’, which was co-written by Douglas Adams.

The invisible creature, a kind of giant rooster, is nothing to get excited about and is, in itself, the least interesting aspect of the episode. However, it serves a purpose, one that I suppose draws on the influence of the classic 1956 science fiction film ‘Forbidden Planet’. In that film, the character Dr Morbius inadvertently creates a gigantic invisible monster with the power of his id. The Krafayis is not created by Van Gogh, but it can be viewed as a kind of manifestation of his illness, not least because ultimately, when it is too late, it is realised that the creature was fearful and disorientated and lashed out for that reason. The action here takes places just months before Van Gogh would commit suicide, a victim of severe depression that had haunted him for much of his life. In the episode we see his extreme mood swings, from great elation to soul-destroying melancholia.

Van Gogh is initially hostile towards the Doctor, although less so towards Amy. However, he craves companionship and people he can talk to who understand him. He soon begins to respond to them and a change can be seen in his manner, until in one tremendous scene we discover how desperately lonely he is. When he realises that the Doctor and Amy will soon leave him he immediately becomes angry and sinks into deep despair. It’s beautifully done, dealt with in a subtle and responsible way.

The episode contains many clever and nicely observed touches. Van Gogh, a native of the Netherlands, speaks in a broad Scottish accent. When the Doctor and Amy first encounter him he observes that Amy has a Dutch accent, because that is how he hears her. We, the audience, are likewise hearing Van Gogh the way that Amy, who is Scottish, does. Van Gogh, because of his acute awareness of the fragility of the mind, is able to recognise Amy’s inner sadness, something she herself is unaware of. Her conscious memory of Rory, her dead fiancé, has been erased, but not it seems her sub-conscious memory.

The episode possibly bludgeons us a little unnecessarily with the fact that Van Gogh was a genius whose paintings were unheralded and unsuccessful in his lifetime and that he was increasingly frustrated that he was unable to reproduce on canvas what he saw in the world around him and in his own head. However, this is leading up to the scene in which the Doctor and Amy bring Van Gogh forward in time so that he can see his work on display in the Musée d’Orsay and hear for himself the enormous admiration and wonder it inspires in people. This scene, complete with cheesy musical accompaniment, courtesy of a song by the dreadful Athlete, could so easily have been mawkish over-sentimental drivel, but against all the odds it works beautifully, in no small part due to the terrific performance by Tony Curran.

The closing scene, also, in which Amy insists that she and the Doctor return to the Musée d’Orsay after taking Van Gogh back to his own time, is effective and cleverly conceived. She expects to find new paintings, even greater works that Van Gogh would have created had he not killed himself when he did. Instead, she discovers that nothing has changed. Those few days of happiness and the renewal of spirit that Van Gogh experienced in the company of the Doctor and Amy were just that, a fleeting respite from his spiralling despair and mental illness.

The only jarring note for me was the “To Amy” message now appended to the painting of Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers. It was enough for us to suppose that Amy had inspired Van Gogh to create this celebrated painting, but this unnecessary addition made it became too artificial and pulled me away from the narrative.

This fifth season of the revived series is increasingly proving to be one of the best yet. It is certainly, for me, a return to the brilliance of the first two seasons back in 2005 and 2006. My rating for each episode has been deliberately on the low side. I do not want to fall into the trap of awarding a “5” based on my initial reaction after watching an episode once or twice at most. However, ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ is an episode that quite possibly will, in the fullness of time, prove to be just that.

Review posted 8 June 2010

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Batman Begins

2010-06-07T14:16:00.008+01:00

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Rating 2

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Written by Christopher Nolan and David S Goyer, based on the comic books by Bob Kane and Bill Finger

Starring Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne / Batman), Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth), Liam Neeson (Henri Ducard), Katie Holmes (Rachel Dawes), Rutger Hauer (William Earle), Gary Oldman (Sgt James Gordon), Cillian Murphy (Dr Jonathan Crane / The Scarecrow), Tom Wilkinson (Carmine Falcone), Mark Boone (Detective Arnold Flass), Linus Roache (Thomas Wayne), Sara Stewart (Martha Wayne), Ken Watanabe (Ra’s al Ghul) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox)

Young Bruce Wayne witnesses the murder of his parents. He returns to Gotham City as an adult, intent on revenge against the killer, who is then assassinated before he can do so. He decides to immerse himself in the criminal underworld to try to understand the motivation to do evil and ends up in a hellish prison. He escapes and encounters Henri Ducard, who leads him to Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Shadows, where he undergoes rigorous training, intended to rid him of his fear and turn him into a fearless fighter. He is told of a plan to purge Gotham of evil by destroying the city, but he refuses to have anything to do with it. He returns to Gotham and with the help of Alfred Pennyworth, the loyal Wayne family butler, he sets about creating an alter-ego, Batman, to help rid the city of corruption.

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I should start by mentioning that ‘Batman Begins’ has an 85% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 254 reviews, 215 of those reviews judged to have been favourable.

It took me three attempts to watch the whole of the film. I all but gave up after the first 45 minutes or so, having become increasingly irritated by the relentless ninja nonsense. I later returned to the film for a second try, picking it up where I had stopped watching. Once the action moved back to Gotham and Batman made a first appearance, things improved marginally, but still I grew restless within the hour. I came back to the film the next day to finish watching it, but I had largely lost interest before the end came.

So, what is wrong with the film? Probably nothing very much, but I just didn’t like it. Much was made of the fact that the film and directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan and clearly it has been made with some skill. It was, we were repeatedly told, a much darker interpretation of Batman, which I guess is true if by dark they mean silly. I found the comic-book fight scenes excruciatingly boring, but that is something I knew to expect, because it has increasingly become a problem in these types of blockbuster films.

Most troublesome, though, was my dislike of Christian Bale’s performance in the lead role. I had not previously seen a Christian Bale film and I was undoubtedly guilty of some bias because of the spectacularly appalling rant he was responsible for on the set of ‘Terminator Salvation’. Irrespective of the excuses that have been made for his behaviour, and his own subsequent apology, he is quite clearly an arsehole. However, it is tempting to suspect that this kind of behaviour is commonplace and Bale is only really guilty of having his outburst made public. It should not necessarily affect judgement of his acting. I was just left cold by his take on Batman. I didn’t like Katie Holmes either, although I have seen performances in other films and not come away with any negative opinions. She was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal in the sequel, ‘The Dark Knight’. Cillian Murphy seemed to be channelling the spirit of Christian Slater, which I found rather off-putting, because it was all I could focus on whenever he was on the screen. Having said that, the concept of the Scarecrow was quite effective.

The remainder of the lead cast did exactly what you would expect from them and this was probably the saving grace for me. I was happy enough to watch Michael Caine and Rutger Hauer and rather impressed by Liam Neeson, although the true identity of his character was blatantly obvious to me right from the start, without any knowledge of the comic book source material. The revelation, so I have subsequently read, was supposed to come as a shock. I find this very hard to believe, so glaringly obvious was it. The Ming the Merciless facial hair did rather give it away.

‘Batman Begins’ had a production budget of $150 million and grossed a not entirely overwhelming $323 million at the box office. It was ranked eighth in the annual domestic box office list for 2005, but its gross was dwarfed by that of its sequel ‘The Dark Knight’ three years later, a film that garnered considerable additional publicity because of the untimely death of Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous best supporting actor Academy Award for his performance as the Joker.

Review posted 7 June 2010

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Cloverfield

2010-06-05T21:57:00.004+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Directed by Matt Reeves

Written by Drew Goddard

Starring Michael Stahl-David (Rob Hawkins), Mike Vogel (Jason Hawkins), T J Miller (Hudson Platt), Odette Yustman (Beth McIntyre), Lizzy Caplan (Marlena Diamond), Jessica Lucas (Lily Ford) and Ben Feldman (Travis)

A surprise going away party is arranged for Rob Hawkins, who is about to leave Manhattan to take up a new job in Japan. His brother Jason persuades their friend Hud Platt to use a camera to film testimonials to Rob given by party guests. The party begins to sour when Beth McIntyre, who Rob has recently slept with, arrives with a new boyfriend, and it is then disrupted by what appears to have been an earthquake. When the guests go up onto the roof they discover that vast areas of Manhattan are ablaze and when they go out onto the street below they are nearly killed when the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty comes crashing down just metres from them. Manhattan is under attack from a monstrous alien creature.

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I missed out on most of the early hype that surrounded ‘Cloverfield’ before its theatrical release at the beginning of 2008. I don’t recall exactly when I became aware of it, but what caught my attention initially was that it had been written by Drew Goddard, who had contributed episodes to the seventh and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even so, by the time the film arrived in Britain I had been put off by the hype and although I remained interested to see it, I was not convinced that I could sit through a film made to look like everything had been shot through a shaky hand-held camera. It has taken me more than two years to finally get around to watching it.

The lengthy opening, in which we learn but don’t care that Rob has slept with his friend Beth and now a month later a party is being thrown in his honour before he departs for Japan, is not interesting enough to be diverting. It merely served to make me impatient and question whether or not I wanted to sit through this film. It doesn’t help that the characters struggle to leave any lasting impression. Because the film did not hold my attention enough in the opening scenes I kept confusing Rob and his brother Jason. Hud was only distinguishable because he was the one behind the camera – and because he was rather annoying. At least I recognised the actress Lizzy Caplan, who I had seen before in ‘Mean Girls’ and ‘Tru Blood’.

The concept is an interesting one and it is achieved with some skill and success. Some people consider it to be a brilliant and adventurous work at a time when the industry, Hollywood specifically, is in a state of dire creative doldrums. I would not go that far. The film is clearly drawing on ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and cinéma vérité is hardly a new approach to film making. The shaky hand-held camera proved not to be as annoying as I feared it might be, but there were times when I wished we could have another view and perhaps a bit more characterisation. Having said that, the plight of these nondescript people caught in an entirely inexplicable situation and doing something that defies logic, which they themselves capture on film more of less accidently, is quite effective and could have been quite affecting.

A question I repeatedly asked myself was why Hud kept on filming, when clearly he would have a greater chance of escaping the clutches of the monster if he wasn’t hindered by having a camera on his shoulder. This was explained to some degree at one point in the film, but not in a way that I felt was altogether convincing. I found the monster disappointing. It was a lot more “Aliens” than I was expecting, having read review after review that made reference to ‘Godzilla’. As Xander said about the 1998 ‘Godzilla’ remake in the Buffy episode ‘Dirty Girls’, which was, incidentally, written by Drew Goddard, “Matthew Broderick did not kill Godzilla. He killed a big, dumb lizard. That was not the real Godzilla.”

I like the fact that no explanation is ever offered for what is happening, but I was quite glad to see the end arrive. The film, at least, has a relatively short running time and does not outstay its welcome. It’s a good film, no doubt, but one that will probably be enjoyed a lot more by some people than others.

‘Cloverfield’ has a 76% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 190 reviews. It grossed a little under $171 million at the box office against a production budget of $25 million. There has been some talk about a sequel.

Review posted 5 June 2010

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Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol

2010-06-03T11:22:00.002+01:00

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Rating: 2¼

Written by Graeme Curry

Directed by Chris Clough

Starring Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Sheila Hancock (Helen A), Ronald Fraser (Joseph C), Harold Innocent (Gilbert M), Lesley Dunlop (Susan Q), Georgina Hale (Daisy K), Rachel Bell (Priscilla P), Jonathan Burn (Silas P), Tim Baker (Harold V), Richard D Sharp (Earl Sigma), John Normington (Trevor Sigma), Tim Scott (Forum Doorman) and David John Pope (Kandy Man)

The TARDIS materialises on the planet Terra Alpha. The Doctor has heard rumours of unrest amongst the human colony there and tells his companion Ace that they have a busy night ahead of them. They soon discover that unhappiness has been outlawed and large numbers of the population, those designated as “killjoys”, have disappeared. They also hear tales of a grotesque and frightening executioner known as the Kandy Man.

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This is a very interesting one. At the time of first broadcast, Margaret Thatcher had been the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for nine and a half years, with a another two years in office still remaining. For many of us living in Britain at that time it was a very dark period. Moving forward two decades, the new coalition government, led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, talks meaningless nonsense about the “Big Society”, but Thatcher said “there is no such thing as society” and set about proving her contention by destroying it, a goal she more than succeeded in achieving. That quote, from an interview she gave in 1987, two years before coming to power, is rather taken out of context, but Thatcher was a malignant and destructive force, whose terrible impact is still being felt today, some twenty years after her own party prised her out of Downing Street.

The purpose of this rant? Although somewhat watered down by the time production was complete, ‘The Happiness Patrol’ was a less-than-complementary commentary about Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative government of the time. It is not hard to interpret the intended meaning behind a storyline in which freedom of expression is forcibly suppressed and demonstrations are crushed.

‘The Happiness Patrol’ was told across three 25-minutes episodes between 2 and 16 November 1988, during the second season to feature Sylvester McCoy in the role of the Doctor. This was the twenty-fifth season, all told, and McCoy was the seventh actor to play the lead role. The first thing one notices is how threadbare it looks. All three episodes are studio-bound and much of the action takes place on an obviously tiny and very fake set. It looks more like the set of an amateur play than a prime-time television series. The story itself is quite peculiar and although there are some very good actors here the whole thing is so odd and inexplicable that they are faced with overwhelming obstacles to overcome.

The next thing that most immediately stands out in these episodes is the Kandy Man, a sadistic psychotic killer robot that looks like a liquorice allsort and is thwarted by the Doctor not once but twice using lemonade. Bassett’s, the makers of liquorice allsorts, lodged an official complaint with the BBC, claiming, not unreasonably, that the Kandy Man was nothing more than a copy of “Bertie Bassett”, the company’s mascot. The BBC agreed not to use the Kandy Man again, which is actually a pity. The first instinct might be to laugh, but he is certainly memorable.

It did strike me how plodding and careless the direction seemed to be. It needed to make a virtue of the limitations, but failed to do so, although oddly the very fact that it was so derisory seems somehow appropriate. Perhaps that was the intention. Chris Clough directed six Doctor Who serials in total and has had a long career on British television as a director and producer.

This was the dog-end of the original series, as it wound down towards its inevitable cancellation, but strangely it was also a genuinely creative period. These final three seasons were not always successful, but they always strived to be inventive. ‘The Happiness Patrol’, which, apart from its commentary on Margaret Thatcher, also contains a very obvious gay subtext, runs out of steam before the end of the third episode, but for all of its very obvious faults it does remain quite fascinating as an allegorical tale of the time.

Review posted 3 June 2010

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Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood

2010-05-31T20:01:00.014+01:00

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WARNING: major spoiler if you have not already watched these two episodes

Rating 2¾

Written by Chris Chibnall

Directed by Ashley Way

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Meera Syal (Nasreen Chaudhry), Robert Pugh (Tony Mack), Nina Roberts (Ambrose Northover), Alun Raglan (Mo Northover), Samuel Davies (Elliot Northover), Neve McIntosh (Alaya / Restac), Richard Hope (Malohkeh) and Stephen Moore (Eldane)

The TARDIS materialises in what the Doctor thinks is going to be Rio de Janeiro, but actually turns out to be the small Welsh village of Cwntaff, the centre of an ambitious drilling project going deeper into the core of the planet than has ever previously been achieved. When Amy is sucked into the ground, the Doctor realises that something deep inside the earth is coming up and soon he is faced with an old adversary, the Silurians.

...

The second two-part story of the fifth season, ‘The Hungry Earth’ and ‘Cold Blood’ pays homage to the old “classic series” and in particular the first season that starred Jon Pertwee in the lead role, originally broadcast in the first six months of 1970. That season, the seventh of the old series, introduced the Silurians in a tremendous story called ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ that followed a storyline very similar to this new one. The Silurians, who are also referred to as the Eocenes and “Homo reptilia”, made a second appearance in 1984 in the story ‘Warriors of the Deep’.

Watching ‘The Hungry Earth’, the first of these two new episodes, for the first time I came away feeling a little disappointed, but when I watched it a second time that changed completely. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy it, I also started to pick up on many little subtleties in the writing. I suspect my initial reaction was simply a subconscious expectation that it wouldn’t live up to my memories of the old series from what remains my favourite era of the show. ‘The Hungry Earth’, in fact, proved on second viewing to be a very tightly written and well structured episode with a real emotional resonance to it.

‘Cold Blood’ had a lot to live up to and, ultimately, probably did not quite manage to pull it off, despite a powerful ending. That ending, which should have come as a rather shocking surprise, was slightly dampened for me because of something I read in The Guardian newspaper that morning that alerted me to what was coming – and the television critic responsible should be ashamed of himself.

I felt that in the middle of the episode ‘Cold Blood’ seemed to veer off into ‘Star Trek’ territory, with the Doctor acting as a kind of slightly high-handed diplomatic envoy, creating, by using almost bullying tactics, an atmosphere in which negotiations could take place between two opposing factions, a la Captain Picard. These scenes were effective enough, without injecting much drama into the proceedings, but more than that they were never very believable, even within a context that is already, if we think about it, fairly far-fetched to start with.

The storyline dabbled in some moral issues. The Silurians, although aggressive, were not the aggressors per se and the humans failed to, as the Doctor put it, “be the best of humanity.” Whether or not, however, this ultimately amounted to very much is somewhat debatable. It worked well enough, without really giving pause for thought. Having said this, it was more than made up for by the simple fact that the two episodes had a good feel to them. For an old-timer like me it did feel like “old Doctor Who”, without stripping away all the things that have made the revived series so successful.

There was a nice little nod in ‘Cold Blood’ to the Peter Davison era, with the Doctor’s comical reference to celery and all in all it was not too much of a letdown after the tremendous opening episode. The closing scenes, however, made it a whole lot more important, with the death of Rory. A central character dying in Doctor Who is still something of a rarity, enough so that it does come as a shock when it is not expected. Joss Whedon made killing off main characters into an art form, but he has done it so often now that it has become very tired and boring, simply too predictable. Rory’s death in Doctor Who didn’t fall into this trap, although I am very sorry to see him go so soon. However, many fans doubt this is the last we will see of him and suspect he will be back in some guise or other before the season is done.

‘The Hungry Earth’ and ‘Cold Blood’ were watched by what might be the lowest audience numbers since the series was revived back in 2005. That is a pity because this new season is proving to be very good indeed, although the low viewing figures are probably not quite the cause for alarm that some fans have been suggesting. Somehow, I do not think the series is in danger of being cancelled just yet.

Review posted 31 May 2010

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Doctor Who: Amy’s Choice

2010-05-25T20:10:00.009+01:00

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Rating 3¾

Written by Simon Nye

Directed by Catherine Morshead

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory), Toby Jones (Dream Lord), Nick Hobbs (Mr Nainby), Joan Linder (Mrs Hamill) and Audrey Ardington (Mrs Poggit)

“If you can’t save him, then what is the point of you?”

The Doctor unexpectedly arrives in the small village of Upper Leadworth to visit Amy, who is heavily pregnant, and Rory, five years after they last travelled with him. All three fall asleep while sitting on a bench and wake up back in the TARDIS. It has, or so it seems, been a shared dream. They encounter a mysterious figure who has somehow managed to infiltrate the TARDIS. He calls himself the Dream Lord and tells them they must decide which reality is real. Death awaits them if they make the wrong choice.

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‘Amy’s Choice’ is the seventh episode of the fifth season of the revived series. With the exception of the somewhat under-par ‘Victory of the Daleks’, the standard has been very high so far, closer to that of the first two seasons than the slightly tired latter stages of David Tennant’s time in the role, when the episodes, especially the “specials” broadcast in 2009, were becoming a little brash, if still just about the best thing on television.

Matt Smith settled into the lead role immediately. As has been commented elsewhere, he seems to have an uncanny ability to project the fact that although the Doctor now has the appearance of a young man and outwardly behaves as such, he is, in fact, extremely old and carries the weight of often painful and traumatic experience. Karen Gillan, also in her first season, has proved to be excellent and should be given extra points for getting the Daily Mail worked up into a froth of moral outrage. I like the character Rory and the performance of Arthur Darvill, but this character does seem to have been greeted with scepticism by many fans.

‘Amy’s Choice’ instantly became a favourite episode on first viewing and that didn’t change when I watched it for a second time. It put me in mind of episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, in particular ‘Nightmares’ from the first season of that show, ‘Restless’, the inspired season four closer, and, to some degree, ‘Dead Things’, a dark and controversial episode from the sixth season. Although there is no reason to assume that ‘Amy’s Choice’ drew any direct inspiration from these episodes, it would not be the first time the revived series has been influenced by Buffy. Former executive producer and head writer Russell T Davies never hid his love of that show or his admiration for Joss Whedon.

The episode is very cleverly pieced together, as the Doctor and his two companions move between two possible realities – one inside a dead TARDIS, where they are rapidly freezing to death, and the other in what initially appears to by an idyllic rural setting, one that the Doctor thinks is “boring” and then very quickly realises is not as it seems on the surface. It also manages to incorporate some very well judged and genuinely laugh-out-loud humour into what otherwise proves to be an ultimately rather dark episode with a real sting in its tail.

Added to this, the Doctor is left with the riddle of the true identity of the Dream Lord (brilliantly played by Toby Jones), which proves to be a particularly compelling component of the episode and one that promises to provide some more twists in the future.

‘Amy’s Choice’ was written by Simon Nye, creator of the 1990s sitcom ‘Men Behaving Badly’ and more recently the co-writer of the misfiring ‘Reggie Perrin’ update.

Review posted 25 April 2010

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The Prisoner

2010-05-24T13:57:00.013+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Directed by Nick Hurran

Written by Bill Gallagher

Episodes: (1) Arrival; (2) Harmony; (3) Anvil; (4) Darling; (5) Schizoid; (6) Checkmate

Starring James Caviezel (6), Ian McKellen (2), Ruth Wilson (313), Hayley Atwell (4-15), Lennie James (147), Jamie Campbell Bower (11-12) and Rachael Blake (M2)

A man wakes up in the desert, not knowing how he got there. He is caught in the middle of a chase, as an old man is pursued. The old man dies and the stranger buries the body before wandering into a strange isolated village where all the inhabitants are known by numbers. He is 6 and the outwardly benign leader is 2. The other inhabitants act as though nothing exists outside the village, although some dream of other places. 6 is now trapped in a surreal nightmare, intent on escaping the village, showing that there is a world outside and proving that he is a free man.

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The original television series ‘The Prisoner’ was co-created and produced by Patrick McGoohan, an American-born actor who had become a star in Britain during the 1960s in ‘Danger Man’ (renamed ‘Secret Agent’ in the US). McGoohan, who starred in ‘The Prisoner’ as Number 6, also wrote and directed some of the seventeen episodes, which were broadcast by ITV between 29 September 1967 and 1 February 1968. Although the series mystified many when it was first shown, it quickly established a cult following that remains as strong as ever some forty-plus years later and it ultimately had a sizeable impact on other television series and popular culture in general.

Fans of the series continue to make the pilgrimage to Portmeirion, the small resort village in Wales where the location filming took place. They continue to discuss and debate the meaning behind the seventeen episodes and even debate the correct order in which those seventeen episodes should be watched.

The 2009 remake, co-produced by ITV with the American cable network AMC, was always destined to be contentious and face angry criticism. Writing about it in The Guardian newspaper, James Donaghy suggested that, “It struggles from the outset to get past its own futility and never gets close to making it. Too timid to take risks with the story and with nothing substantial to add to the Prisoner canon it feels like a cheap knockoff.” He goes on to write, “Still, in a turbulent world it’s comforting to know that some things remain constant. ITV retains its uncanny knack of doing the dumb thing whenever it counts.”

I was vaguely aware that a remake of ‘The Prisoner’ was on the cards. What I didn’t know was it had actually been made and already broadcast some several months earlier on the AMC network in America. When a friend mentioned to me that it was about to be shown on ITV my initial reaction was negative. I very much doubted that a remake would compare at all favourably to the original, a peculiar and unique aberration that at one time I might have called my favourite television series ever. I had no plans to watch it, but curiosity got the better of me.

The opening episode, entitled ‘Arrival’, as was the opening episode of the original series, did not bode well. I wasn’t convinced by the change from a rocky coastal setting to the desert. I didn’t like the look of the village. I thought the use of old vehicles, all of which I remembered from my childhood, was too much a quaint artifice, although I was rather taken by the Renault Dauphine used as a taxi by the character 147 – and the presence of Lennie James, the actor who plays 147, bucked me up a little because I liked him in ‘Jericho’. I was a little worried that Ian McKellen was going to give a rather hammy performance, one that seemed to be pitched somewhere between ‘Brideshead Revisited’, ‘Gods and Monsters’ (a film in which McKellen starred) and a Merchant-Ivory production. My main gripe, though, was James Caviezel in the lead role. I didn’t like his performance at all. However, this opening episode did enough to persuade me to carry on watching.

There are six episodes in total (a clue in itself, I guess) and I think this is just about right. It allows the story to be told, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome. I got used to Caviezel in subsequent episodes and Ian McKellen proved to be fabulous. I also got used to the setting, even if it is no match for the original.

Although I did find some episodes slightly tedious in places, I was always quite intrigued to find out where the story was leading and what the conclusion would be. The fact I knew I would only have to wait for six episodes helped enormously. In the end, the explanation of the strange events that had unfolded was surprisingly satisfactory and retained the flavour of the original – the idea that we are all prisoners of our own minds. I ended up liking it, even if to all intents and purposes this remake has been rather made redundant by the recently concluded ‘Lost’.

The iconic theme music from the original, composed by Ron Grainger of ‘Doctor Who’ fame, is gone. The penny-farthing crops up a couple of times. The catchphrase “Be seeing you!” is changed here to “I’ll be seeing you,” which doesn’t particularly work for me. Noticeably missing is “I am not a number, I am a free man!” and the question “Who is Number 1?” with it ambiguous answer, “You are Number 6,” (or “You are, Number 6.”). Instead, we get the altogether less intriguing mantra, “Number 6 is the one.”

The new series does not slavishly follow the storyline of the original, but instead takes the basic theme and creates something that is very similar, but not quite the same. It perhaps suffers because it comes at a time when we seem to be apathetic bystanders, disinterestedly watching as our civil liberties are gradually eroded, whereas the original was the product of a time when more and more people were standing up their rights and demanding more freedom. The difference, of course, is that for many of us those freedoms were granted, to some degree or other, and we don’t have much to fight against any longer, the very thing that has allowed the erosion of human rights to take place. I live in a country that shouts loudly about its adherence to and defence of democracy, but whose security services have routinely participated in torture, with, it surely appears, the knowledge and hidden authority of the government of the day. I feel tremendous anger about it, but I still sit back, my own freedom not obviously affected, but still insidiously chipped away by the appalling times I live in.

‘The Prisoner’ received a mixed reaction from television critics. Metacritic gives it a rating of 46/100, based on 21 collected reviews.

Review posted 24 May 2010

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Malice in Wonderland

2010-05-23T21:20:00.008+01:00

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Rating 2

Directed by Simon Fellows

Written by Jayson Rothwell, loosely based on ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

Starring Maggie Grace (Alice), Danny Dyer (Whitey), Nathaniel Parker (Harry Hunt), Pam Ferris (The Duchess), Matt King (Gonzo), Antony Higgins (Rex), Paul Kaye (Caterpillar), Gary Beadle (Felix Chester), Steve Haze (Midge), Amanda Boxer (Bag Lady) and Bronagh Gallagher (Hattie)

An American student is knocked over by a black cab while being chased by a couple of goons. Although she is not seriously hurt, the collision leaves her suffering from amnesia. Whitey, the taxi driver, puts her in the back of his vehicle and says he will help her, but first he has to collect a gift for a notorious underworld boss and he is already late. Alice is thrown into a surreal after-dark world of crime and bizarre characters as she tries to remember who she is and get home.

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‘Malice in Wonderland’ is an unusual take on the Lewis Carroll story, played out as a kind of comic version of a Guy Ritchie gangster flick. The film critic Kim Newman, writing in Empire magazine, called it a “genuinely original interpretation”, but in general it was received with far less welcoming words. Ten reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes result in a 10% rotten rating.

I really wanted to like the film and I was certainly looking forward to watching it. In the event, I cannot pretend that it wasn’t a slight disappointment. The look of the film, all tacky neon and suffused lighting, is effective, but the performances are relentlessly quirky, which can become become rather irritating.

Danny Dyer, who has recently attracted much bad publicity as a result of an ill-informed and badly thought-out ghost-written item in the utterly appalling and reprehensible lads mag ‘Zoo’, plays to type as a small-time crook. He has so far failed to build on the early promise he showed as an actor. Maggie Grace, in the central role, phones in an uninvolved and uninvolving performance. She has been effective in the past, but here she simply seems miscast, all at sea and uninterested. She signed up as a last-minute replacement for Mischa Barton, but she seems to have no great passion for the part. However, in the original story Alice is a largely uninvolved and bemused bystander to the surreal events taking place around her, so perhaps Grace has not approached her performance without giving it at least some thought.

I liked ‘Malice in Wonderland’ enough to watch it twice, but I cannot imagine it is a film I would recommend to anyone else. The film it most reminds me of is Martin Scorsese’s 1985 black comedy ‘After Hours’.

Review posed 23 May 2010

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Doctor Who: The Vampires of Venice

2010-05-09T16:25:00.015+01:00

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WARNING: spoilers if you have not watched this episode

Rating 3

Written by Toby Whithouse

Directed by Jonny Campbell

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Helen McCrory (Rosanna Calvierri), Alex Price (Francesco Calvierri), Lucian Msarnati (Guido), Alisha Bailey (Isabella) and Simon Gregor (Steward)

Following “the kiss”*, the Doctor reunites Amy with her fiancé Rory and takes them in the TARDIS to Venice in 1580 for a romantic weekend to get their relationship back on track. Once there, the Doctor immediately realises that something is wrong and when he investigates a mysterious school for girls run by the city’s patron Rosanna Calvierri it seems that he has uncovered a nest of vampires.

(*See the episode ‘Flesh and Stone’.)

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Toby Whithouse, who wrote ‘The Vampires of Venice’, is the creator and main writer of the BBC3 series ‘Being Human’, an inspired mix of comedy, drama, thriller and horror that tells the story of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who share a house. He previously wrote the season two Doctor Who episode ‘School Reunion’, which saw the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and was responsible for my favourite ‘Torchwood’ episode ‘Greeks Bearing Gifts’.

Before I realised that ‘The Vampires of Venice’ was written by Toby Whithouse I had been slightly wary of it. Vampires have started to become rather tired and clichéd recently due to over-exposure, what with the ‘Twilight’ film franchise and the television series ‘True Blood’, amongst others. In the event, it proved to be a very enjoyable episode, with plenty of humour typical of Whithouse, although not without its faults.

Bringing back Rory, who we first encountered in ‘The Eleventh Hour’ (the first episode of this latest season), worked very well. In a clever twist, he was not overwhelmed that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than outside, immediately guessing that the inside exists within a different dimension. His anger at the Doctor when he tells him “you have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves” was powerful and palpable, although we might wonder how he has been able to form such an incisive impression of the Doctor so quickly. Perhaps there is more to Rory than meets the eye and we are in for some surprises later on. The prospect is intriguing.

The vampire storyline works well for the first twenty minutes or so, with its echoes of the 1989 story ‘The Curse of Fenric’, but it seems as if one minute they are not affected by light and the next minute they are, something that occurs time and time again. Having watched the episode twice and taken care the second time to look for clues to explain this, it still seems like an inconsistency in the story, unless I am missing a subtle explanation for it. Once we discover that the vampires are, in fact, no such thing the episode does begin to unravel a little bit, but this is always going to be a problem when trying to tell a story in 45 minutes. Everything starts to become rather rushed and frenetic as the action builds up towards its climax.

Signora Calvierri (played by Helen McCrory, who I recently saw in the now cancelled American crime-drama series ‘Life’) clearly knows exactly who the Doctor is once she has discovered that he comes from Gallifrey, although this is not particularly well explained to us. She knows of the fate of the Time Lords and of the part the Doctor played in the Time War, suggesting to him that he is now responsible for the extinction of two races, hers as well as his own. This new season is clearly harking back to the first season of the revived series, both in theme and content.

It does seem a little odd that knowing the creatures are still in the water beneath Venice, the Doctor just leaves them there to die, but I suppose there is nothing he can do to save them. Once again, though, it does seem like an inconsistency in the story. After all, they will presumably continue to devour anyone unfortunate enough to fall into the water. Equally, it seems inconceivable that earlier in the story Signori Calvierri would just allow the Doctor to walk away once she has discovered who he is and that he intends to stop her plans. Surely she would have had him killed immediately or at least hold him captive.

I don’t think this is ultimately destined to be remembered as a classic Doctor Who episode, but it is a very good one and there seems to be a lot here that will become much more relevant as we see future episodes in this season.

‘The Vampires of Venice’ was filmed in Trogir, Croatia, on the Adriatic coast, and at St Donat’s Castle in Glamorgan. It looks fantastic, a very realistic depiction of Venice.

Review posted 9 May 2010

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Doctor Who: Planet of Fire

2010-05-08T21:05:00.016+01:00

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Rating 2½

Written by Peter Grimwade

Directed by Fiona Cumming

Starring Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri Brown), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Anthony Ainley (The Master), Peter Wyngarde (Timanov), Barbara Shelley (Sorasta), James Bate (Amyand), Michael Bangerter (Curt), John Alkin (Lomand), Edward Highmore (Malkon), Jonathan Caplan (Roskal), Dallas Adams (Professor Howard Foster) and Gerald Flood (Voice of Kamelion)

The Doctor and Turlough are drawn to the planet Sarn, which holds secrets about Turlough’s identity and past that he is reluctant to share. Once on Sarn they encounter the Doctor’s old adversary the Master. They also pick-up an accidental hitch-hiker along the way, American botany student Perpugilliam ‘Peri’ Brown.

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Peter Davison had the unenviable task of taking over from Tom Baker, who had played the Doctor for seven seasons between December 1974 and March 1981, by far the longest tenure of any of the actors who have played the role to date. More so than that, Doctor Who was enormously popular during Baker’s tenure, averaging eight or nine million viewers an episode. The final episode of the story ‘The City of Death’, co-written by Douglas Adams and broadcast on 20 October 1979, was watched by over 16 million viewers. It remains a record for the show, one that is extremely unlikely to be broken.

Davison proved to be a clever choice because not only was he quite different to Tom Baker, his Doctor was quite different to any of his predecessors. This Doctor was less arrogant than had been seen in the past, a much more reserved and diffident character. Rather than wanting to always be at the very centre of the action, he was frequently content to remain on the sidelines, observing events as they unfolded from a distance. His relationship with his companions was also quite different in many ways and much more collaborative.

‘Planet of Fire’, the penultimate story to feature Peter Davison, is not the best of his time in the role. In many respects it is hampered by the fact that it needs to help to bring one era to an end and set the scene for the new era that was soon to come, preparing the way for the change from the fifth to the sixth Doctor. Turlough leaves the story here and Peri is introduced, complete with numerous gratuitous bikini scenes. There was also what appeared at the time to be a somewhat unsatisfactory final appearance of the Master, at least as played by Anthony Ainley, although in fact it would not be long before his return.

The story is not an altogether uninteresting one, with its themes of religious belief and intolerance, even if perhaps it is a little flat. There is even some genuine location filming in Lanzarote. It is enlivened by the presence of Peter Wyngarde, who is great value. Wyngarde had been a big star on British television and a larger-than-life one in the late 1960s and early 1970s in ‘Department S’ and its spin-off ‘Jason King’. Barbara Shelley, a familiar face from many British horror films of the 1950s and 1960s, is also featured, although she is underused in a rather inconsequential role.

At the time of Nicola Bryant’s arrival as Peri the producers of the show played down the fact that she is actually British, although she was playing an American character. They were also reluctant to make it known that she was married – oddly enough, to an American, which gave her dual British-American citizenship.

Review posted 8 May 2010

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Doctor Who: The Twin Dilemma

2010-05-08T20:52:00.007+01:00

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Rating 2½

Written by Anthony Steven (completed by Eric Saward)

Directed by Peter Moffatt

Starring Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri Brown), Maurice Denham (Professor Edgeworth / Azmael), Edwin Richfield (Mester), Kevin McNally (Hugo Lang), Barry Stanton (Noma), Oliver Smith (Drak), Dennis Chinnery (Sylvest), Gavin Conrad (Romulus), Andrew Conrad (Remus), Seymour Green (Chamberlain), Dione Inman (Elena) and Helen Blatch (Fabian)

Following his regeneration, the Doctor’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and borders on psychotic. He attempts to strangle his companion Peri, but apparently remembers nothing of the incident immediately afterwards. He sets the controls of the TARDIS to take them to Titan 3 where, he says, he intends to spend a thousand years of solitude, but once there they encounter Commander Hugo Lang and become tangled up in a mystery involving Azmael, another Time Lord and an old friend of the Doctor.

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There were two things more than anything else that contributed to the success of Doctor Who when it first began back in 1963. One was the iconic electronic theme music and the other was the creation of the Daleks. However, one thing more than anything else ensured its longevity and that was the regeneration of the Doctor. Initially, it was an expedient forced upon the producers of the show when William Hartnell, the first Doctor, departed in 1966, partly as a result of increasing ill health. The series had been a huge success and they were looking for a novel way of persuading the audience to accept another actor in the lead role. It worked beautifully and it meant that the show could now effectively continue for as long as there was an audience to watch it.

Colin Baker was the sixth Doctor, taking over the role from Peter Davison at the end of the twenty-first season. The regeneration itself took place at the end of the story ‘The Caves of Androzani’, which was voted by fans as the greatest Doctor Who story of all-time in the official magazine in 2009. ‘The Twin Dilemma’ was the final story in that season, told across four episodes between the 22 and 30 March 1984.

Unlike the previous story, ‘The Twin Dilemma’ is not universally well-regarded and it marked the start of a very troubled time for the show. In fact, many fans would claim it is the worst story in the history of the series. Through no fault of Colin Baker, several factors meant that his time in the lead role was not a happy one. In retrospect, however, it is clear that Baker was a good choice for the role and there were some interesting ideas played with during his brief tenure as the Doctor.

Baker’s performance in ‘The Twin Dilemma’ is perhaps rather hammy at times, but this was his first story in the role and the writers were attempting to show a new and much less likeable side of the Doctor. The moment when he attempts to strangle Peri still has enough of an impact to shock. The story itself fizzles, never quite catching fire, and doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but it is enjoyable enough and I rather like Mester, the telepathic giant slug creature.

There was, as I recall it, some unhappiness at the suggestion that this was a Doctor who was deeply flawed, one who bordered on megalomania. It brings to mind the reaction of some fans to Buffy’s flawed and complex character in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ – and later on when dislike of both the lead character and the actress who played her had become deeply entrenched in those same fans (irrationally so, in my opinion), their negative reaction to the flaws explored in supporting characters like Willow.

I don’t know if I watched all four episodes of ‘The Twin Dilemma’ the first time around, but I did watch the opening episode and it has always been one that has remained in my memory. I came to it again all these years later not expecting too much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Doctor Who has been much better than this many times, both before and since, but even below its best it remains compulsive viewing.

Review posted 8 May 2010

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The Box

2010-05-04T11:29:00.008+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Directed by Richard Kelly

Written by Richard Kelly, based on the short story ‘Button, Button’ by Richard Matheson

Starring Cameron Diaz (Norma Lewis), James Marsden (Arthur Lewis), Frank Langella (Arlington Stewart), Sam Oz Stone (Walter Lewis), Holmes Osborne (Dick Burns), Gillian Jacobs (Dana / Sarah Matthews), Deborah Rush (Clymene Steward), Ryan Woodle (Lucas Carnes), James Rebhorn (Norm Cahill), Celia Weston (Lana Burns) and Allyssa Maurice (Suzanne Weller)

A package containing a strange box with a button locked inside a clear Perspex dome is left on the doorstep of the home of Norma Lewis, a teacher, and her husband Arthur, a NASA engineer. Norma then receives a visit from a mysterious stranger who is missing a large chunk of the left side of his face. He introduces himself as Arlington Stewart and tells Norma if she and her husband unlock the box and press the button someone they do not know will die, but they will receive one million dollars. Arthur is sure it must be a hoax, but when Norma presses the button Arlington Stewart once again calls to hand over a briefcase full of money. However, Norma and Arthur are filled with guilt and their lives begin to spiral out of control as they are overtaken by increasingly surreal events that have tragic consequences.

...

Writer-director Richard Kelly made an immediate impact with his critically acclaimed debut full-length feature ‘Donnie Darko’ in 2001. Its belated follow-up ‘Southland Tales’ was finally released in 2007 after a troubled gestation to a suspiciously gratuitous mauling from some critics. It is certainly an over-ambitious sprawling mess of a film, but I like it. ‘The Box’ is Kelly’s most recent film, based on ‘Button, Button’, a 1970 short story by Richard Matheson that was made into an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ in 1986.

‘The Box’ shares many similarities with Richard Kelly’s previous work, ‘Donnie Darko’ in particular, and is certainly typical of his established style, with its themes of science and metaphysics. It is very slow moving and resolutely downbeat. I must admit that for a time I found it bordering on being quite simply boring, but I wanted to know what happened and that kept me watching, until eventually I just seemed to slip into the rhythm of the film. I suspect it is a film that would benefit from repeat viewings and I would like to watch again sometime, but perhaps not in a hurry.

‘The Box’ was greeted with very mixed reviews, many of them negative. It has a 45% rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 132 reviews. It grossed just over $29 million at the box office against a production budget of $30 million.

Review posted 3 May 2010

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Doctor Who: Battlefield

2010-05-04T10:02:00.013+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Written by Ben Aaronovitch

Directed by Michael Kerrigan

Starring Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart), Jean Marsh (Morgaine), James Ellis (Peter Warmsly), Angela Bruce (Brigadier Winifred Bambera), Marcus Gilbert (Ancelyn), Christopher Bowen (Mordred), Ling Tai (Shou Yuing), Noel Collins (Pat Rawlinson), June Bland (Elizabeth Rawlinson), Dorota Rae (Flight Lieutenant Lavel), Robert Jezek (Sergeant Zbrigniev), Paul Tormany (Major Husak), Marek Anton (The Destroyer) and Angela Douglas (Doris Lethbridge-Stewart)

The Doctor responds to a distress signal and the TARDIS materialises close by Lake Vortigern in England in the 20th Century, where he encounters a UNIT convoy transporting a nuclear device. When Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, now retired from active service, is informed that the Doctor has returned, he immediately responds to the call and a military helicopter is sent to take him to the site. They all get caught up in an ancient war spilling sideways across time from an alternative dimension involving sorcery and the legend of King Arthur. The Doctor is already known to the combatants, who identify him as Merlin.

...

‘Battlefield’, which was broadcast on BBC1 between the 6th and 27th September 1989, was the opening story of the twenty-sixth and final season of the original Doctor Who, the so-called “classic series”. It was the third and final season to feature Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor, although he did return for the “regeneration” scenes in the 1996 film version starring Paul McGann. McCoy is, along with David Tennant, one of two Scottish actors to have played the Doctor.

‘Battlefield’ was made during the period when John Nathan-Turner was producing Doctor Who (pictured with Sylvester McCoy). He was the longest-serving producer on the series, having taken over the role in 1980, and presided over 130 episodes. Nathan-Turner cast the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors (Pater Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy), during what became an increasingly turbulent time after the tremendous popularity and success of the Tom Baker years. He dealt with complaints from campaigners like Mary Whitehouse, who thought the show had a negative influence on children, and opposition from within the BBC. He also faced criticism from some fans of the show as a result of the changes he made, not least because of declining audience ratings.

In Sylvester McCoy’s first season the Doctor was portrayed as slightly comical and clownish, not entirely dissimilar to the second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton. This perhaps was influenced by McCoy’s own acting background and in particular his time as a member of the Ken Campbell Roadshow, where his brand of physical humour included hammering nails up his nose and setting fire to his head. Later on, however, McCoy’s Doctor became a distinctly darker and more ambiguous character.

I have always been extremely fond of McCoy’s third and final season in the role and consider the four stories, told across fourteen episodes, to be amongst my favourites from any era of the series. However, it had been many years since I last watched ‘Battlefield’. It’s an ambitious attempt to marry the legend of King Arthur and Excalibur to a theme of inter-dimension warfare and although it is a little bit messy and convoluted it is not altogether unsuccessful, despite more than a few faults.

The battle scenes do look like the rather peculiar re-enactments that historical societies like to put on and the special effects are a long way short of being realistic. The incidental music is horrible and not remotely fitting, although certainly typical of the late 1980s. These faults, however, are more than made up for by the simple fact that this is a spirited romp, even if it does feel a little rushed at times and perhaps would have benefited from more than its four 25-minute episodes. I would have liked to have seen the Arthurian legend expanded a little more. There is an interesting take on the legend that one day King Arthur will make a messianic return to lead the Britons to freedom and victory. Here, it is ultimately discovered that Arthur turned to dust centuries ago and the continued conflict has been a futile exercise in unnecessary killing and retribution.

There is a return for Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart after quite a considerable gap. Courtney made his first appearance in the Doctor Who story ‘The Web of Fear’ in early 1968 and was most recently seen in 2008 in the second season of the spin-off series ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’. There is also an unnecessary but not at all unwelcome appearance by “Bessie”, the car that had been driven by the third Doctor.

When Sylvester McCoy first took over the role of the Doctor he inherited the companion of his predecessor Colin Baker. Sophie Aldred joined in the final story of that first season and her character Ace became the Doctor’s companion for the next two seasons. This was a rebellious, forthright and tough character with a troubled home background and in many ways quite a departure from the past, a clear reaction to the slightly simpering companion exemplified by Jo Grant (played by Katy Manning). Ace is an interesting character and even if Aldred is perhaps not the most skilful of actors, I always thought she was a good match for the role and she and McCoy worked very well together.

A few seeds of the revived series devised by Russell T Davies can be found here. Ace quickly forms a friendship with the only other young person she encounters, Shou Yuing. The Doctor’s relationship with Lethbridge-Stewart is seen at the end of the story to be very much that of old friends. Instead of making a swift departure in the TARDIS, as he would normally do, he stays as a guest at the brigadier’s house. In fact, more than one friendship has been forged during the events just told. Davies expanded on this theme, something that contributed greatly to the success of the revived series.

There are several things in ‘Battlefield’ that alert us to the fact that this story was made in the 1980s and not the 1970s – and that some hard-fought battles had been won in between times. The presence of a female “brigadier” is just one example. In retrospect it may seem rather quaint and for younger viewers the significance of it may be lost entirely now, but it does lend this period of Doctor Who an added importance.

If truth be told, ‘Battlefield’ doesn’t stand the test of time. However, for someone like me who remembers it with great fondness its weaknesses are outweighed by the sheer nostalgic joy of watching it again. It was great fun and brought back some good memories.

The Northern Irish actor James Ellis, who plays archaeologist Peter Warmsly, is a well-known face on British television. He starred in the long-running crime drama series ‘Z Cars’ between 1962 and 1978, appearing in 625 episodes.

Review posted 3 May 2010

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Doctor Who: ‘The Time of Angels’ and ‘Flesh & Stone’

2010-05-02T15:26:00.015+01:00

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WARNING: spoilers if you have not watched these episodes.

Rating 3½

Written by Steven Moffat

Directed by Adam Smith

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Alex Kingston (River Song), Ian Glen (Octavian), David Atkins (Bob), Darren Morfitt (Marco), Mark Monero (Pedro), George Russo (Phillip), Mark Springer (Christian), Troy Glasgow (Angelo), Simon Dutton (Alistair) and Mike Skinner (Security Guard)

The Doctor spots a 12,000 year old “home box” (a starship version of a black box) in a museum, with a message burnt into it written in ancient Gallifreyan text. Recognising that he is the intended recipient of the message, he takes the TARDIS back in time to rescue River Song from the starship Byzantium, which then crashes into an ancient and long deserted monastery on the planet Alfava Metraxis. A group of soldier clerics led by Father Octavian arrive and the Doctor is informed that a Weeping Angel was in the bowels of the ship and they must now go down into a catacomb of tunnels known as the Maze of the Dead in search of it.

...

The fifth season of the revived Doctor Who (the thirty-first season in total, not including “specials”) started promisingly with ‘The Eleventh Hour’. The second episode ‘The Beast Below’ felt slightest flat first time around, but has benefited from repeat viewings. The rather rushed ‘Victory of the Daleks’ was a slight disappointment, but now the season has hit a high with a two-part story that sees the return of River Song and the Weeping Angels.

River Song, a role originally written with Kate Winslet in mind, but ultimately played by the actress Alex Kingston, first appeared in ‘Silence in the Library’ and ‘Forest of the Dead’, a two-part story in the fourth season of the revived series in 2008. It was hinted at the time that she might have been the Doctor’s wife and in the first of those episodes she asked the Doctor if he yet knew about the crash of the Byzantium, creating a link to this new story. This time around we have stronger hints that River Song is the Doctor’s wife in the future, although it is never explicitly confirmed and denied.

The Weeping Angels made their first appearance in ‘Blink’. That highly-acclaimed episode from 2007 starred Carey Mulligan, who has since received a best actress Academy Award nomination and is tipped for big things in the future, including, so it is claimed, the lead role in a remake of ‘My Fair Lady’. ‘Blink’, ‘Silence in the Library’ and ‘Forest of the Dead’ were all written by Steven Moffat, who has subsequently assumed the role of executive producer and head writer from Russell T Davies. He wrote these two new episodes.

I liked ‘Blink’ very much and thought the Weeping Angels were a fascinating creation. However, because that was such an unusual episode I was not sure about their use again. As it turns out, they work brilliantly here. I didn’t have any strong opinion about River Song following her first appearance, although watching those two episodes again very recently has led me to the conclusion that they are much better than I had remembered, not that I disliked them first time around. I think she works extremely well in these new episodes, but my own preference would be that we don’t meet her again too frequently in the future. The occasional encounter would work best and help to maintain the air of mystery and ambiguity.

I think I am right in saying the budget for this new season of Doctor Who has been cut. It certainly doesn’t show here. These episodes look spectacular and there are some superb special effects. As is the style of Doctor Who now, it is very fast paced, but telling the story across two episodes has allowed for it to build up without the rushed and rather under-cooked feel of ‘Victory of the Daleks’. There is a well-judged aura of foreboding and claustrophobia throughout the two episodes, but particularly in part one. This reaches a crescendo when the young soldier-cleric Bob radios Octavian and the Doctor and it is discovered that he is, in fact, already dead.

There are one or two moments that don’t really work that well and are perhaps best not given too much thought – for example, Amy walking with her eyes shut amongst the Weeping Angels, tricking them into believing that she can see them. I guess this works if we assume the Doctor did not have any better solution to the problem and this was the only thing he could think of in a seemingly hopeless situation. His demeanour and loss of temper with River Song certainly suggests that he was feeling the pressure and I for one am pleased to see this side of him, previously evident in Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor, starting to come to the surface again.

I still do have a sense of déjà vu, something that has been with me since ‘The Beast Below’. Apart from the return of River Song and the Weeping Angels, there are many other things here to remind us of previous stories in the revived series. Episodes that immediately came to my mind include ‘The Satan Pit’ and ‘The Waters of Mars’.

The closing scene in which Amy passionately kisses the Doctor and tries to entice him into bed has caused some debate and disquiet. I had not read about this before watching ‘Flesh & Stone’ and it did come as a surprise on first viewing. I have subsequently learned that the Daily Mail has rather predictably taken against it. That newspaper has already previously complained about Karen Gillan being too sexy, laughably and implausibly claiming that at no time previously could any of the Doctor’s companions be described as “sexy”. Having watched ‘Flesh & Stone’ again, I think the scene works very well. I am not going to worry unduly about where it might lead to just yet.

Reaction to the new Doctor and to this new season has been generally very positive, but there have been some dissenting voices. One particularly angry fan comment I have read in response to ‘The Time of Angels’ and ‘Flesh & Stone’ suggests that it is now so bad on every level that it should be cancelled immediately. The only reason I am not more taken aback by such opinions, apparently coming from fans of the show, is that I encountered exactly the same thing in the days of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. At that time I was quite shocked that a large minority of fans seemed so angry and critical and so quick to voice their disapproval, but now I realise it is just a symptom of such loyal and fanatical fandoms.

The cameo appearance by Mike Skinner in the opening scene of ‘The Time of Angels’ passed me by completely because, up to that moment, I did not actually know what he looked like.

My expectations of this new season are probably still too high just now, but this was very good. I don’t think there is a better show on television at the moment.

Review posted 2 May 2010

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Doctor Who: The War Games

2010-05-01T23:56:00.013+01:00

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Rating 3½

Written by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke

Directed by David Maloney

Starring Patrick Troughton (The Doctor); Frazer Hines (Jamie); Wendy Padbury (Zoe); David Savile (Lieutenant Carstairs); Philip Madoc (War Lord); Edward Brayshaw (War Chief); James Brae (Security Chief); Vernon Dobtcheff (Scientist); Jane Sherwin (Lady Jennifer Buckingham); Noel Coleman (General Smythe); Hubert Rees (Captain Ransom); Richard Steele (Commandant Gorton); Graham Weston (Russell); David Troughton (Moor); Rudolph Walker (Harper); Bermard Horsfell (First Time Lord); Trevor Martin (Second Time Lord) and Clyde Pollitt (Third Time Lord)

The TARDIS materialises in no-man’s land in what appears to be a trench war zone in the Great War. The Doctor and his two companions, Jamie and Zoe, end up in the field headquarters of the British Army, where they are accused of being spies and court-martialled and the Doctor is sentenced to be executed by firing squad. However, when they escape and find themselves chased by Roman foot soldiers it quickly becomes apparent that all is not as it seems. They are at the epicentre of a complex Alien plot to become absolute rulers of the Galaxy.

...

‘The War Games’ was the final regular story to feature the second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, although he did turn up again on three more occasions in the company of subsequent Doctors. It was told across ten episodes and a total running time a little over four hours between 19 April and 21 June 1969. As far as I know, only ‘The Daleks Master Plan’, told across twelve episodes in late 1965 and early 1966, is longer, unless one counts ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’ in 1986. 63 episodes from the Patrick Troughton era are lost, so we should be grateful that all ten episodes of ‘The War Games’ still exist and in good condition. This was the last time Doctor Who was filmed in black and white.

Despite its lengthy running time, ‘The War Games’ has surprising few real dead spots, although it does have a tendency to repeat itself a little too often and undoubtedly would have benefited from some trimming. The concept is a very interesting one and the subtext about the horror and futility of war is admirable. The recreation of the horrific reality of trench warfare is surprisingly effective, if perhaps the other war zones are not quite so successfully realised. Some extremely dodgy attempts at German, American and Mexican accents do not help, but somehow the variable acting doesn’t really seem to matter. Some of the acting is truly awful, but that is part of the period charm of it all.

Special mention must be given to Philip Madoc for a great performance as the War Lord. Madoc had already made an appearance in the 1966 film ‘Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD’, which is not considered to be part of canon, and in another Patrick Troughton story ‘The Krotons’ in 1968. He appeared in Doctor Who again in 1976 in one of my favourite stories, ‘The Brain of Morbius’, which was written by Terrance Dicks, one of the two co-writers of ‘The War Games’. I loved the hammy performance of James Brae as the Security Chief. The strange over-emphasised monotone voice patterns he employed are almost identical to Dan Aykroyd in the Saturday Night Live sketches and 1993 film ‘Coneheads’. It made me smile, but at the same time it was strangely chilling.

There is an appearance by Rudolph Walker, who went on to star in the contentious 1970s sit-com ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ and later on in ‘The Thin Blue Line’ with Rowan Atkinson, before joining the cast of the soap opera ‘EastEnders’. There is also an early role for David Troughton, the son of Patrick Troughton and an acclaimed stage and television actor in his own right. He has appeared in Doctor Who again, most recently in the 2008 episode ‘Midnight’ with David Tennant.

The few Patrick Troughton stories that I can still recall are very stylised. That is particularly true here when the action moves from the war zones to the Alien centre of operations, complete with control panels that are actually nothing more than metal shapes on a magnetic board. This is, I think, the first time we visit the home planet of the Time Lords, although the name Gallifrey is not actually mentioned. I also think it is the first time they are called the “Time Lords”.

Troughton’s Doctor is often referred to as the “Cosmic Hobo”. He was quite different to the first Doctor, portrayed by William Hartnell, and indeed to his successor Jon Pertwee. He often appeared befuddled, but was something of a trickster, meaning that his adversaries would underestimate his quicksilver mind. He had a number of catch-phrases, of which the one I recall best is, “When I say run... RUN!”

As well as being Patrick Troughton’s final story, ‘The War Games’ also marks the departure of Fraser Hines, who played Jamie Robert McCrimmon from ‘The Highlander’ in December 1966, the second story with Troughton, onwards. Hines returned, alongside Patrick Troughton, to appear in the ‘The Five Doctors’ in 1983 and ‘The Two Doctors’ in 1985. Wendy Padbury also departed at the end of ‘The War Games’. Her character Zoe Heriot had first appeared in ‘The Wheel in Space’ in April 1968. She made one subsequent appearance, a cameo in ‘The Five Doctors’. Padbury went on to star in a now largely-forgotten series called ‘Freewheelers’, while Hines was among the regular cast of the long-running soap opera ‘Emmerdale Farm’ (later shortened to ‘Emmerdale’) between 1972 and 1994.

I don’t know where ‘The War Games’ sits in the pantheon of classic Doctor Who stories, but while it certainly isn’t without its faults, I enjoyed it immensely.

Review posted 2 May 2010

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Doctor Who: Jon Pertwee’s first season (classic series)

2010-04-28T19:39:00.018+01:00

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Rating 5

1) Spearhead from Space (4 episodes: written by Robert Holmes, directed by Derek Martinus)

2) Doctor Who and the Silurians (7 episodes: written by Malcolm Hulke, directed by Timothy Combe)

3) The Ambassadors of Death (7 episodes: written by David Whitaker, with Trevor Ray and Malcolm Hulke, directed by Michael Ferguson)

4) Inferno (7 episodes: written by Don Houghton, directed by Douglas Camfield and Barry Letts)

Starring Jon Pertwee (The Doctor), Caroline John (Liz Shaw), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart) and John Levene (Sergeant Benton)

The TARDIS materialises on the planet Earth in the 20th Century, where the Doctor, who has just gone through a new regeneration, has been exiled by the Time Lords. He reluctantly agrees to work in an unofficial capacity for Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), who had previously encountered and worked with him, in an earlier incarnation, on two other occasions. The Doctor works closely with Liz Shaw, a young graduate from the University of Cambridge who is seconded to UNIT as a scientific advisor. He spends much of his time using UNIT facilities to try to repair the TARDIS, which has been disabled by the Time Lords, but is also called on to deal with alien invasions, intergalactic kidnapping, military sabotage and mad scientists whose actions threaten to destroy the planet.

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I don’t have any clear recollection of watching Doctor Who in its original incarnation when William Hartnell played the lead role, although I undoubtedly would have done. I do have memories of various stories from the period when the Doctor was played by Patrick Troughton and I was certainly watching it week on week long before Troughton gave up the role in the summer of 1969. However, it was the arrival of Jon Pertwee that probably coincided with the start of the period when I became an avid fan of the series and he remains my favourite Doctor. Budget constraints placed on the show dictated that the Doctor would now be exiled on Earth; something I think has been greeted down the years with a mixed reaction. It did, however, give the stories a consistent running theme and it always worked well for me. My fondest memories are reserved for stories from the second, third and fourth seasons of Pertwee’s Doctor, those that feature his companion Jo Grant, played by Katy Manning, but having recently watched his first season again I was struck by the unexpected high quality I found and the constantly fascinating and thought-provoking themes that still resonate strongly today.

It is at least fifteen years since I last watched ‘Inferno’, the final story in the season reviewed here, and probably longer for the preceding three stories. In fact, in the case of ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ I suspect this might be the first time I have seen it again since it was broadcast in late March through to the beginning of May 1970.

In a later story, ‘The Three Doctors’, which included the return and final appearance of William Hartnell, the first Doctor, he describes Pertwee and Troughton as the “dandy and the clown”. Just as Patrick Troughton had done before him, Jon Pertwee drew on some aspects of earlier interpretations of the Doctor and incorporated his own take on the character. Pertwee’s Doctor is a mixture of arrogance and compassion. His attitude towards his companions (Liz Shaw in this first season, Jo Grant later on and finally Sarah Jane Smith) is sometimes that of a stern father, sometimes a mentor and sometimes condescending, but no matter how sorely his patience is tried, he feels a great deal of affection for them all. He is, first and foremost, a scientist, but he also sees himself as something of an action man. When he is not talking about “reversing the polarity” he is often to be found playing with various gadgets of his own invention or taking a very active role in the pursuit of villains.

Pertwee, who was also widely known for the television series ‘Worzel Gummidge’ and the long-running radio show ‘The Navy Lark’, seemed to have good screen chemistry with the other regular actors, notably Roger Delgado who played the Master from the beginning of his second season onwards. Delgado’s tragic death in June 1973 is said to have been a major factor in his decision to leave the series. He also worked very well with Nicholas Courtney, a great favourite amongst Doctor Who fans, who surely must make an appearance in the revived series at some point, although age may be a factor since he is now in his eighties.

The first season with Jon Pertwee, the seventh season of the so-called “classic series”, comprised twenty-five episodes between 3 January and 20 June 1970, each one 25 minutes in length, telling four stories. It opens with ‘Spearhead from Space’, which cleverly introduces the new Doctor in a satisfying manner and sets the scene for the direction the series would take over the next few years. It also introduces the Autons, who would appear again in ‘Terror of the Autons’, the opening story of Pertwee’s second season. They made a third appearance in 2005 in ‘Rose’, the very first episode of the revived series. ‘Spearhead from Space’ is told across four episodes (the remaining three stories each got seven episodes). It is also the first Doctor Who story to be filmed in colour.

‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ marks the first appearance of the Silurians, reptilian creatures (clearly modelled on the 1954 film ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’) who, we discover, ruled the planet Earth 200 million years earlier. There is interesting moral ambiguity in the story about exactly who the aggressor is. We also have the theme of the dangers of nuclear power misused and science gone mad, something that is returned to again in ‘Inferno’. The Silurians are classic Doctor Who monsters, actors in rubber suits who largely seem to have been given only the very basic of stage directions. The labyrinth of caves in which the Silurians have been hibernating for all these millions of years are, of course, entirely artificial and unrealistic, but that’s all part of the charm of it. It is, in fact, a fast moving and enjoyable story. Paul Darrow, who is probably best remembered as Avon in ‘Blake’s 7’, is featured here, as is Geoffrey Palmer, who has starred in various popular sitcoms over the years. Palmer appeared in Doctor Who again, playing different roles, in ‘The Mutants’ in 1972 and ‘Voyage of the Damned’ in 2007.

‘The Ambassadors of Death’ is the story that surprised me most, probably because it is the one I remembered least. Even the opening credits sequence is slightly modified from the norm, coming in two parts with a brief recap teaser in between. The story was clearly inspired by ‘The Quatermass Experiment’, the classic 1953 BBC serial that was remade as a film by Hammer Film Productions in 1955. As is often the case with Doctor Who, it is best not to look for holes in the plot or dwell on the implausibility of some of the scenarios, but it just works really well as a story. I also noticed the use of some rather unusual and not always entirely appropriate original incidental music, which I found both odd and strangely compelling. ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ marks the first appearance of Sergeant Benton, a regular for the next few years to come, having previously appeared in the 1968 story ‘Invasion’ as Corporal Benton.

‘Inferno’ is widely regarded to be one of the classic Doctor Who stories. It has very obviously parallels with a 1967 Star Trek episode called ‘Mirror, Mirror’ and would seem to have been influenced by that earlier work. Once again, the theme of science gone mad is at the heart of the story. This time around the Doctor taps into some of the available nuclear power to conduct his continuing experiments on the TARDIS console and is shifted sideways into a parallel dimension in which he finds himself in a totalitarian version of Britain with a decidedly less than friendly version of Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT. It’s an intense and rather downbeat story with some interesting themes and an unusual one insomuch that the Doctor fails to save the planet from destruction, in one reality at least. The “primords”, humans mutated into savage beasts who look uncannily like Oddbod in ‘Carry On Screaming’, need to be taken with tongue in cheek, but otherwise ‘Inferno’ maintains the very high standard of the previous three stories and the inter-related themes.

Jo Grant was and will probably always remain my favourite companion, undoubtedly because of nostalgia and the fact that as a twelve-year-old I had a huge crush on Katy Manning. However, there is no doubt in retrospect that she was a rather simpering character and, from this distant perspective, a distinctly sexist creation. This is given greater credence by the decision of producer Barry Letts to dispense with the actress Caroline John after just one season because he felt Liz Shaw was an unsuitable companion for the Doctor (John was pregnant at the time, which undoubtedly would also have been a factor in the decision). Shaw was portrayed as a strong and independent character who respected the Doctor but was not intellectually threatened by him. Watching these first season episodes again, I realise how good this character who I previously had given very little thought to could have been had she stayed around longer.

I don’t know what younger viewers of the revived Doctor Who would make of this earlier incarnation. The very limited special effects of old Doctor Who have always been a point of discussion and good-natured humour and would undoubtedly be a big problem for some viewers used to the kind of special effects that are now the norm. The length and the slower pacing of the stories would also, I imagine, come as a surprise, as perhaps would the rather downbeat themes. For me, though, watching these episodes again has not just confirmed my memories of them, but actually surpassed my expectations.

When Doctor Who was revived in 2005 it was no longer permitted to refer to UNIT as United Nations Intelligence Taskforce and so it became Unified Intelligence Taskforce.

Numerous episodes of Doctor Who were wiped or otherwise destroyed by the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s. Considerable effort has been made to locate missing episodes from a number of different sources, primarily overseas broadcasters, although 108 episodes from the first six years of the show remain missing. The Jon Pertwee episodes were badly affected by the BBC’s policy of reusing or destroying old videotapes and although mostly now restored, several parts of ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ exist only in black and white.

Review posted 28 April 2010

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Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child (classic series)

2010-04-26T22:16:00.003+01:00

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Rating 2½ (5 for the pilot episode)

Written by Anthony Coburn (and C E Webber, uncredited)

Directed by Waris Hussein (and Douglas Camfield – film inserts, uncredited)

Starring William Hartnell (The Doctor), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Derek Newark (Za), Jeremy Young (Kal), Alethea Charlton (Hur), Howard Lang (Horg) and Eileen Way (Old Mother)

Schoolteacher Barbara Wright is concerned about her pupil Susan Foreman and shares these concerns with her colleague Ian Chesterton. Susan is unusually bright in many respects, but strangely uninformed in others. She is also secretive about her home life, other than to say she lives with her grandfather, who doesn’t like strangers. Barbara and Ian decide to confront Susan’s grandfather and go to the scrap yard Susan has given as her address. When they go inside the gates they discover a blue Police box and are then confronted by the elderly man, who is both evasive and angry at their interference. When they hear Susan’s voice from inside the box they force their way past the old man, only to discover that it is considerably bigger on the inside than out. Susan tells her teachers they are in a machine that can travel in time and space, which they do not believe. The Doctor angrily tells them they can now not leave and uses the controls to take them away from London in 1963 back in time to the Stone Age, where they all find themselves in deadly danger.

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The very first episode of ‘Doctor Who’, entitled ‘An Unearthly Child’, was broadcast on BBC (there was only one BBC channel at the time) on 23 November 1963. It was part of a story told across four episodes. During the early years of the series, up to the latter stages of the third season in the Spring of 1966, each episode was given a separate title. So it was that ‘An Unearthly Child’ was followed by the episodes ‘The Cave of Skulls’, ‘The Forest of Fear’ and ‘The Firemaker’. However, it is the opening episode that is of particular interest and especially an earlier version, filmed a month or so before the one that was broadcast. Referred to these days as the “pilot” episode, it was not intended as such, but there were several technical problems identified with it and the depiction of the Doctor was considered to be too sinister and too frightening for younger viewers. It is this pilot that is most interesting to me.

I think it is superior to the later version, although how long the series could have progressed with such a cruel and unsympathetic version of the Doctor is a moot point. Even with the character softened somewhat through re-writes, William Hartnell continued to play him as an irascible and autocratic figure, emphasising his alien nature. This is something, to a lesser extent, that subsequent actors who assumed the role later on have continued to do from time to time, right through to the revived series, starting with Christopher Eccleston’s war-scarred Doctor in 2005.

The pilot is certainly rough around the edges, but even after nearly 47 years it still packs a punch, as does the later broadcast version. A big part of this, of course, is thanks to the opening credit visuals and the extraordinary theme music, composed by Ron Grainer and created by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, using electronic oscillators and various pioneering tape loop and reverse tape effects. The other most significant contribution to the early and ongoing success of the series is the TARDIS, the time machine shaped like a Police box. Although an anachronism now that many younger viewers would not be familiar with outside of the series, they were still a common sight throughout the 1960s and, in fact, there are apparently one of two still in use in rural areas.

The BBC already had an established reputation for innovative and popular sci-fi drama, first in the 1950s with the ‘Quatermass’ trilogy (the three serials were broadcast live) and then in 1961 with ‘A for Andromeda’, which starred Julie Christie in one of her earliest roles. Tragically, only one of the seven episodes has survived. Much like these earlier productions, the episode ‘An Unearthly Child’, whether the pilot or the broadcast version, remains a significant moment in the history of British television and film science-fiction.

The following three episodes that make up the first story are not of as much interest and seen through our eyes now are borderline offensive, with their depiction of unintelligent “savages”, and entirely historically unauthentic and unrealistic. However, they do need to be considered within the context of the time in which they were made. What is interesting is that it is the character Ian Chesterton who is most proactive in getting them out of the predicament they find themselves in, while the Doctor often sulks and behaves in an almost childish manner, his pride easily hurt. He is a long way removed from the humanitarian Doctor of later years.

The Foreman scrap yard visited by Barbara and Ian in the opening episode, where they first encounter the Doctor and enter the TARDIS, is seen again in two subsequent stories much later on – ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ in 1985 and ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ in 1989.

William Hartnell, the first Doctor, was an experienced theatre and film actor whose career dated back to the 1920s. He was 55 years old when he assumed the role, but he looked older. He was, by some accounts, not always easy to work with during his time on Doctor Who and ill health meant he had problems memorising his lines. He played the role in the first three seasons and the first two stories of season four. His final episode was broadcast on 29 October 1966. He returned briefly to appear in ‘The Three Doctors’ in December 1972 through into January 1973, although his appearance was limited by health problems. He died in 1975 at the age of 67.

Derek Newark, who appears in episodes two to four of this initial story, appeared in Doctor Who again in 1970 at the time of the third Doctor in a story called ‘Inferno’. It was primarily directed by Douglas Camfield, who was assistant director to Waris Hussein on ‘An Unearthly Child’ and directed some of the second unit film inserts.

Review posted 26 April 2010

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Star Trek (2009 film)

2010-04-20T16:34:00.018+01:00

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Rating 3¼

Directed by J J Abrams

Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry

Starring Chris Pine (James T Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Karl Urban (Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy), Zoe Saldana (Nyota Uhura), John Cho (Hikaru Sulu), Anton Yelchin (Pavel Chekov), Simon Pegg (Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott), Eric Bana (Captain Nero), Chris Greenwood (Christopher Pike), Ben Cross (Sarek), Wynona Ryder (Amanda Grayson), Chris Hemsworth (George Samuel Kirk) and Leonard Nimoy (Spock)

When Starfleet receives a distress signal from the planet Vulcan, cadets are mobilised for active service on awaiting starships. Commander Spock is assigned to the starship USS Enterprise, which is captained by Christopher Pike. A junior Starfleet physician, Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy, smuggles aboard his friend James T Kirk, a rebellious cadet who has been suspended from active duty following a charge brought against him by Spook. As the Enterprise travels at warp speed towards the stricken planet, Kirk realises that something is seriously wrong and it is somehow connected to the death of his father many years earlier.

...

Development on ‘Star Trek’ began in early 2005. The last Star Trek film, ‘Nemesis’, had been released in December 2002 to generally unenthusiastic reviews and grossed a little over $67 million at the box office against a production budget of $60 million. The last (to date) television series, ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’, ran for four seasons, but suffered from sharply declining audience figures before coming to an end in May 2005. ‘Star Trek’ was intended to “re-boot” the franchise, going right back to the beginning to tell the story of how the original characters first met and became the crew of the starship USS Enterprise.

The “re-boot” was placed in the hands of ‘Lost’ co-creators and producers J J Abrams (who directed the film) and Damon Lindelof. The screenplay was written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who, alongside Abrams, are the co-creators of the television series ‘Fringe’. The film utilised extensive state of the art special effects and had a production budget of $150 million. It grossed a little over $385 million at the box office. Its domestic gross a little under £258 million placed it at No.7 in the yearly list for 2009.

I am not a devoted fan of Star Trek. I watched the original iconic late-1960s television series as a child and teenager and loved it. There was a time when I watched ‘Next Generation’ regularly, but that is many years ago and I am perhaps not as keen on it in retrospective. I can take or leave ‘Deep Space Nine’; I don’t mind watching the occasional episode, but it is not something I would wish to watch regularly. I didn’t like ‘Voyager’ very much and missed out on ‘Enterprise’ altogether. I have seen most, but not necessarily all of the various feature films and oddly the one that probably stands out most for me is ‘Nemesis’, which was not universally well received.

There are all manner of ways in which ‘Star Trek’ could have been a monumental disaster, but it proved to be anything but; not only performing well (if not spectacularly) at the box office, but also garnering good reviews from critics. 279 reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes result in a 94% fresh rating. I don’t know what reaction was like amongst “Trekkers” (or “Trekkies”), but while the nature of fandom dictates that there was probably plenty of criticism, I am not aware of any widespread backlash against the film.

It’s not perfect. The special effects are extremely impressive, but an over-abundance of effects and constant in-your-face frenetic action sequences are not to all tastes. It can become exhausting and the depiction of Kirk as almost super-human, apparently able to withstand any amount of punishment, does wear out its welcome after a while. The film tumbles into extreme schmaltz on several occasions, but this is actually quite affecting, more so than nauseating, which it so easily could have been. I wasn’t sure what to make of the relationship of Spock and Uhura. I don’t know where that came from, but I guess I must have forgotten something from the original television series.

What most struck me was the near-perfect casting of the main characters, with one notable exception. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, in particular, give performances that, while they are not impersonations, are scarily accurate. Pine, without attempting to duplicate William Shatner’s inimitable acting style, is sensational, although ultimately it is perhaps Quinto who steals the film. Each actor, it seems, was free to take elements from the performances of the original actors and incorporate these into their own interpretation of the role. It works superbly well. The one exception, I thought, was Simon Pegg as Scotty, which is a pity because I like Simon Pegg a lot.

I must admit I did struggle with the film during the first twenty or thirty minutes. It was slipping into boredom for me and the two-dimensional portrayal of Kirk as a troubled and rebellious child/teenager/young man almost had me reaching for the off button. However, things improved as soon as they were on the Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy’s appearance as Spock is beautifully incorporated into the story, although as the film closes and we hear those famous words, “Space... the Final Frontier,” I just think they should have been spoken by William Shatner, not Nimoy.

I wasn’t sure what to expect and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Review posted 20 April 2010

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Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks

2010-04-18T11:23:00.015+01:00

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Rating 2

Written by Mark Gatiss

Directed by Andrew Gunn

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amelia ‘Amy’ Pond), Ian McNeice (Winston Churchill), Bill Patterson (Professor Edwin Bracewell), Tim Wallers (Captain Childers), Susannah Fielding (Lillian), Nina de Cosimo (Blanche) and Colin Procktor (ARP Warden)

The Doctor receives a call from Winston Churchill and the TARDIS materialises in the cabinet war rooms beneath London. The British have a new secret weapon in their war against the Nazis; “ironsides” invented and built by Professor Edwin Bracewell. The Doctor instantly recognises these new weapons as Daleks and desperately attempts to warn Churchill of the deadly danger he has unleashed, while trying to unravel Bracewell’s motivation for his apparent deception and discover the secret plan of the Daleks.

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The third episode of season five of the revived series brings back the Doctor’s most deadly and iconic adversaries, the Daleks. I am not particularly a fan of the Daleks and I do feel, as do others, that they are in danger of becoming overused. They first appeared in a Doctor Who story called ‘The Daleks’ (or ‘The Mutants’) in December 1963. They appeared in sixteen stories in total in the so-called “classic series”, making their final appearance in ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ in October 1988. This is their sixth appearance since the revival of the series in 2005.

I always look forward to a new Doctor Who episode, but perhaps the Dalek episodes are not amongst my favourites. However, Phelim O’Neill wrote in the Guardian about ‘Victory of the Daleks’, “Many are fearing the return of the overused Daleks for all the wrong reasons. Tonight should see those same doubters eagerly awaiting their next appearance... This is the new Doctor’s first outright classic episode.” I also noticed that the episode was written by Mark Gatiss. This made me go in with much higher expectations, but in the end I came away slightly disappointed. It was another fairly typical Dalek episode. It was quite enjoyable in a frenetic kind of way, but it was flawed. I don’t think it was a classic and ultimately I found it rather unsatisfying.

The premise was an interesting one, but it needed more than 45 minutes to tell the story. It felt rushed to me and I continue to believe that it isn’t necessary for every single story to be told at such a frenetic pace. It is all a bit exhausting.

Once the Doctor has established what the Daleks are planning the story does start to unravel a little bit. There has been criticism of the Dalek ship, but surely the slightly comical no-expense-spent DIY look of it was deliberate. My initial reaction to the preposterous sight of the Spitfires attacking the spaceship in outer space beyond the atmosphere of the planet Earth (in what I take to be a nod towards the climactic scenes in the original ‘Star Wars’ film) was to find it quite insulting in its stupidity. However, it was clearly intended with tongue firmly in cheek and the silliness and humour of it all should be greeted with a smile. There has been criticism about the somewhat anti-climactic ending, but clearly this is just a prelude to another story, presumably to be told at the end of this season.

The crack in time witnessed in the opening episode of season five has now reappeared at the close of the next two episodes, signalling that something similar to the “Bad Wolf” story-arc of season one is coming.

Ian McNeice gives a broad impersonation of Churchill and unlike some fans I didn’t mind the implication that he and the Doctor are old friends, despite there being no suggestion of that in the history of the series before now. I do, however, appreciate that the portrayal of someone as complex and contentious as Churchill as a genial old cove is considerably wide of the mark. It was nice to see Bill Patterson – and Professor Bracewell proved to be a effective character. However, where Russell T Davies was a master of bringing life to even the most peripheral characters and inhabiting them with real emotional resonance, it is perhaps something this new season is going to lack.

‘Victory of the Daleks’ contained some very nice touches and the story was given extra frisson by the knowledge that when Terry Nation first created the Daleks 47 years ago he based them on the Nazis. Having said that, I do not imagine it is destined to become one of my favourites and I don’t think it is the “outright classic” suggested by Phelim O’Neill. I have given the episode a rating of two, which acknowledges the high standards of the series in general and my own high expectations of it.

Early indications are that ‘Victory of the Daleks’ was watched by an audience in the region of 6.2 million viewers, just under 33% of the total television audience during that timeslot. Although this is not an exceptional result, it is still a very strong showing.

Review posted 18 April 2010

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Life

2010-04-17T22:27:00.016+01:00

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Rating 2½

Created by Rand Ravich

Writers: Rafael Alvarez, Laurie Arent, Wendolyn Calhoun, R J Colleary, Marjorie David, Scott M Gimple, Joe Hortua, David Manson, Glen Mazzara, Rand Ravich, Melissa Scrivner, Jonathan Shapiro, Far Shariat

Directors: Adam Arkin, John Behring, John Dahl, Holly Dale, Tucker Gates, Elodie Keene, Fred Keller, Peter Markle, Paul McCrane, Daniel Sackheim, David Semel, Marcos Siega, David Straiton, Lawrence Thrilling, Jay Torres, Tony Wharmby

Starring Damian Lewis (Detective Charlie Crews), Sarah Shahi (Detective Dani Reese), Adam Arkin (Ted Earley), Brent Sexton (Officer Bobby Stark), Donal Logue (Captain Kevin Tidwell), Robin Weigert (Lt Sgt Karen Davis), Jessy Schram (Rachel Seybolt), Victor Rivers (Jack Reese), Garret Dillahunt (Roman Nevikov), Shashawnee Hall (Special Agent Paul Bodner), Roger Aaron Brown (Carl Ames), Jennifer Siebel (Jennifer Conover), Titus Welliver (Titus Hollis), Brooke Langton (Constance Griffiths), Christina Hendricks (Olivia Canton), Gabrielle Union (Detective Jane Seever) and Helen McCrory (Amanda Puryer)

LAPD uniform police officer Charlie Crews is wrongly convicted of a double murder and spends twelve years in high security prisons. When the conviction is quashed and he is released he receives a $50 million compensation settlement and is reinstated in the LAPD as a homicide detective. He is assigned Detective Dani Reese, who harbours her own problems, as his partner and begins an unofficial investigation to identify the people who framed up, an investigation that leads him to his partner’s father, retired LAPD police caption Jack Reese.

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‘Life’ was an NBC police drama broadcast across two seasons and a total of 32 episodes between 26 September 2007 and 8 April 2009, at which point NBC announced that it would not return for a third season. It starred the acclaimed and skilled English actor Damian Lewis, who had previously made an impact on American television in the 2001 mini-series ‘Band of Brothers’, and Sarah Shahi, who is perhaps otherwise best known for her role in seasons two and three of the television drama series ‘The L Word’. The English stage actress Helen McCrory, the wife of Damian Lewis, had a recurring role in season two of the show. ‘Life’ was created by Rand Ravich, the writer/director of the 1999 Johnny Depp film ‘The Astronaut’s Wife’

It is standard practice that all American network police procedurals come with a quirk; something that is intended to make each one stand out against the others in what is otherwise a very formulaic genre. ‘Life’ came with an overabundance of quirks and that, perhaps, was partly its downfall. Charlie Crews had so many tics and idiosyncrasies that he made even Dr Gregory House (from the hugely and I think inexplicably popular television medical drama ‘House’) seem positively mundane. To add to an already bursting to the seams collection of quirks displayed by Crews, his partner Dani Reese was a recovering drug addict and alcoholic with a major chip on her shoulder and Kevin Tidwell, the captain of their homicide division (in season two of the show), had an eccentric personality and an unpredictable approach to his job. The basic premise of the show, of course, was already patently ridiculous, but it was compounded by too much silliness and too many characters who were written out without proper explanation.

Crews was a Zen-like character who bought himself a huge house in the hills and seemed to be addicted to very fast and very expensive cars, but who had no furniture in his house because he claimed his life was not ruled by possessions or material things. He obsessively ate fruit of all kinds and varieties and constantly expressed childlike wonder at technological advances that had occurred while he was in prison. He was a very high profile and contentious figure in the LAPD, one that was potentially very embarrassing for them, so they assigned him a partner who was a recovering drug-addict and alcoholic with some serious issues of her own. The silliness was piled on thick and fast.

Throughout the first season and the first half of season two Crews was obsessed with his former wife, constantly harassing her new husband and ultimately breaking down her defences and persuading her to sleep with him. It was a pointless and grating sub-plot and neither character was seen or mentioned again afterwards. The defence attorney who continued to work for twelve years to have the conviction quashed and Crews released from prison and who seemed to be an important figure in his life was suddenly written out of the show without warning. Crews was obsessed with finding his god-daughter, the daughter of the friends he was wrongly convicted of murdering. When he finally did track her down, he brought her to stay with him. Subsequently, he decided it was not safe for her and sent her away. She was not seen or mentioned again. In the first season the homicide division Crews was assigned to was headed up by a character who proved to be a decidedly uninteresting presence and was summarily written out at the start of season two and replaced with a new character. The rather sudden disappearance of Jack Reese in season two was treated with far too little concern by characters who should have taken much more interest in his absence, until a rather clunky explanation for his disappearance was provided in the final episodes.

I found the sudden departure of Dani Reese from the main storyline during the closing episodes of season two rather strange. The reasons given for this and her brief appearances in subsequent episodes didn’t work very well for me to explain what was going on. It was only after I had finished watching the season and read about the background of the show that I discovered that the actress Sarah Shahi was pregnant. Initially, the character Bobby Stark was temporarily promoted upwards to become Crews’ new partner and I thought that worked quite well, but after a couple of episodes he was suddenly replaced, for no obvious reason.

The necessity to make allowances for Sarah Shahi’s pregnancy is understandable, but there seems to have been far too many other instances of the writers simply changing their minds about a character or storyline. This is not altogether uncommon in the early stages of American network shows, but surely not usually to this degree?

The premise, as I have already mentioned, was preposterous and the season-wide conspiracy story-arc in season two became increasingly convoluted, to the point where, except for the absence of aliens, it was almost heading into ‘The X-Files’ territory. I was, I should mention, reasonably diverted by this storyline, although it was ultimately rushed to a somewhat unconvincing conclusion (perhaps because the writers knew that show was not coming back and wanted to tie up some loose ends).

There were as many problems in the show as good points, perhaps more, and I really struggled to get past the first episode, which I found monumentality irritating. However, for all the faults and for all of my criticisms, I did end up enjoying it, although whether or not I’d want to watch the whole thing again is another matter entirely.

The opening episode of ‘Life’ attracted an audience of 10.15 million viewers on NBC. The low point was the eighteenth episode of the second season, which was watched by 4.22 million viewers. The final episode attracted 4.5 million viewers. The first season of the show was disrupted by the Writers Guild of America strike and only eleven episodes were made, although twenty-two had been commissioned. Several writers did not return for the second season, which ran to twenty-one episodes.

Review posted 17 April 2010

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Meteor Storm

2010-04-12T11:11:00.004+01:00

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Rating 1

Directed by Tibor Takács

Written by Peter Mohan

Starring Michael Trucco (Colonel Tom Young), Kari Matchett (Dr Michelle Young), Kirsten Prout (Kara Young), Brett Dier (Jason Young), Eric Johnson (Kyle Pember), Lara Gilchrist (Lena), Emily Holmes (Laura), Travis Nelson (Brad), Kevein McNulty (General Brock) and Viv Leacock (Colonel Jack Clancey)

San Francisco prepares for what should be a spectacular meteor shower speeding across the night sky. Astro-physicist Dr Michelle Young is angry when her estranged husband Tom forgets to collect their two teenage children, Kara and Jason, to bring them to see the display. However, instead of the spectacular display everyone was expecting, this is the first of a series of deadly meteor storms that threatens to destroy San Francisco and wipe out the population. Michelle and Tom have to put their difference aside to work with the US Military to find a solution – and rescue their kids.

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I am not a regular viewer of the Sci-Fi Channel, but I have watched enough “SyFy” movies to know exactly what to expect and yet I still cannot stop myself from hoping that the next one I watch will not be as laughably bad as the last one. So it was with ‘Meteor Storm’, which I watched because it stars Kari Matchett. This isn’t the worst example I have seen, but it was just a jumble of ridiculous clichés and pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

Michael Trucco, who starred in ‘Battlestar Gallactica, which I have never seen a single episode of, is the all-action hero here. We know this because he wears a leather jacket and rides around on a Harley. When he is not riding the Harley he is driving around in a Hummer. He rescues a pregnant woman from an overturned vehicle just seconds before it blows up. He rescues his wife from a downed helicopter – just seconds before it blows up. He rescues his children, who are trapped in an elevator, and his daughter’s boyfriend, who is sick and trapped in an apartment, just moments before the entire building collapses. However, to show that he’s only human, he fails to save his wife’s sister, who is driving across the Golden Gate Bridge when it is hit and destroyed by a meteor storm. As it happens, something that is conveniently overlooked, she would probably have safely got to the other side had it not been for Michelle calling her on her cell-phone while she was driving and screaming at her to get off the bridge, something that caused her to crash.

I cannot be too critical because it is not as if I do not know exactly what to expect when I watch these things, but ‘Meteor Storm’ leaves no cliché overlooked and has no sense of humour to alleviate the grimness of it all. It’s competently made, but wholly unimaginative.

Review posted 12 April 2010

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Mannequin

2010-04-12T09:35:00.012+01:00

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Rating 2

Directed by Michael Gottileb

Written by Michael Gottileb and Edward Rugoff

Starring Andrew McCarthy (Jonathan Switcher), Kim Cattrall (Emmy Hasure), Carole Davis (Roxie Shield), James Spader (Mr Richards), G W Bailey (Captain Felix Maxwell), Cristopher Maher (Armand), Steve Vinovich (B J Wert) and Estelle Getty (Mrs Claire Timkin)

Jonathan Switcher goes through a succession of dead end jobs until one day a mannequin he created comes to life and his life is transformed. He finds work creating displays in a department store, but soon finds himself in conflict with his girlfriend Roxie, the store’s Vice-president Mr Richards and its officious and incompetent security guard Felix Maxwell. He falls in love with the dummy, a woman from ancient Egypt called Emahauser, who only comes to life when she can be seen by no one else but him. His displays cause a sensation and he becomes a target for the owner of a rival department store.

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‘Mannequin’ is a 1987 romcom. Everything about the film screams the 1980s and that is a decade I continue to struggle with. Such an outlook makes it difficult to view a film like this with anything approaching an objective response, although as time moves on I am beginning to feel less anger about the horror of Thatcherism, perhaps because what has subsequently occurred has proved to be a kind of watered-down and deceitful version of it, which has been, if anything, even more repulsive and damaging. The film is a typical product of its time, a shallow decade of ostentatious greed that at least had its own very distinctive identity. What we are left with now, seemingly a result of that decade, is pastiche and rampant greed that has gone so far out of control there is no pulling it back.

There is not much to be said about ‘Mannequin’. It’s a silly, kitschy and, in retrospect, almost endearing film that stands the test of time as a harmless artefact of its period. Andrew McCarthy was one of the so-called “Brat Pack” and his other hit films from the era include ‘St Elmo’s Fire’ and ‘Pretty in Pink’. Fans of ‘Sex in the City’ may find some interest in the presence of Kim Cattrall in one of her earlier roles. Estelle Getty (‘The Golden Girls’) and G W Bailey (the ‘Police Academy’ films) also feature and there is a truly awful performance by James Spader.

‘Mannequin’ was not popular with critics, but it grossed nearly $43 million at the domestic box office, more than ‘Pretty in Pink’ the previous year. It is No.27 in the domestic gross list for 1987, one place behind ‘Wall Street’ and one in front of the Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah comedy ‘Roxanne’.

A sequel, ‘Mannequin: On the Move’, starring Kristy Swanson, followed in 1991.

Review posted 12 April 2010

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Doctor Who: The Beast Below

2010-04-11T11:03:00.036+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Written by Steven Moffat

Directed by Andrew Gunn

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amelia ‘Amy’ Pond), Sophie Okonedo (Liz Ten), Hannah Sharp (Mandy), Alfie Field (Timmy), Terrence Hardiman (Hawthorne), Christopher Good (Morgan) and David Ajala (Peter)

This is Amy’s first journey in the TARDIS. The Doctor takes her far into the future to a spacecraft that look like a skyline of skyscrapers suspended in space, each one bearing the name of a different English county. He says this is what remains of the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland after the planet Earth was destroyed by solar flares, although it does not include Scotland because the Scottish people wanted their own ship. They discover a young girl who is crying and yet being ignored by all those around her and the Doctor tells Amy to find out why the girl is upset. He also wants her to find out more about the strange painted “fairground” heads that sit motionless in glass-fronted booths. Meanwhile, he goes off to investigate why there is not even the faintest hint of vibration on the giant spacecraft and discovers it has no engine. During these investigations he encounters Liz Ten, the incumbent British monarch, who already knows who he is.

...

‘The Beast Below’ is the second episode of the fifth season of the revived series and the second episode to feature the new doctor and companion. As was the case with the opening episode, ‘The Eleventh Hour’, it was written by Steven Moffat, who has assumed the role of head writer and executive producer following the departure of Russell T Davies.

This is an episode that contains many of the classic elements of Doctor Who and mirrors several themes already seen in the revived series, including the underlying alien nature of the Doctor and the consequences of the burden he is constantly required to shoulder. It contains some memorable moments, but on first viewing I came away from it with a sense of déjà vu. Somehow it just felt like we’d seen all this before and the episode as a whole was slightly underwhelming. Some fans have already noted the similarity to the episode ‘The Long Game’ in the first season of the revived series. There are also clear links back to ‘The Idiot Lantern’ in season two and, in terms at least of the subtext drawing a parallel with the political landscape of Britain, perhaps even a comparison to ‘The Happiness Patrol’ from the Sylvester McCoy era of the late 1980s.

There is an amusing little joke about Scotland – the character Amelia Pond is Scottish, as is Karen Gillan, the actress who plays her, and indeed Steven Moffat. There is also a cleverly timed statement about elections and voting and the fact that the right to protest in this country has been greatly eroded in the lifetime of the current government. The Doctor tellingly comments, “Once every five years everyone chooses to forget what they’ve learned – democracy in action”, and at one point directly refers to the Britain of the far future as displaying all the signs of a police state.

Centre stage is largely given over to Amy to further establish this character. The early signs are very positive and I am inclined to say that Karen Gillan may prove to be the best companion since Bille Piper. Matt Smith has also quickly settled into the role of the Doctor and entertainingly so, although it is too early to judge how he will ultimately compare to his ten predecessors. The character Liz Ten did not work at all for me and the other characters unique to the episode are too sketchy to make much impact, none of them occupying much more than a few minutes of screen time, although the 12-year-old Mandy is actually a quite effective character, being very aware of what is happening around her, unlike the adults who bury their heads in the sand and ignore her, partly because she is a child and partly because she is not yet old enough to vote.

At the moment I suspect my expectations of the fifth season is creating a sense of anti-climax. With a new Doctor, a new companion, a new head writer and new producers I was hoping for a change of direction, a new approach to the series. However, what we seem to have is a rehash of what we’ve already seen during the previous five years. Time will tell, of course, and there are still eleven episodes remaining in this new season. ‘The Beast Below’ may well be an episode that improves with repeated viewings, but my initial reaction is one of slight disappointment.

Additional: Having watched the episode for a second time my opinion about the character Liz Ten remains unchanged, but overall I thought it was much better than my initial reaction to it suggested and it certainly deserves a nod for the use of the word “minging”.

Review posted 11 April 2010

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Quatermass II

2010-04-07T09:33:00.006+01:00

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Rating 2¾

Directed by Val Guest

Written by Nigel Kneale and val Guest, based on the original BBC serial written by Nigel Kneale

Starring Brian Donlevy (Professor Bernard Quatermass), John Longden (Inspector Lomax), Sid James (Jimmy Hall), William Franklyn (Brand), Bryan Forbes (Marsh), Vera Day (Sheila), Charles Lloyd Pack (Dawson), Percy Herbert (Gorman), Michael Ripper (Ernie) and Jogn Rae (McLeod)

Professor Bernard Quatermass is angry after his request for more funds for his planned exploration of the Moon is rejected, but he is intrigued by the meteorite shower his team has been tracking and by the sample they have analysed. He travels to Winnerden Flats, the area where the meteorites were concentrated and discovers what appears to be a fully-functioning replica of his planned Moon base. His colleague Marsh is badly burned by ammonia gas from one of the fallen rocks that leaves a strange V shape mark on his skin. Quatermass is warned away by armed guards and when he is given a hostile reception in the nearby town he goes to Inspector Lomax at Scotland Yard for help investigating the true purpose of the secret base.

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‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ in 1955 was a Hammer Films production based on the 1953 BBC television serial. The commercial success of that film resulted in ‘Quatermass II’ in 1957, also based on a BBC serial. Nigel Kneale, who wrote the BBC serials, was involved in writing the screenplay this time around, with input by producer Anthony Hinds and subsequent re-writes by the director Val Guest. The American actor Brian Donlevy returned as Bernard Quatermass, much to Kneale’s annoyance, who considered him, quite rightly, to be miscast in the role. Kneale also claimed that Donlevy was an alcoholic who was paralytic on the set and could barely read his lines off the idiot boards that were being used because he was incapable of memorising them. Guest claimed that these allegations were not true, saying Donlevy was very professional, although he did concede that the actor laced his coffee with whisky and was “not stone cold sober either”.

Donlevy was cast as a deliberate ploy to make the ‘Quatermass’ films more appealing to American distributors. He is not a perfect match for the role, but not a bad one, and his performance is fine. If he really was “crippled with drink” as Nigel Kneale claimed it doesn’t show. Reginald Tate had played the lead role in the first BBC serial, but following his sudden death in 1955 he was replaced at short notice by John Robinson for the second serial. The role was played by André Morell in the third BBC serial and subsequently by Andrew Keir, John Mills and Jason Flemyng.

The film rattles along at a brisk pace and doesn’t suffer for the general absence of special effects. A Shell oil-refinery doubled as the secret complex where the aliens are plotting their colonisation of Earth. We do not see the alien creatures until the final moments of the film and then only through the gloom of night cover. They are typical of the period, not at all convincing and yet somehow more effective than many of today’s state-of-the-art CGI effects. Fans of the ‘Carry On’ films would perhaps be interested to see Sid James in one of his earlier non-comic roles.

‘Quatermass II’ has been widely interpreted as an attack on the Conservative government at the time.

Review posted 7 April 2010

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Jonathan Creek: The Judas Tree

2010-04-06T14:50:00.006+01:00

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Rating 2

Written and directed by David Renwick

Starring Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek), Sheridan Smith (Joey Ross), Paul McGann (Hugo Dore), Sasha Behar (Harriet Dore), Natalie Walter (Emily Somerton), Doreen Mantle (Mrs Gantry), Ian McNeice (Father Roderick Alberic), Florence Hall (Young Emily), Susanne Ahmet (Kim) and Stuart Milligan (Adam Klaus)

Emily Somerton is hired to help the aging housekeeper of a large house where a mysterious and still unexplained death occurred more than a hundred years previously. Emily suffers from a nervous disposition following a strange incident several years earlier when she saw a house that seemed to disappear and was then attacked by an old man slithering through the long grass in the field where the vanishing house had stood. Her state of mind is made more fragile by strange happenings in the house where she has gone to work and live and she asks self-styled psychic investigator Joey Ross for help, who in turn involves Jonathan Creek. Before long they are desperately trying to solve the puzzle and prove Emily innocent of the charge of murder.

...

‘Jonathan Creek’ ran for four seasons and 25 episodes on BBC1 between May 1997 and February 2004, attracting an audience as big as 11.5 million viewers. Each episode was written by David Renwick, who is otherwise best known for the often surreal sitcom ‘One Foot in the Grave’, which subverted the form with some inspired black comedy. Renwick also dramatised four episodes of ‘Agatha Christie’s Poirot’ starring David Suchet in the early 1990s, amongst his portfolio of other work.

Following a gap of nearly five years, a new episode of ‘Jonathan Creek’ was broadcast at New Year 2009, attracting an audience just shy of 10 million, and now after a further lengthy break comes another “special”, broadcast at Easter 2010, with the promise of more to come.

Jonathan Creek designs illusions for a cheesy and amoral stage magician called Adam Klaus, the only other character to have been featured in the whole of the series. Creek also solves seemingly unsolvable mysteries, placing the emphasis on discovering how something was done and not the identity of the perpetrator. Klaus is not involved in these mysteries and his presence in the series is for comic purposes. For example, in an irreverent and irrelevant sub-plot in ‘The Judas Tree’ he becomes the victim of an online prankster and is painted as a racist. Klaus is not racist; he is simply entirely self-absorbed. The role of Adam Klaus was played in the very first episode by Anthony Head, whose future involvement after that was presumably curtailed by ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. Stuart Milligan assumed the role in the first episode of the second season in January 1998.

Creek’s foil was initially an investigative writer called Maggie Magellan (played by Caroline Quentin), who would quite happily lie and use dishonesty in pursuit of material for her books. She frequently involved a reluctant Creek in her investigations and they had an on-off sexual relationship. Quentin played this role in the first three seasons up to January 2000. There was no new season in 2001 or 2002, but Julia Sawalha made her first appearance in the Christmas 2001 special, playing Carla Borrego, a theatrical agent. Sawalha became a regular cast member in season four in 2003, by which time her character had married and become the presenter of a real-life crime show on television. Her husband was played by the comic actor, writer and musician Adrian Edmondson, whose frequent on-screen partner Ric Mayall had guest starred in a season two episode.

Following the five-year hiatus, Sheridan Smith made her first appearance in the January 2009 special, playing Joey Ross, and has repeated that role in ‘The Judas Tree’. Smith is probably best known for the sitcom ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’. Her other television work includes the comedy-drama series ‘Love Soup’, which was created and written by David Renwick.

David Renwick has said one of the reasons he stopped writing ‘Jonathan Creek’ after the fourth season was that it was becoming increasingly hard to think up new puzzles and mysteries for his title character to solve. His reason for bringing the character back was largely because the only other viable option was to retire, unless he attempted to create an entirely new show, something he says he does not have the energy for. ‘The Judas Tree’ does seem to indicate that his powers are waning. Although it starts quite brightly, the story never really goes anywhere and there is very little for Jonathan to ponder. Worst of all, the twisty ending is very sloppy and undefined. Jonathan does not solve the puzzle at all, although he has put most of the pieces in place, and it has to be explained to him, following which it is not entirely clear how it all ends.

Having said that, Jonathan has always been a likeable character, albeit one with a mixture of detached reticence and off-hand arrogance, and the one-time stand-up comedian Alan Davies is a perfect fit for the role, although he was not the first choice. A number of other actors had been approached and at one point Hugh Lawrie was signed to the project before Davies was eventually hired. Sheridan Smith has also, I think, proved to be a successful addition to the cast. She does, of course, have the advantage that she has not immediately succeeded Caroline Quentin and it is now ten years since Quentin left the show.

Familiarity and likeability work in favour of ‘The Judas Tree’, which is otherwise a rather weak and undistinguished addition to the list of ‘Jonathan Creek’ episodes. The symbolic significance of the Judas tree that perpetually fails to flower remains somewhat elusive.

Review posted 6 April 2010

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Doctor Who: The Two Doctors

2010-04-05T16:52:00.017+01:00

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Rating 3

Written by Robert Holmes

Directed by Peter Moffatt

Starring Colin Baker (The Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Perpugilliam ‘Peri’ Brown), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Jacqueline Pearce (Chessene), Laurence Payne (Dastari), John Stratton (Shockeye), James Saxon (Oscar) and Carman Gomez (Anita)

The second Doctor is sent by the Time Lords, taking his companion Jamie with him, to put a stop to experiments in time travel being conducted under the auspices of a brilliant scientist called Dastari. The Doctor is concerned by biological “augmentations” Dastari has made to a morally-corrupt and bestial alien species known as the Androgum, in particular Chessene, who now possesses a genius intellect. His initial attempts at negotiations with Dastari end badly, but before he can repair the diplomatic damage done he becomes caught up in a raid by the Sontarans. The sixth Doctor collapses in the TARDIS when he has a vision of the violent death of an earlier incarnation of himself. He and his companion Peri follow a trail of clues that eventually lead them to a hacienda in the south of Spain where the second Doctor is being held captive.

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I chanced to watch ‘The Two Doctors’ recently quite by accident. The Sc-Fi Channel was having a “Doctor Who Easter Weekend”, showing episodes from what is commonly referred to as the “classic series”. I wasn’t aware of this, but came across it while aimlessly channel surfing the day after ‘The Eleventh Hour’, the opening episode of the new Doctor Who series, had been broadcast by the BBC.

I probably watched some Doctor Who episodes in the era of the first Doctor, William Hartnell, and I was definitely watching at the time of the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, but it was during the time of Jon Pertwee that it became my favourite television show. Pertwee was the third Doctor and played the role between January 1970 and June 1974. I continued to watch regularly for the next ten years when the role was played by Tom Baker and Peter Davison, but I was beginning to flag by the time of the arrival of Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor in March 1984. I certainly watched some of his first season and, I think, bits of the second season, but I don’t have any particularly vivid memories of any of it. Watching ‘The Two Doctors’ did not bring back any memories at all, so it is quite possible I had not previously seen it.

This was not the first time the Doctor had encountered a previous incarnation of himself. ‘The Three Doctors’ in December 1972 and January 1973 marked the tenth anniversary of the show and brought Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell together. The twentieth anniversary was marked by ‘The Five Doctors’ in November 1983, with Peter Davison joined by Tom Baker (little more than a cameo appearance pieced together from old unused footage after he had declined to be involved), Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and Richard Hurdnall, standing in for William Hartnell, who died in 1975. Hurdnall himself died just a few months after ‘The Five Doctors’ was first broadcast. Unlike those two stories, ‘The Two Doctors’ did not mark an anniversary.

This was a troubled time for Doctor Who. Michael Grade, who became Controller of BBC1 in 1984, made no attempt to hide the fact that he detested the show, calling it “rubbish” and “pathetic”. There was a gap of eighteen months between the end of the first season with Colin Baker in the lead role and the start of the second season, at the end of which Grade sacked Baker, calling his performance, “Utterly unlikeable, absolutely god-awful in fact.”

Although long-term fans of Doctor Who have often been critical of the quality of the episodes during this period, Colin Baker has been defended with increasing regularity and his portrayal of the Doctor seems to have found more and more fans over the years. Baker himself, in my limited experience, has been very gracious about the whole experience and certainly appears to hold no ill-will towards the character or the show itself.

Prior to the arrival of Colin Baker, each Doctor Who story had been shown in multiples of 25-minute episodes, usually four or six. The episodes were now 45-minutes in length and ‘The Two Doctors’ was shown across three episodes between 16 February and 2 March 1985. It was written by Robert Holmes, who had been responsible for many Doctor Who stories, dating back to 1968 when Patrick Troughton portrayed the lead role. Troughton, whose time as the Doctor came to an end in June 1969, reprises his role here, alongside Frazer Hines, playing his companion Jamie, an 18th Century Scottish piper and Jacobite. By 1985 both Troughton and Hines were rather long-in-the-tooth for their characters, but strangely this does not prove to be much of a problem.

The story as it was first written was set largely in New Orleans, but when funding to film on location in the U.S. did not materialise this setting was changed to Spain, for no apparent reason. It’s a visually appealing setting, but seems to serve no purpose whatsoever and it doesn’t have any real bearing on the story. Robert Holmes, a vegetarian, intended the story as an allegory about meat eating and attitudes towards the treatment and slaughter of livestock, so perhaps the setting had some relevance in this respect that became lost in translation. The production in Spain was, apparently, plagued by all manner of technical problems.

The story is rather strange and some aspects of it are rather disquieting. The Androgum have no ethical grounding and although this is not always successfully projected, there are troubling moments, including what could be taken to be a representation of the attempted rape of Peri by Shockeye, a character who spends much of the two hours of running time wanting to cook and eat human flesh and who, because the point is laboured to breaking point, does become decidedly irritating as a result.

The two Doctors spend surprisingly little time on screen together and as such there is not much interaction between them, which does rather seem to the defeat the point of the exercise. The character Dastari, who seems to be a kind of updating of Dr Solon from an earlier Doctor Who story ‘The Brain of Morbius’, unfortunately wears a pair a glasses that make him look like a cross between Brains in ‘Thunderbirds’ and a member of The Buggles. This did make him rather difficult to take seriously. The Sontarans, adversaries of the Doctor that had been created by Robert Holmes and had been seen in three previous Doctor Who stories, are rather ineffectively used here. For all of these criticisms, there was something very likeable about the whole thing.

What surprised me most was how good Colin Baker was in the lead role and how much I liked Peri, the Doctor’s companion, portrayed by Nicola Bryant. I had always remembered her as a rather irritating character, but that was not the case here at all. In fact, she seemed rather spirited, even if quite clearly the character was intended to do little more than add a bit of “sex” to what was always a rather sexless show.

I enjoyed ‘The Two Doctors’ immensely, much to my surprise. It is not the best of Doctor Who and the story is a little threadbare, but watching it just 24 hours after ‘The Eleventh Hour’ I was struck by how good the show used to be. This is not intended as a criticism of the revived series, which I like very much, but it brought home to me again that I do find the constantly frenetic pace of the show now a little wearisome after a while.

Robert Holmes died in May 1986, having finished a draft of the first episode of the final story for the second and final season of Doctor Who featuring Colin Baker in the lead role.

Review posted 5 April 2010

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Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

2010-04-05T13:00:00.021+01:00

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Rating 3

Written by Steven Moffat

Directed by Adam Smith

Starring Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amelia ‘Amy’ Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Annette Crosbie (Mrs Angelo), Tom Hopper (Jeff), Nina Wadia (Dr Ramsden), Marcello Magni (Barney Collins), Olivia Colman (Mother), Perry Benson (Ice Cream Man), Caitlin Blackwood (Amelia Pond as a child) and Patrick Moore (himself)

The newly regenerated Doctor is clinging to the outside of his TARDIS as it hurtles out of control and crashes into the garden of a house in the English countryside, where he encounters seven-year-old Amelia Pond. She is not scared of him or perturbed by his bizarre behaviour, but she tells him about a crack in her bedroom wall that frightens her. He investigates and discovers a crack in time and space, through which “Prisoner Zero” has escaped. Returning to his TARDIS, he tells Amelia he will be back in five minutes, but does not rematerialise again until twelve years later. Amy, as she is now known, is less than impressed with his tardiness, but they still have to deal with the alien creature that has been hiding in her house that whole time.

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‘The Eleventh Hour’ marks the beginning of the new era of Doctor Who, introducing the eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, and a new companion, played by Karen Gillan. Steven Moffat has assumed the role of Head Writer, taking over from the departing Russell T Davies. It also marks the arrival of Piers Wenger, who took over the role of Head of Drama at BBC Wales from Julie Gardner in January 2009.

The return of Doctor Who in March 2005 after what had more or less amounted to fifteen years in television wilderness, give or take the brief reign of the eighth Doctor, Paul McGann, in a not entirely successful film-length version in 1996, had seemed like a risky proposition. The decision of Russell T Davies to cast Christopher Eccleston in the lead role undoubtedly took some people by surprise, but it was surely not as contentious as his decision to cast Billie Piper as the Doctor’s companion. It proved to be a triumph, although Eccleston stood down after just one season and most fans seem to prefer his successor David Tennant.

Tennant played the role for three seasons, plus various “specials”, between December 2005 and December 2009, by which time I think the show was starting to feel a little tired and in need of some fresh ideas. To be clear, Russell T Davies did a remarkable job of resurrecting something that seemed to be dead and buried outside of a very loyal and long existing but decidedly entrenched fanbase. This fanbase continues to debate and argue with vehement intensity the merits or otherwise of the Davies era and the changes he brought to what remains the longest-surviving and possibly most successful sci-fi series in television history.

I am great supporter of Russell T Davies and I liked David Tennant as the Doctor, but I do think they chose the right time to step down. I hoped that Steven Moffat, who wrote ‘Blink’, which many fans would argue is the best episode of the RTD era, would take the show in a new direction. Having watched ‘The Eleventh Hour’, plus the clips of forthcoming episodes, I am not sure to what degree this is going to happen. For my own personal tastes, Doctor Who with David Tennant had latterly started to become rather too frenetic. The stories no longer had time to breathe; the Doctor had little time for reflection. If anything, Matt Smith seems to be an even more frenetic incarnation of the character. One television critic has already compared him to Jim Carrey.

I do appreciate that the Doctor Who of 2010 is made for quite a different audience to that of 1985 or 1975 or 1965. This is an audience brought up on computer games; in an era when celebrities are expected to “twitter” every minute of every day so that we can become their artificial “virtual” friends. I am clearly showing my age, but I do increasingly feel slightly out-of-step with a world in which everything is instant.

‘The Eleventh Hour’ draws on themes from previous Doctor Who episodes. An obvious example would be ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, another Steve Moffat script, that took place during David Tennant’s first season in 2006. There is, perhaps, a slight sense of déjà-vu for this reason. The story felt like it quickly ran out of ideas, but to contradict myself somewhat, at the same time I think it would have benefited from being told across two episodes or as a 90-minute extended episode. I was impressed how quickly Matt Smith seems to have settled into the role, but it would have been nice to have spent a bit more time introducing this new Doctor and also his new companion and done so with a little less haste.

One criticism of the revived series that I have previously disagreed with really hit home here. The background music was very intrusive, especially in the opening scenes, rather taking away from the otherwise near perfect mix of humour and creepiness and the sense of claustrophobic foreboding that was clearly the intended ambience. Equally, the alien creature was uninteresting. Patrick Moore makes a pointless and uninvolving cameo apperance as himself, which is a bit of a letdown. However, of much more importance than any of this, I liked the new Doctor and the new companion.

Although not perfect, ‘The Eleventh Hour’ is a very good start to the new era and I am very interested to see how the series unfolds over the next twelve episodes leading up to the Christmas special in December 2010. It does seem that the Daleks and the Cybermen will be making an appearance in this new series, which I find disappointing. Personally, I think they could do with a rest, but then I have never particularly been a fan of either.

‘The Eleventh Hour’ was watched by an audience of appoximately 8 million viewers, nearly 37% of the total television audience in its timeslot.

Review posted 5 April 2010

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Harper’s Island

2010-03-23T11:05:00.016Z

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Rating 3¼

Created by Ari Schlossberg

Executive Producers: Jeffrey Bell and Jon Turteltaub

Episodes written and directed by: EP1 Whap (Ari Schlossberg / Jon Turteltaub); EP2 Crackle (Jeffrey Bell / Sanford Bookstaver); EP3 Ka-Blam (Jill E Blotevogal / Steve Boyum); EP4 Bang (Lindsay Sturman / Guy Bee); EP5 Thwack (Tyler Bensinger / Steve Gomer); EP6 Sploosh (Robert Levine / James Whitmore Jr); EP7 Thrack, Splat, Sizzle (Jeffrey Bell / Scott Peters); EP8 Gurgle (Tyler Bensinger / Rick Bota); EP9 Seep (Nichelle Tramble Spellman / Craig R Baxley); Ep10 Snap (Christine Roum / Steve Boyum); EP11 Splash (Dan Shotz / Rick Bota); EP12 Gasp (Christine Roum and Robert Levine / Seith Mann); Ep13 Sigh (Jeffrey Bell / Sanford Bookstaver)

Starring Elaine Cassidy (Abby Mills), Christopher Gorham (Henry Dunn), Katie Cassidy (Trish Wellington), Cameron Richardson (Chloe Carter), Adam Campbell (Cal Vandeusen), C J Thomason (Jimmy Mance), Jim Beaver (Sheriff Charlie Mills), Richard Burgi (Thomas Wellington), Dean Chekvala (J D Dunn), Matt Barr (Christopher ‘Sully’ Sullivan), Brandon Jay McLaren (Danny Brooks), Chris Gauthier (Malcolm Ross), Sean Rogerson (Joel Booth), Gina Holden (Shea Allen), David Lewis (Richard Allen), Cassandra Sawtell (Madison Allen), Claudette Mink (Katherine Wellington), Amber Borycki (Beth Barrington), Sarah Smyth (Lucy Daramour), Ben Cotton (Shane Pierce), Anna Mae Routledge (Kelly Seaver), Ali Liebert (Nikki Bolton), Beverly Elliott (Maggie Krell), Victor Webster (Hunter Jennings), Callum Keith Rennie (John Wakefield), Jay Brazeau (Dr Ike Campbell), Sarah-Jane Redmond (Sarah Mills), Dean Wray (Cole Harkin), and Harry Hamlin (“Uncle” Marty Dunn)

Seven years ago on Harper’s Island John Wakefield brutally murdered six people in a ritual killing spree before being shot dead by the local sheriff, Charlie Mills, whose wife was one of victims. Mills sent his daughter Abby away from the island following the killings and she has been estranged from him ever since. She comes back to the island seven years later for the wedding of her childhood friend Henry Dunn, but when the wedding guests start to die or disappear it seems as if there is a copycat killer on the loose, continuing where John Wakefield left off.

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‘Harper’s Island’ is a murder mystery / thriller / drama series broadcast on the CBS network in thirteen episodes between 9 April and 11 July 2009. It differed from other American network shows because it was never intended to extend past its one and only season, which might partly explain why CBS allowed the full run to be broadcast despite an alarming drop in ratings after the opening episode. This was rather out-of-step with the usual trigger-happy response of the television networks, which are often quick to cancel anything that does not make a sustained instant impact. The first episode was watched by 10.2 million viewers. The series hit a low with episode nine, which was watched by just 3.2 million viewers. The final episode had an audience of just over 4 million viewers.

The show was created by Ari Schlossberg, who was in charge for the original short pilot presentation. However, by the time of the first episode Jeffrey Bell and Jon Turteltaub had been brought in as executive producers and Bell extensively rewrote that opening episode. Several actors cast in leading roles in the pilot had also been replaced. Jeffrey Bell’s previous credits included ‘The X-Files’ and ‘Angel’. Jon Turteltaub is a successful film director whose credits include ‘While You Were Sleeping’ and ‘National Treasure’. He was an executive producer on ‘Jericho’, a show that ran on the CBS network between 2006 and 2008.

An obvious reference point for ‘Harper’s Island’ is the famous 1939 Agatha Christie crime thriller novel ‘And Then There Were None’, which was originally titled ‘Ten Little Niggers’ and is also known as ‘Ten Little Indians’. The horror franchise ‘Scream’ has also been widely mentioned, although I would say ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and, even more so, its sequel ‘I Still Know What You Did Last Summer’ would be a closer fit. The show bears similarities to numerous other sources, deliberately so. It was always intended to pay homage to a particular brand of murder mystery and horror.

I watched the opening episode three times before making the leap to the second episode. Each time I felt a sense of disappointment because I wanted to like it so much more than I did. However, once I had moved on to episode two I quickly found myself enjoying it more and more and soon became hooked, watching all thirteen episodes (on DVD) in the space of four days.

I quickly decided that it was best not to give too much thought to holes in the plot and the myriad of implausible happenings. The action takes place on an island that is not isolated or otherwise unoccupied. It has a fully established community, who remain largely invisible, other than a small handful of characters. There would, we must conclude, be any number of boats available to take people off the island and yet the destruction of one boat and the disappearance of another is seemingly enough to strand the wedding guests there. Early on various wedding guests and others seem to just disappear without anyone noticing anything in particular. We, the audience, know they have been killed, but within the story their absence is either not mentioned or it is assumed they have returned to the mainland, apparently doing so without saying goodbye and letting anyone know they were leaving. To some extent this is explained by the fact that everyone is hard at work making last-minute plans for what is clearly an elaborate and very expensive wedding, and are somewhat oblivious to what is going on around them, but when we don’t simply accept the ride for what it is there is no doubt that it all becomes rather silly.

Having said this, it is a very enjoyable piece of hokum. The cast is great, including Christopher Gorham, who will be familiar to many people from ‘Ugly Betty’, Cameron Richardson, who was in the short-lived ‘Point Pleasant’, a show I adore, and stalwarts like Richard Burgi and Jim Beaver. The lead role of Abby Mills is played by Elaine Cassidy, an Irish actress I am sure I recognise, although I cannot bring to mind anything else I might have seen her in.

The show is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and the various red herrings are so transparent that they often serve little purpose. It takes a few episodes to really get warmed up and it does start to unravel a little bit in the final few episodes; I am still undecided about the dénouement. However, for all of these criticisms, it’s the most enjoyable American television series I have watched in quite a while, although I am not sure how well it would stand up to a second viewing.

Reviews were mixed. Twenty-two reviews are collected at Metacritic, resulting in a 61% rating. Not all critics were impressed. Matthew Gilbert, writing in the Boston Globe, called it “this enervating, vapid and obscenely over-promoted thriller,” while Daniel Carlson of the Hollywood Reporter thought it was “boring”.

Review posted 23 March 2010

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Jumanji

2010-03-22T16:04:00.007Z

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Rating 3¾

Directed by Joe Johnston

Written by Jonathan Hensleigh, Greg Taylor and Jim Strain, based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg

Starring Robin Williams (Alan Parrish), Kirsten Dunst (Judy Shepherd), Bradley Pierce (Peter Shepherd), Bonnie Hunt (Sarah Whittle), Bebe Neuwirth (Nora Shepherd), David Alan Grier (Carl Bentley), Jonathan Hyde (Van Pelt / Sam Parrish), Patricia Clarkson (Carol-Anne Parrish), Adam Hann-Byrd (Young Alan) and Laura Bell Bundy (Young Sarah)

12-year-old Alan Parrish is bullied by other boys because of his friendship with Sarah Whittle. His father is a cold and distant figure in his life who plans to send him away to boarding school. Alan finds a strange board game that had been buried a hundred years previously and is literally sucked into the game when he and Sarah start to play it. She flees from the house in terror, pursued by African bats, but nobody believes her story of what happened and Alan’s disappearance remains a mystery from that day on. Twenty-six years later Nora Shepherd moves into the house once occupied by the Parrish family with her young niece and nephew Judy and Peter. Their parents were killed in an automobile accident. The children find the board game in the attic and when they start to play it they release Alan, now a fully-grown man, but (with the help of Alan and Sarah) they must complete the game to save the local community from the chaos and destruction they have unwittingly unleashed.

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‘Jumanji’ is a 1995 family film based on a 1981 illustrated children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, who also wrote ‘The Polar Express’. The film employed what were then state-of-the-art special affects and had a production budget of $65 million. It grossed just under $263 million at the box office. Reviews were mixed. 26 reviews are collected at Rotten Tomatoes and result in a 50% rating. At Metacritic the rating is 39% from 18 reviews. At Amazon the brief write-up by Jeff Shannon describes the films as, “A chaotic and misguided attempt at family entertainment, the movies does offer a few good laughs, and the effects are frequently impressive, if not entirely convincing to the eye.”

I certainly agree about the special effects, which are at once impressive (although slightly ragged looking fifteen years on) and yet strangely unconvincing. However, this is a film I like very much. I did not see the film at the cinema and I have never owned a copy on video or DVD, but I have now watched it about half-a-dozen times when it has been shown on television and I have enjoyed it immensely each time.

It’s a spirited romp with a touch of invention in the story and a perfect vehicle for the feverish mugging that is the stock-in-trade of Robin Williams. He is on good form here, but his over-the-top antics do not overwhelm the film and his odd combination of frenetic over-acting and mawkish sentimentality (a kind of mixture of the Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin) works impeccably. The film has a strong cast generally, including 13-year-old Kirsten Dunst, a year after ‘Interview with the Vampire’, and a blink and you might miss her appearance by Patricia Clarkson.

‘Jumanji’ is a contender for my all-time favourite family/children’s film. Great stuff.

Review posted 22 March 2010

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Possession

2010-03-07T15:51:00.012Z

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Rating 1 (2 on second viewing)

Directed by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist

Written by Michael Petroni, based on the film‘Addicted’, written by Byun Won-mi

Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar (Jessica), Lee Pace (Roman), Michael Landes (Ryan), Tuva Novotny (Casey), Chelah Horsdal (Miranda), Dhirendra (Dr Rajan) and William B Davis (Hypnotist)

Jessica and Ryan are happily married, although Jessica is not as attentive to the marriage as her husband. His troubled younger brother Roman, who has recently been released from prison following a six month conviction for aggravated assault, is temporarily living with them, an arrangement that Jessica finds increasingly difficult. Following a freak automobile accident that leaves both Ryan and Roman in a coma, Roman awakes, now claiming to believe that he is Ryan, leaving Jessica to try to come to terms with her own feelings of guilt and loss.

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‘Possession’ is an American remake of a 2002 South Korean film called ‘Addicted’ (or ‘Jungdok’). The film was first announced in 2006 and originally set for release in February 2008, but when the production company Yari Film Group experienced financial problems it resulted in a number of delays, until finally it was released direct to DVD in March 2010.

The film is a melancholy psychological thriller with supernatural overtones that follows a similar pattern to previous Sarah Michelle Gellar films ‘The Grudge’ and ‘The Return’. However, unlike those two films, it just does not work. There is little suspense or foreboding and there does not appear to be much obvious on-screen chemistry between Gellar and Lee Pace, both of whom are competent actors who give uninvolving performances here. The film is rather threadbare and somewhat botched and quite simply fails in almost every aspect.

I consider myself to be a fan of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s work and although the last film in which she took a starring role that made any appreciably commercial impact was ‘The Grudge’ in 2004, I think she has made some very worthwhile films since that time, even if she seems not to attract much critical support for her choices. However, ‘Possession’ is very poor, much like ‘Suburban Girl’ in 2007, another rare Gellar film that was, I concluded, somewhat less than inspiring.

Additional: Having watched the film for a second time, some of my previous criticisms no longer apply. It is, I have decided, not as bad as my initial impression of it suggested and both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Lee Pace give better performances than I had at first concluded. However, I do feel that the film fails to fire on all cylinders - it seems largely stuck in second gear and rarely gets any further than third. Perhaps my biggest criticism is that the portrayal of Ryan’s undying love for Jessica in the opening scenes comes across not so much as romantic and inspiring, but overly sentimental and even a little creepy.

Original review posted 7 March 2010 - additional comments added on 10 March 2010

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Leap Year

2010-03-07T15:42:00.007Z

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Rating 1½

Directed by Anand Tucker

Written by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont

Starring Amy Adams (Anna Brady), Matthew Goode (Declan), Adam Scott (Jeremy), John Lithgow (Jack Brady), Kaitlin Olson (Libby)

Anna and Jeremy have been dating for four years and have recently applied to rent an exclusive apartment. When Jeremy fails to propose to Anna, as she had expected him to do, she decides to follow him to a medical conference in Dublin to propose to him, in accordance with an old Irish tradition told to her by her father Jack, allowing women to propose marriage on February 29th in a leap year. Anna’s flight from Boston is diverted due to bad weather and lands in Cardiff. She hires a boat to take her across the water to Dublin, but the boat is blown off-course in the stormy seas and lands in Dingle, where she meets cynical and hostile pub owner Declan. In desperate need of money, he agrees to drive her to Dublin, but they are befallen by a series of increasingly farcical mishaps.

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‘Leap Year’ is a formulaic rom-com that offers nothing new to the genre and fails in almost everything it sets out to do. We know exactly how the story is going to unfold right from the very start, which is not in itself a problem, but there is no invention here. We might forgive the fact that Cardiff is irritatingly referred to repeatedly as “Cardiff, Wales”, just in case we are not clear about the fact that it is not in Ireland. We might even forgive the complete absence of any attention to geography and overlook the ludicrous suggestion that a boat travelling across the St George’s Channel from Cardiff towards Dublin would land in Dingle. However, it is harder to ignore the horribly stereotypical and patronising depiction of a whimsical Ireland. The Irish accent employed by the English actor Matthew Goode is also all too predictably bad.

Goode has been highly critical of the film, suggesting that it might be a contender for the worst film of 2010. It probably isn’t that bad, but equally there is little to commend it and not even a typically spirited and accomplished performance by Amy Adams can rescue it, although her presence undoubtedly makes it more watchable.

‘Leap Year’ has a 21% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 112 reviews. Its box office gross to date is a little under $26.5 million, against a production budget of $19 million.

Review posted 7 March 2010

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The Good Witch

2010-02-14T17:05:00.005Z

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Rating 2½

Directed by Craig Pryce

Written by Rod Spence

Starring Catherine Bell (Cassandra Nightingale), Chris Potter (Sheriff Jake Russell), Catherine Disher (Martha Tinsdale), Peter MacNeill (George O’Hanrahan), Matthew Knight (Brandon Russell), Hannah Endicott-Douglas (Lori Russell), Noah Cappe (Deputy Derek Sanders), Allan Royal (Bill Cobb), Paul Miller (Mayor Tom Tinsdale), Paula Boudreau (Nancy Perkins), Murray Oliver (Bill Perkins) and Jesse Bostick (Kyle)

Cassandra Nightingale causes much talk in the small town of Middleton when she moves into the Gray House, an old abandoned house that is said to be haunted. She makes an immediate impression on the townsfolk who encounter her, especially the local Sheriff and his two young children, but she is soon accused of being a witch

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‘The Good Witch’ was made for the Hallmark Channel and on its first broadcast in January 2008 was the second highest audience rated original movie ever shown on the channel up to that point. The plot is tissue-thin and it does borrow heavily from earlier films. The local store Cassandra opens, for example, is called Bell, Book and Candle, the name of the store owned by Kim Novak’s character in the 1958 film of the same name.

Small town America is invariably presented in films, particularly made-for-television films, as an ideal and that is the case here. Each and every obstacle encountered is resolved in the most superficial of ways. Brandon Russell, the young son of the Sheriff, deals with a bully on the advice of Cassandra by befriending him and then introducing him to his father, who is able with a minimum of effort to solve the problem of the boy’s troublesome home life and violent single parent. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental, but it’s also sweet-natured, easy to watch and rather heart warming if approached with an absence of cynicism.

Life is not like this, even if the prejudice of Martha Tinsdale, who instigates the witch-hunt against Cassandra, does have a genuine touch of nastiness about it. In the end, though, I rather enjoyed it.

A successful sequel, ‘The Good Witch’s Garden’, followed in February 2009 and apparently a third film, ‘The Good Witch’s Wedding’, is coming.

Review posted 14 February 2010

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Latest Reviews

2010-02-03T11:18:00.002Z

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The Capture of the Green River Killer 2½ Stars
Lifetime Television film shown in two parts that tells the story of the investigation that led to the capture and conviction of the so-called ‘Green River Killer’.

Chopping Mall 2 Stars
Cheap and cheerful 1980s horror.

Hot Fuzz 2¼ Stars
Clever by slightly disappointing follow-up to the much-loved zombie homage ‘Shaun of the Dead’, this time dealing with a zealous police office who is sent to a sleepy crime-free village.

Night Of The Comet 2½ Stars
Cult 1984 low budget homage to low budget genre films.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest 2½ Stars
The second film in the blockbuster franchise. It grossed a whopping $1,066,179,725 at the box office.

Last review posted 3 February 2010

All reviews posted in the last thirty days:

The Capture of the Green River Killer 2 February 2010
Chopping Mall 21 January 2010
The Day of the Triffids (2009) 4 January 2010
Hot Fuzz 3 February 2010
Night Of The Comet 19 January 2010
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest 8 January 2010
The Turn of the Screw 9 January 2010

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Hot Fuzz

2010-02-03T11:05:00.011Z

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Rating 2¼

Directed Edgar Wright

Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright

Starring Simon Pegg (Sgt Nicholas Angel), Nick Frost (PC Danny Butterman), Jim Broadbent (Inspector Frank Butterman), Timothy Dalton (Simon Skinner), Edward Woodward (Tom Weaver), Bill Bailey (Sgt Turner), Paddy Considine (DS Andy Wainwright), Rafe Spall (DC Andy Cartwright), Kevin Eldon (Sgt Tony Fisher), Karl Johnson (PC Bob Walker), Olivia Colman (PC Doris Thatcher), Billie Whitelaw (Joyce Cooper), Eric Mason (Bernard Cooper), Stuart Wilson (Dr Robin Hatcher), Paul Freeman (Rev Philip Shooter), Anne Reid (Leslie Tiller), Alice Lowe (Tina), Bill Nighy (Chief Inspector), Martin Freeman (Sergeant) and uncredited appearances by Steve Coogan and Cate Blanchett

PC Nicholas Angel is the textbook police officer, so much so that he puts his colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Service to shame, so they rid themselves of him with a promotion to Sergeant and a transfer to Sandford, a crime-free village in Gloucestershire. Angel is greeted with suspicion by his new colleagues and with derision when he suggests that a series of seemingly accidental deaths were, in fact, murders, but he finds a friend and ally in the PC Danny Butterman, the son of the local police inspector.

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‘Hot Fuzz’ was the follow-up to the much-loved zombie homage ‘Shaun of the Dead’, and like that film was directed by Edgar Wright from a screenplay co-written with Simon Pegg, and starring Pegg alongside Nick Frost and a wealth of British acting talent. Wright, Pegg and Frost had previously worked together on the BBC television series ‘Spaced’ (which was co-written by Pegg and the actress Jessica Hynes, nee Stevenson) and are now working on a sci-fi film called ‘The World’s End’.

For the first hour of ‘Hot Fuzz’, which apparently has its roots in ‘Dead Right’, an amateur film made by Edgar Wright in 1993, it plays like a kind of mixture of ‘Midsomer Murders’, ‘The League of Gentlemen’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. The second hour is an over-cooked homage / parody of action films like ‘Bad Boys II’ and ‘Point Break’, both of which are name-checked extensively.

‘Hot Fuzz’ is very typical of Simon Pegg’s style of comedy and homage to a variety of niche genres. It contains many clever touches and some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, but somehow it just isn’t quite as funny as it should be and I did start to get very bored during the interminable action sequences in the second half. More noticeable yet, it isn’t as warm-hearted as the wonderful ‘Shaun of the Dead’, which admittedly was a very hard act to follow.

I have to say that I found the under-appreciated mid-1990s Rowan Atkinson television sitcom ‘The Thin Blue Line’ funnier, but that is not to say that ‘Hot Fuzz’ is not worth watching.

The film had a production budget of £8 million (a little under $16 million) and grossed over $80.5 million at the box office worldwide. It has a very impressive 90% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 189 reviews.

Review posted 3 February 2010

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The Capture of the Green River Killer

2010-02-02T11:11:00.004Z

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WARNING: This review contains spoilers if you have not watched ‘The Capture of the Green River Killer’.

Rating 2½

Directed by Norma Bailey

Written by John Pielmeier

Adapted by John Pielmeier from the book ‘Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer’ by Dave Reichert

Starring Thomas Cavanagh (Dave Reichert), Amy Davidson (Helen ‘Hel’ Remus), Jessica Harmon (Natalie ‘Nat’ Webley), John Pielmeier (Gary Ridgway), James Russo (Jeb Dallas), John Fasano (Joe Jakes), Sharon Lawrence (Fiona Remus), Ingrid Rogers (Faye Brooks), Currie Graham (Captain Norwell), Zak Santiago (Seth Imperia), Christina Lindley (Lynn Mosey) and James Marsters (Ted Bundy)

Detective Dave Reichert is put in charge of a Task Force assigned to track down a serial killer who is targeting young women, mainly prostitutes, in King County, Washington, and who dumps most of the bodies in or near to the Green River. The case becomes an obsession for Reichert over the next nineteen years, as the killings continue and his investigations leads him up a succession of dead ends.

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‘The Capture of the Green River Killer’ is based on the serial killer Gary Ridgway, who carried out his first killing in 1982 but was not captured until 2001, by which time he had killed at least 48 women, many of them just teenagers as young as 16 years old. He claims to have killed 71 women and some people think the total is even higher than that. Dave Reichert was a leading member of the Task Force formed to track down the “Green River Killer”. In 1997 he was appointed Sheriff of King County and subsequently has become a member of the United States Congress.

The film, which was made for the Lifetime Movie Network, has a running time close to three hours and was shown in two parts. It is based on a book written by Dave Reichert about the case. How closely the film adheres to the book and how closely the book adheres to the events of the long investigation I do not know. The film does not, for example, directly refer to Robert D Keppel, who as well as working on the investigation into the Green River killings, was also involved in the investigation that led to the arrest of another notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy. It was Keppel who interviewed Bundy in prison as part of the Green River investigation. In the film Bundy is interviewed by Reichert and an FBI profiler known as ‘Seth Imperia’, whose inaccurate profile of the killer is given as one of the reasons why it took so long to finally apprehend Ridgway, who was actually first interviewed in connection with the case as far back as 1983. Keppel has stated in interviews that the FBI profiles were not, in his opinion, damaging to the case.

Ted Bundy, played uneventfully by James Marsters, makes a cameo appearance in the film, which is largely concerned with Reichert’s investigation and his obsession with the case, and with two fictional characters, Helen ‘Hel’ Remus and Natalie ‘Nat’ Webley. This is where the film starts to unravel a little bit. These characters are used to give the film an extra emotional layer and to show how women as young as sixteen could have ended up working as prostitutes and become victims of Gary Ridgway. This is fine, but Helen Remus, who acts as a narrator throughout the film, is portrayed as a probable victim of the killer and comes back as a ghost presence to haunt the investigation. That doesn’t work particularly well for me.

The progress of the investigation is generally done very well, because it is portrayed as being very mundane. Mistakes are made, the investigation constantly ends up hitting a brick wall, and there are no heroics. The film does become seriously overwrought in the last half-an-hour or so as Reichert utilises advances in DNA forensics to finally establish evidence linking Ridgeway to the crimes, but the film does seem to have a genuine desire to make it clear that none of the victims deserved to die, something it makes a point of emphasising at various junctures during the three hours.

Although it certainly has its flaws, I am glad I watched this film.

I recognised Thomas Cavanagh from ‘Scrubs’, but I guess American audiences would perhaps associate him more closely with the television comedy-drama ‘Ed’. Amy Davidson was previously one of the lead cast of the sitcom ‘8 Simple Rules’. Gary Ridgway is played by John Pielmeier, who also adapted Dave Reichert’s book and wrote the screenplay.

The film (or miniseries, as it seems to be referred to) was watched by two million viewers when it was shown on Lifetime television in March 2008, a new audience record for the network

Review posted 2 February 2010

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Chopping Mall

2010-01-21T16:53:00.008Z

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Rating 2

Directed by Jim Wynorski

Written by Jim Wynorski and Steve Mitchell

Starring Kelli Maroney (Alison Parks), Tony O’Dell (Ferdy Meisel), Russell Todd (Rick Stanton), Karrie Emerson (Linda Stanton), Barbara Crampton (Suzie Lynn), Nick Segal (Greg Williams), John Terlesky (Mike Brennan), Suzee Slater (Leslie Todd), Dick Miller (Walter Paisley), Paul Bartel (Paul Bland) and Mary Woronov (Mary Bland)

Four young couples plan a wild party in the Park Plaza Mall after it has shut for the night, but they are menaced by three deadly security robots that have gone haywire following an electrical storm.

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‘Chopping Mall’ is a 1986 horror film. It was produced by Julie Corman, the wife of the celebrated low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman, the film’s executive producer, and was originally released under the title ‘Killbots’. Basically, it’s a kind of horror version of ‘Short Circuit’, although it pre-dates that film by a couple of months.

There isn’t much to say about the film. It’s cheap and cheerful and doesn’t outstay its welcome. The script is threadbare and the robots are not threatening looking in the slightest, but Kelli Maroney (who also starred in the cult favourite ‘Night of the Comet’) runs around the deserted Mall with commendable enthusiasm.

It’s silly and not remotely scary, but the exploding head is effective and the film is quite fun to watch once. I cannot imagine needing to watch it a second time.

Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov have cameos playing their characters from Bartel’s cult 1982 film ‘Eating Raoul’. Perhaps these cameos are amusing if you are familiar with the earlier film, which I am not.

Review posted 21 January 2010

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Night Of The Comet

2010-01-19T19:38:00.011Z

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Rating 2½

Written and directed by Thom Eberhardt

Starring Catherine Mary Stewart (Regina Belmont), Keli Maroney (Samantha Belmont), Robert Beltran (Hector Gomez), Mary Woronov (Dr Audrey White), Geoffrey Lewis (Dr Carter), John Achorn (Dr Oscar Silverman), Peter Fox (Dr Wilson), Michael Bowen (Larry Dupree), Ivan E Roth (Willy), Sharon Farrell (Doris), Janice Kawaye (Sarah) and Chance Boyer (Brian)

The world is preparing for the spectacular display that will light up the night sky when a comet passes overhead. The comet had last crossed paths with the Earth at the time of the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years earlier. Regina, who works at a local cinema, elects instead to spend the night with Larry, the projectionist. Her sister Samantha, a cheerleader, sneaks out of a party at home after an argument with her stepmother. The next morning Regina and Samantha discover that a red smog hangs heavy in the air, nearly everyone seems to have been reduced to a red dust, and they are harassed by flesh-eating zombies. They encounter another survivor, Hector, at a local radio station. He is on his way to search for any surviving members of his family. In the meantime, Regina and Samantha have come to the attentions of a group of scientists who had predicted the effects of the comet and hidden in a secret underground facility.

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‘Night of the Comet’ is a low-budget 1984 film that pays homage to other low-budget genre movies. The classic 1953 film ‘It Came From Outer Space’ is mentioned early on, but a more obvious reference point would be ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and, I thought, ‘The Day of the Triffids’, as well as ‘The World, the Flesh and the Devil’, a 1959 Harry Belafonte film in which he is trapped by an underground cave in and when he escapes he discovers that the world is deserted and he appears to be the only person left alive.

The film’s writer and director Thom Eberhardt has claimed that the production budget was just $700,000, although $3 million has been quoted as a more likely figure. The film grossed a little under $14.5 million at the domestic box office. It has an 83% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 18 reviews and has an established cult status, even being described as a masterpiece of its genre, although one dissenting reviewer was extremely critical of the film and particularly scathing about absurdities in the plot, which is perhaps missing the point when the film so obviously has its tongue in its cheek.

Its protagonists, the heroes (or, I should say, heroines) of the film, immediately make it stand out, although I am not quite sure why in the opening scenes when Regina and Larry have sex in the projection booth she apparently does so on the promise of $15, which he doesn’t pay. We are supposed to glean that she is tough and independent, capable of looking after herself, but this doesn’t seem to serve any purpose whatsoever, other than being slightly demeaning. Much is made of the film’s humour. It is of a type and I didn’t find it particularly funny. The line “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis” spoken by Samantha when the mechanism on the machine gun she is firing jams has been quoted as an example of the witty dialogue.

The film is undoubtedly clever, subverting the genre and paying homage to it at the same time. I did find it rather stilted in general and some of the acting leaves a lot to desired, but I found myself, if not actually liking it more, than certainly disliking it less as it went on. In the end, it’s a film that appeals to a certain audience, has a website devoted to it and even an online discussion board. I didn’t find it as fun or engaging as I had hoped, but that is probably fairly meaningless. It would be interesting to know what influence if any the film had on Joss Whedon.

Thom Eberhardt went on to direct the Sherlock Holmes spoof ‘Without a Clue’, starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. Robert Beltran played Commander Chakotay in 171 episodes of the television series ‘Star Trek: Voyager’. Kelli Maroney’s other films include ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ and ‘Chopping Mall’. Geoffrey Lewis, the father of Juliette Lewis, is a veteran of 200 or more films of varying quality.

Review posted 19 January 2010

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The Turn of the Screw

2010-01-09T21:14:00.007Z

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Rating 2

Directed by Tim Fywell

Written by Sandy Welch, based on the novella by Henry James

Starring Michelle Dockery (Ann), Sue Johnstone (Sarah Grose), Dan Stevens (Dr Fisher), Nicola Walker (Carla), Eva Sayer (Flora), Josef Lindsay (Miles), Mark Umbers (Master), Corin Redgrave (Professor), Wendy Abiston (Baines), Sarah Buckland (Diana), Edward MacLiam (Peter Quint) and Katie Lightfoot (Emily Jessel)

Ann takes up the position of governess to two young orphaned children in a large isolated house in the country. They have been cared for by the housekeeper Sarah Grose since the sudden departure of the previous governess. The girl Flora lives in the house, but her brother Miles is away at school, until a letter arrives to say he is being sent home and will not be allowed to return to the school. Ann becomes increasingly concerned by the behaviour of the two children and as the secrets the house hides are slowly revealed she becomes convinced that a depraved and malevolent presence from beyond the grave is attempting to claim them.

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The BBC has a long tradition of broadcasting Gothic ghost stories at Christmas, often those written by M R James, who remains probably the most celebrated English writer of ghost stories. For Christmas 2009, however, they chose a new production of the famous novella by Henry James, the famous British-based American writer. It was first published in 1898 and has frequently been the subject of literary analysis and discussion. This new adaptation, written by Sandy Welch, who has written many costume dramas for the BBC, including adaptations of ‘Emma’, ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘North & South’, sexes up the story, presumably in an attempt to make it more palatable to television audiences now, and in the process destroys much of the sinister mystery and ambiguity of the themes to found in the book.

Michelle Dockery (whose previous credits include ‘Cranford’, ‘Waking the Dead’ and ‘Fingersmith’) is very good in the central role and Sue Johnston is always worth watching. Eva Sayer and Josef Lindsay are suitably creepy as the strange young brother and sister, but while the production is well mounted, I found it ultimately a little disappointing.

Tim Fywell is an experienced director, primarily working in television. He has directed several episodes of the brilliant long-running BBC crime drama series ‘Waking the Dead’. He also directed the Disney film ‘Ice Princess’, starring former ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ actress Michelle Trachtenberg, and prior to that ‘I Capture the Castle’, a film that starred another former ‘Buffy’ actor, Marc Blucas, together with Tara Fitzgerald, one of the current main cast of ‘Waking the Dead’.

Review posted 9 January 2010

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

2010-01-08T20:52:00.009Z

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Rating 2½

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, based on characters created by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpatt

Starring Johnny Depp (Captain Jack Sparrow), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann), Bill Nighy (Davy Jones), Jack Davenport (James Norrington), Jonathan Pryce (Weatherby Swann), Tom Hollander (Cutler Beckett), Stellan Skarsgård (Bootstrap Bill Turner), Lee Areberg (Pintel), Mackenzie Crook (Ragetti), Kevin McNally (Joshamee Gibbs) and Naomie Harris (Tia Dalma)

Lord Cutler Beckett arrests Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann in Port Royal, Jamaica, threatening execution to force Turner to hunt for the Pirate Captain Jack Sparrow and relieve him of his magic compass. The devious Sparrow and the crew of his ship the Black Pearl have been captured by cannibals on a tropical island. Following their escape they are pursued by Captain Davy Jones and the ghost ship the Flying Dutchman, as well as the legendary sea monster the Kraken.

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‘Dead Man’s Chest’ is the second film in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise, produced by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Gore Verbinski, whose previous films include ‘The Ring’, and was released in 2006. Its box office gross was a mind-boggling $1,066,179,725, against a production budget of $225 million, making it the fourth highest grossing film of all time (not taking into account inflation). It received mixed reviews and has a 53% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 212 reviews.

I enjoyed the first film ‘The Curse of the Black Pearl’, but I also found myself somewhat disappointed by it. I had the same reaction to ‘Dead Man’s Curse’. It’s expertly made, a master class of modern day effects-soaked action-adventure blockbusters, but it’s so bombastic and arrogant of its own hugeness that it lacks heart.

Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are unremittingly bland and charisma-free leads, but perhaps they need to be as an antidote to all the madcap mayhem being unleashed around them, much like Allan Jones (the father of the singer Jack Jones), who found himself playing the bland romantic lead in the anarchic Marx Brothers films ‘A Night at the Opera’ and ‘A Day at the Races’. Johnny Depp’s performance as Captain Jack Sparrow is little more than an impersonation of Keith Richards (who turns up in the third film, playing Captain Jack’s father), but is no less enjoyable for that and has played a big part in the success of the franchise.

At 150 minutes it is probably a little too long and it does become a bogged down and convoluted at times, but there is also a lot of humour and it is fun to watch. While I am often not especially impressed by CGI effects, the special effects here are superb. I particularly liked the Kraken.

‘Dead Man’s Chest’ was followed by ‘At World’s End’. A fourth instalment ‘On Stranger Tides’ has been announced, with Johnny Depp returning as Captain Jack Sparrow, although both Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley (who, in 2008, was the second highest paid actress in Hollywood) have both stated that they do not intend to reprise their roles.

Review posted 8 January 2010

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The Day of the Triffids (2009)

2010-01-04T16:42:00.007Z

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Rating 2¼

Directed by Nick Copus

Written by Patrick Harbinson, based on the novel by John Wyndham

Starring Dougray Scott (Bill Masen), Joely Richardson (Jo Playton), Eddie Izzard (Torrence), Brian Cox (Dennis Masen), Vanessa Redgrave (Durrant), Julia Joyce (Imogen), Jenn Murray (Susan), Shane Taylor (Osman), Ewen Bremner (Walter) and Troy Glasgow (Troy)

The giant and deadly carnivorous triffid plant is cultivated on a huge scale because of the oil it produces, which provides a clean alternative fuel source. Bill Masen is a scientist who works at one of the “farms” where the triffids are grown, studying the plant to try to understand it better. His father, who he is estranged from, was the first person to fully realise the potential of the triffid to end the world’s energy crisis, but his mother, also a scientist, warned of the dangers. Her fears were not heeded and she was killed by a triffid when he was a young boy.

Masen is kept in hospital for observation and has gauze wrapped around his eyes following at accident at work. When he wakes up in the morning, he discovers that a spectacular solar event the previous evening has left everyone who watched it blind. He immediately realises the terrible danger posed if the triffids are able to escape from their confinement and when he encounters Jo Playton, a radio presenter who has also escaped becoming blinded, they join forces, but as anarchy takes over they have more than just triffids to worry about.

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I first saw the 1962 film version of ‘The Day of the Triffids’ when I was a teenager and it immediately became a favourite film of mine. Although it has never been widely regarded with much affection and deviates quite a lot from the original source material (particularly the ending), I still remain very fond of it. I did subsequently read John Wyndham’s original novel, again when I was a teenager. I must admit not to be overly fond of Wyndham’s writing style, although I have also read two of his other most famous novels, ‘The Kraken Wakes’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’. In 1981 the BBC adapted ‘The Day of the Triffids’ for television in six 25-minute segments. I am sure I must have watched it, but I remember nothing at all about it. The BBC has now made a new adaptation, this time in two 90-minute segments.

I chanced to read a review written by John Wollaston for The Guardian before I watched it. Wollaston wrote that Joely Richardson, who plays Jo Playton, “appears to have lost the ability to act.” That seems to be something that afflicts several of the actors here. Joely Richardson’s performance is a little odd in places. She seems to have gone for a naturalistic performance, but frequently her facial expressions are at odds with what is happening round her and the way in which we would perhaps expect her to be reacting. Dougray Scott’s portrayal of Bill Masen is stiff and expression-free, although he fares a little better in the action sequences. Eddie Izzard is a cartoon super-villain, seemingly plucked from another film altogether.

I thought the first 40 minutes or so of the opening episode were horrible, with a constant stream of irritating out of focus shots, slow motion sequences and painfully arty camera placement. However, matters had improved by the end of the opening 90 minutes and ultimately I quite enjoyed it, although it is of no great substance or quality. As has been mentioned in other reviews, Danny Boyle’s film ‘28 Days Later’ is a very obvious reference point.

The general consensus seems to be that the triffids are not scary. I would not disagree with that, but they are effective enough as far as it goes.

Review posted 4 January 2010

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Portrait of Jennie

2010-01-02T13:12:00.011Z

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Rating *5*

Directed by William Dieterle

Written by Paul Osborn , Peter Berneis, Ben Hecht (uncredited) and David O Selznick (uncredited) – adaptation by Leonardro Bercovici from the novel by Robert Nathan

Starring Joseph Cotton (Eben Adams), Jennifer Jones (Jennie Appleton), Ethel Barrymore (Miss Spinney), Cecil Kellaway (Matthews), Lillian Gih (Mother Mary of Mercy), David Wayne (Gus O’Toole), Albert Sharpe (Moore), Florence Bates (Mrs Jekes), Henry Hull (Eke) and Clem Bevans (Captain Cobb)

Eben Adams is an unsuccessful and starving artist in New York City who manages to sell a sketch to art dealer Miss Spinney for $12, not because she is particularly impressed by his work, but because she sees a spark of something in him. Soon afterwards, he encounters Jennie, a rather strange but engaging girl, in Central Park and then soon after secures a commission to paint a mural depicting the Irish rebel Michael Collins in a local bar. He has more encounters with Jennie and becomes increasingly obsessed with painting her portrait, but on each occasion she is noticeably older than the last. As he falls more and more in love with her he realises that he is a witness to fragments of events from the past.

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During the long production of ‘Portrait of Jennie’ Jennifer Jones, who had been married to Robert Walker, the troubled actor whose memorable final performance was in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film ‘Strangers on a Train’, had a long relationship with producer David O Selznick, the legendary film producer responsible for ‘Gone With the Wind’ amongst many others. They married in 1949. Selznick was perpetually unhappy with results he saw during the production, commissioned numerous rewrites, some of which he undertook himself, and tinkered with the film for over a year before it finally received its theatrical release on Christmas Day 1948. It was not a success, but it is now considered to be a classic film of its time.

‘Portrait of Jennie’ is based on a 1940 novel by Robert Nathan, who also wrote ‘The Bishop’s Wife’. The film has an eerie dreamlike quality that perfectly suits the tale of a doomed young woman who calls across time to an artist who had once painted the scene of her death. Even the rather blatant republican propaganda of the mural of Michael Collins, the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish National Army who was killed during the Irish Civil War in 1922, has an certain value. Jennifer Jones and the always reliable Joseph Cotton (a long-time collaborator of Orson Welles and the star of the classic Alfred Hitchcock film ‘Shadow of a Doubt’) give good performances and there is excellent support from Cecil Kellaway and, in particular, Ethel Barrymore, the grand-aunt of Drew Barrymore and a formidable presence in American theatre.

The German director William Dieterle was a steady hand who had previously directed ‘The Story of Louis Pasteur’ and ‘The Life of Emile Zola’, both starring the now largely forgotten Paul Muni, who was once considered to be one of America’s greatest actors, winning one Oscar for Best Actor and receiving five other Academy Award nominations. He also directed ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ starring Charles Laughton.

Jennifer Jones, who did at the age of 90 on 19 December 2009, having survived a suicide attempt in 1967 that left her in a coma, two years after the death of her husband David O Selznick, won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1943 for her role in ‘The Song of Bernadette’. She was nominated on three subsequent occasions; for ‘Love Letters’ in 1945, ‘Duel in the Sun’ in 1946, in which she also co-starred opposite Joseph Cotton, and ‘Love is a Many-Splendored Thing’ in 1955. She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for ‘Since You Want Away’ in 1944. ‘Duel in the Sun’, a controversial film at the time of its release in 1946, also featured Lillian Gish, who received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role. Gish, who plays Mother Mary of Mercy in ‘Portrait of Jennie’, had been a major film star during the silent era. When, in 1999, the American Film Institute announced a list of the 50 top stars of American cinema, 25 male and 25 female, Gish was included at No.17 in the list of “female legends”.

‘Portrait of Jennie is a film of ethereal beauty and fully deserves its reputation.

Review posted 2 January 2010

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Doctor Who: The End of Time

2010-01-01T23:45:00.012Z

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Rating 3

Directed by Euros Lyn

Written by Russell T Davies

Starring David Tennant (The Doctor), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), John Sim (The Master), Timothy Dalton (Narrator / Lord President), Claire Bloom (The Woman), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Karl Collins (Shaun Temple), David Harewood (Joshua Naismith), Tracy Ifeachor (Abigail Naismith), June Whitfield (Minnie Harper), Sinead Keenan (Addams), Lawry Lewin (Rossiter), Alexandra Moen (Lucy Saxon), Jessica Hynes (Verity Newman), Russell Tovey (Alonso Frame), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Tommy Knight (Luke Smith), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) and Matt Smith (The Doctor)

The Doctor is summoned to the Ood Sphere, where he learns that the Ood have experienced visions of his arch-nemesis the Master, who he until now believed to be dead. They tell him that something is coming and the end of time is near. The Doctor races back to Earth, arriving on Christmas Eve. Aided by the elderly Wilfred Mott, the grandfather of his last companion Donna Noble, it is now a race against time to stop the Master and, ultimately, the return of the Time Lords themselves.

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‘The End of Time’, broadcast on BBC1 in two one-hour segments on Christmas Day 2009 and New Year’s Day 2010, marks the end of David Tennant’s tenure as the Doctor, as well as providing a farewell to Russell T Davies, the show’s head writer and one of its executive producers since its return in March 2005. The show has proved to be a huge ratings success in that time, a winner with (most) fans and critics alike, and David Tennant is now arguably the most popular Doctor of them all, although each fan will have her or his own particular favourites. Mine will probably always be Jon Pertwee, the Doctor between 1970 and 1974, and Sylvester McCoy, who occupied the role between 1987 and 1989. I would also have liked Christopher Eccleston to have stayed around for a while longer, although his single season does have a very distinctive and quite unique flavour to it.

The show, since its return, was undoubtedly at its peak in the first two seasons – the one with Eccleston and the first season with David Tennant, when Billie Piper was on board as Rose Tyler, the Doctor’s companion and perhaps the most iconic companion since Elisabeth Sladen appeared as Sarah Jane Smith between 1973 and 1976. That character was brought back by Russell T Davies and subsequently given her own series, ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’, which has run for three seasons so far. ‘Torchwood’ is another successful spin-off of the revived show, proving the extent of its enduring popularity. Since the end of season three of ‘Doctor Who’ in July 2008 there have been a number of “specials”, taking the place of a full fifth season. These have proved to be a little hit or miss and it has been difficult not to conclude that the formula set in place by Russell T Davies and the full-on approach of David Tennant has become a little stale at this stage. The same impression lingers during ‘The End of Time’.

I find that the constant frenetic pace can become rather tiring after a while and across two hours it is positively exhausting, although I do appreciate that the intention is to provide exhilarating Christmas entertainment for a widespread family audience. The Master’s appearance here is perhaps not quite as successful as John Sim’s initial appearance in the role at the end of season three and I wasn’t all that keen on having so many of him on the screen at the same time after the Master has become, more or less, every single person on Earth. It sometimes seemed as though Sim and David Tennant had shared a private bet to see who could give the most exaggerated performance, although they are certainly no slouches when it comes to acting ability. The characters Joshua and Abigail Naismith were far too sketchy, particularly given their central roles in the plot early on, as were the two “Vinvocci” aliens, whose presence was rather artificially and unconvincingly engineered as a plot necessity. Even the presence of Bernard Cribbins did not wholly rescue matters, although I have added an extra star rating for giving him such a central role and so much welcome screen time.

For all of the frenzied running around, it was at times strangely flat and rather convoluted, veering too much into metaphysical storytelling for my own tastes. However, for all of these criticisms it ultimately proved to be reasonably successful, although I imagine there will be much debate amongst fans about it, especially those who have been critical of Russell T Davies and his handling of the show – for example, the reference to the Lord President (played by Timothy Dalton) as “Rassilon” is sure to have raised a few eyebrows.

I did like the cameo appearances at the end of the second episode by various departed central characters from the four most recent seasons. This could so easily have been clumsy, but I thought it worked very well and highlighted the lovely emotional undercurrent that exists in the writing style of Russell T Davies at his very best. I am curious about the appearance of Russell Tovey (whose name had at one point been put forward as a possible candidate to take over the lead role when David Tennant announced his departure) and I wonder if there are plans for him to feature in the fourth season of ‘Torchwood’, assuming there is going to be a fourth season.

The regeneration scene before the brief appearance of Matt Smith as the new Doctor was perhaps rather drawn out, but David Tennant has been a particularly successful Doctor and so probably deserves such a send off.

Judged on the extremely high standards that Russell T Davies set for the show, ‘The End of Time’ proved to be slightly disappointing, but it was no less welcome for that and there was a whole host of nice little touches, especially during the closing scenes.

Review posted 2 January 2010

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Top Hat

2010-01-01T15:17:00.012Z

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Rating *5*

Directed by Mark Sandrich

Written by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor

Songs written by Irving Berlin

Starring Fred Astaire (Jerry Travers), Ginger Rogers (Dale Tremont), Edward Everett Horton (Horace Hardwick), Helen Broderick (Madge Hardwick), Erik Rhodes (Alberto Beddini) and Eric Blore (Bates)

Jerry Travers, a celebrated American dancer, comes to London to star in a new show produced by Horace Hardwick. He meets Dale Tremont in less than congenial circumstances and instantly falls in love with her. Dale is on her way to Italy to visit Madge Hardwick, the wife of Horace, and also to model the clothes of Alberto Beddini, a flamboyant Italian fashion designer. She mistakes Jerry for Horace, thinking that Madge’s husband has designs on her, and a comedy of errors ensues.

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Between 1933 and 1939 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made nine films for RKO Radio Pictures, reuniting again briefly in 1949 to star in ‘The Barkleys of Broadway’ for MGM. They remain the most celebrated and the best loved dancing duo in the history of Hollywood film musicals and Astaire has been widely acknowledged as one of the foremost American dancers of the 20th Century. Rudolph Nureyev is quoted as having called him, “Simply the greatest, most imaginative, dancer of our time.”

‘Top Hat’, the fourth of the nine films they made at RKO, one of the so-called “Big Five” studios during the Golden Age of Hollywood, was their most commercially successful film together and the second most successful film of Astaire’s career, behind ‘Easter Parade’, the 1948 musical in which he co-starred with Judy Garland. Like that film, the songs featured in ‘Top Hat’ were written by Irving Berlin, who is arguably the most celebrated American songwriter of the 20th Century, although Astaire is more usually associated with the songs of George and Ira Gershwin. ‘Top Hat’ contains all the elements that went to make Astaire and Rogers such a winning combination – unforgettable songs (including ‘Cheek to Cheek’), outstanding dance routines, a light frothy rom-com storyline and just the right degree of screen chemistry between the two leads. It has often been claimed that Astaire and Rogers constantly feuded, but there seems to be little real evidence to support this rumour, although Astaire did lose his temper with her during the filming of the ‘Cheek to Cheek’ sequence, something that has subsequently become Hollywood folklore, and his perfectionism is known to have been hard on his dance partners, especially those like Rogers who were not professional dancers.

Astaire’s first dance partner was his sister Adele and it has sometimes been said that she was the more talented of the two. They began dancing together in 1905 and by 1917 they were dancing on Broadway. They became major stars of the musical stage on Broadway and in London’s West End during the 1920s and unsuccessfully auditioned for Paramount Pictures in 1927. In 1932 when Adele married Lord Charles Arthur Francis Cavendish, the 9th Duke of Devonshire, and retired from performing Astaire continued to dance with new partners Claire Luce and Dorothy Stone, before trying his luck again in Hollywood.

Legend has it that the initial response to his RKO screen test was “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little.” However, RKO signed him up and immediately loaned him to MGM for the 1933 Joan Crawford and Clark Gable musical film ‘Dancing Lady’, playing himself. The film was a box office hit and RKO next put him in ‘Flying Down to Rio’ in a supporting role alongside a contract player, Ginger Rogers. This was their first film together and from it the partnership was born. Their first film as co-leads was ‘The Gay Divorcee’ in 1934, which Astaire had previous starred in on the stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in 1932, partnered by Claire Luce. It has been said that he wanted Luce to reprise her role in the film, but this was vetoed by RKO when the screen chemistry with Rogers in ‘Flying Down to Rio’ was specifically noted by many film critics.

I first saw the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films in either late 1976 or 1977, when, coming towards the end of my teenage years, I had become a punk, or at least a fan of punk music. Although the two things may not seem obviously symbiotic, I perhaps perversely found something glamorous about the early punk era and as much as it was a reaction to the abject dreariness and hopelessness of 1970s Britain, so the Astaire and Rogers films seemed to speak of a more glamorous past. It is clearly no coincidence that part of the appeal and glamour of 1930s Hollywood was the escapism it offered its audience from the grim reality of the Great Depression. And so it was that, as well as buying records by the Sex Pistols and the Clash, I was also discovering the recordings Fred Astaire made for Brunswick Records at the time of the Astaire and Rogers musical films.

‘Top Hat’ is not my favourite Astaire and Rogers film, but it is their archetypical outing. The frothy plot moves along at a crisp pace and it has a lightness of touch that matches their dancing. The deliberately artificial Art Deco sets are also notable. However, the film is almost stolen by supporting actors Helen Broderick and Edward Everett Horton, a master of the double-take. Lucille Ball, a mainstay of American television in the 1950s, has a small uncredited role as a flower shop sales girl.

It’s just a delightful film that defies criticism.

Review posted 1 January 2010

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Touch of Evil

2010-01-01T00:11:00.008Z

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Rating *5*

Directed by Orson Welles

Written by Orson Welles, Paul Monash (additional scenes – uncredited), Franklin Coen (contributing writer, reshoots – uncredited), based on the novel ‘Badge of Evil’ by Whit Masterson (pseudonym of Robert Allison Wade and H Bill Miller)

Starring Charlton Heston (Ramon Miguel ‘Mike’ Vargas), Janet Leigh (Susan ‘Susie’ Vargas), Orson Welles (Police Captain Hank Quinlan), Joseph Calleia (Police Sergeant Pete Menzies), Akim Tamiroff (Uncle Joe Grandi), Ray Collins (District Attorney Adair), Harry Gould (Police Chief Pete Gould), Mort Mills (Al Schartz), Joanna Cook Moore (Marcia Linnekar), Victor Millan (Manolo Sanchez), Val de Vargas (Pancho), Zsa Zsa Gabor (Strip-club owner), Dennis Weaver (Night Manager) and Marlene Dietrich (Tana)

In the hellish town of Los Robles that straddles the Mexican/US border a local construction tycoon and his companion are killed by a bomb just moments after their car has crossed the border onto American soil. Mike Vargas, who is heading up a Pan-American Narcotics Commission that has recently led to the arrest of the head of the notorious Grandi family, is on the scene and witnesses the explosion. He offers his services to the local police, but the lead detective Hank Quinlan is openly antagonistic towards him from the start. When the case is quickly solved, Vargas is convinced that Quinlan has planted evidence and sets out to prove his suspicions. In the meantime, Uncle Joe, the acting head of the Grandi family, seeks revenge against Vargas by targeting his new wife Susie.

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The popular story surrounding the making of ‘Touch of Evil’ has it that Orson Welles was hired in a supporting acting role when the film was in pre-production. Charlton Heston, who Universal Pictures wanted for the lead role, only agreed to take it if Welles was signed on to direct, at which point Welles insisted on re-writing the script, based on a pulp novel called ‘Badge of Evil’, first published in 1956. Welles greatly increased his own role in the film. An alternative story suggests that given the opportunity to direct his first American film in ten years by the producer Albert Zugsmith, Welles choose the worst script from those he was given, rewriting it to prove that he could produce a great film from bad source material.

Whatever the true story may be, the studio did not like the rough cut Welles gave to them and demanded reshoots and extra scenes. Welles always claimed this was done without his consent and involvement, although the studio counter-claimed that he simply ignored their communiqués to him. When the eventual 1958 93-minute theatrical cut was eventually cobbled together Welles sent a lengthy memo to the studio asking to be allowed to re-edit the film, setting out in detail what he planned to do. His request was either refused or ignored and the story became another sorry chapter in his fraught relationship with Hollywood. ‘Touch of Evil’ was to be the last American film he directed.

In the mid-1970s Universal Pictures discovered a 108-minute cut of the film in their vaults and released it, claiming it to be the original Orson Welles version, although it was actually no such thing. That cut no longer exists. In 1988 a new cut was assembled from all the existing stock still available, using the 56-page memo Welles had written in 1958 for guidance. This version is as close as it is possible to get to how Welles originally intended the film and is the one now available.

‘Touch of Evil’ is a masterpiece, from the legendary opening three-and-a-half minute single tracking shot onwards. It contains all of the visual imagery and interweaving storylines that had made Welles so famous in the first place at the time of his debut film ‘Citizen Kane’ in 1941. Shot in black and white, the film is visually stunning in places, making outstanding use of the setting and utilising constantly arresting camera angles and shifting shadows. Welles also gives a tour-de-force performance as Hank Quinlan, the police detective gone to seed, a huge lumbering malevolent figure inexorably hurtling towards his own inevitable doom.

It has been suggested that the scenes that take place at the desert motel featuring a young Dennis Weaver as the unbalanced and disconcerting night clerk influenced ‘Psycho’, the classic and controversial Alfred Hitchcock film released two year later, although I don’t know if there is any truth to this rumour. Janet Leigh, the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis, starred in both films.

Charlton Heston is clearly miscast in the lead role as a Mexican government official, but he still does a competent job. In the end, none of that matters. It is Welles who bestrides the film like a colossus, sweeping aside everyone else in his wake. The film also gave Marlene Dietrich one final memorable role and Joseph Cotton, a long-time collaborator of Welles, dating back to the Mercury Theatre Company in the 1930s, makes a brief appearance as a police detective.

‘Touch of Evil’ is one of the 525 films preserved (as of 2009) in the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress.

Review posted 1 January 2010

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A Matter of Life and Death

2009-12-31T18:56:00.005Z

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Rating *5*

Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Starring David Niven (Peter Carter), Kim Hunter (June), Roger Livesey (Dr Frank Reeves), Marius Goring (Conductor 71), Raymond Massey (Abraham Farlan), Abraham Sofaer (Judge / Surgeon), Robert Coote (Bob Trubshawe), Joan Maude (Chief Recorder) and Richard Attenborough (English Pilot)

Peter Carter, a Squadron Leader on a Lancaster bomber, is returning from a bombing raid over Germany when his plane is hit and badly damaged. One of his crew, Bob Trubshawe, is killed and the rest have bailed out on his orders, but he has no parachute. In the minutes before the plane crashes he manages to make radio contact with June, a young American radio operator based in the south of England. He tells her he is going to bail out anyway, fully expecting to die. However, when he awakes, having been washed up on a deserted beach, he discovers that through some miracle he is not dead. He and June fall in love, but Peter is in a battle to be allowed to continue to live and not be taken to the “Other World”, his intended destination, and he must find someone to act as his Defence Counsel now that a Heavenly Court of Appeal has been convened to hear his case. June’s friend Dr Frank Reeves diagnoses a brain injury and prescribes that immediate surgery is the only option.

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Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (pictured), who are commonly referred to jointly as “The Archers”, could justifiably lay claim to being Britain’s greatest ever filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock excepted. Although their films were mainly written by Pressburger and directed by Powell, they usually shared an equal writer-director-producer credit. They collaborated for the first time in 1939 on the film ‘The Spy in Black’ and for the last time in 1957 for ‘Ill Met for Moonlight’, but their greatest films were those made between 1943 and 1948, including ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, ‘Black Narcissus’ and ‘The Red Shoes’. They had a quite unique style, which, much like Hitchcock, remains inimitable, despite their widespread influence.

‘A Matter of Life and Death’ was made in 1946, originally in response to a Government department suggestion to improve Anglo-American relations in the aftermath of World War II. It was the follow-up to ‘I Know Where I’m Going’, my own personal favourite Powell and Pressburger film, and was the last of the three films they made that featured the excellent British actor Roger Livesey. It is widely regarded to be their best film and in 2004 it was ranked the second greatest British film ever made in a poll of 25 film critics instigated by Total Film magazine. It is an extraordinary film that marries the fantasy elements to the romantic central storyline with pinpoint precision and employs inspired special effects that are never allowed to overwhelm or interfere with the story. It is left up to the audience to decide if Peter’s visions are real or imagined; proof of an afterlife or a consequence of his condition.

In addition to Roger Livesey, the film boasts an impressive cast, including the celebrated British actor David Niven, who put his Hollywood film career on hold in 1939 to re-enlist in the British Army when Britain declared war on Germany. American actress Kim Hunter won a best supporting actress Academy Award (and Golden Globe) for her performance in the 1951 film ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. The Canadian actor Raymond Massey was the father of the actress Anna and actor Daniel Massey. Marius Goring appeared in four Powell and Pressburger films. The film is also notable for an early appearance by Richard Attenborough, a year before his major breakthrough role in ‘Brighton Rock’.

Famously, the scenes on Earth are shot in vivid Technicolor (by the noted Academy Award winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff), whereas the celestial scenes are in monochrome.

The film had a total production budget in excess of £300,000. The famous “stairway to heaven” cost £3,000 and took three months to construct (the equivalent of approximately £78,000 now, or $126,000). Filming took place over a period of four months and nearly five and a half thousand extras were employed. On its original release, an early scene that showed a naked boy on the beach was cut from the American print of the film, where it was renamed ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

Not all reviews at the time of its first release were positive. Fred Majdalany, writing in the Daily Mail, called it “an elaborate joke that doesn’t quite come off,” and in the trade magazine Variety the film was dismissed as “striving to appear intellectual ... less desire to exhibit alleged learning and more humanity would have resulted in a more popular offering.” It remains, more than sixty years after it was first made, an absolutely stunning film of considerable emotional resonance. Utterly brilliant.

Review posted 31 December 2009

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Little Black Book

2009-12-23T10:12:00.008Z

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Rating 2

Directed by Nick Hurran

Written by Melissa Carter and Elisa Bell, from a story by Melissa Carter

Starring Brittany Murphy (Stacy), Holly Hunter (Barb), Kathy Bates (Kippie Kann), Ron Livingston (Derek), Kevin Sussman (Ira), Julianne Nicholson (Joyce), Josie Maran (Lulu Fritz), Rashida Jones (Dr Rachel Keyes), Stephen Tobolowsky (Carl), Dave Annable (Bean), Sharon Lawrence (Mom) and Carly Simon (herself)

Stacy gets a job as an associate producer on a daytime reality TV show. She confides in her colleague Barb that her boyfriend Derek has commitment issues and becomes uncomfortable and uncommunicative when she tries to talk about his past relationships. Barb persuades her to look at Derek’s Palm smart-phone, which he has accidentally left behind when going away on a business trip, and then to interview his past girlfriends, purportedly as research for a television programme, but Stacy begins to learn things she doesn’t want to know.

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I did debate with myself whether or not I wanted to review this. On the evening after watching it I went to my computer to begin to write a review and discovered the breaking news reports about the sudden unexpected death of Brittany Murphy at the age of 32. It was a very sad coincidence.

I am not overly familiar with Murphy’s films. I have seen a few, but not the three films that are probably her most famous outings – ‘Clueless’, ‘Girl Interrupted’ and ‘8 Mile’. In the films I have seen I thought there was a spark about her, something that made her stand out, although perhaps not in ‘Deadline’, the 2009 psychological horror film in which she was dreadful. She is much better in ‘Little Black Book’, a rom-com from 2004; even if it is a somewhat manic performance and the film itself has an unpleasantly mean streak and sends out a decidedly odd message, portraying its lead character as someone almost paranoid in her insecurities about her boyfriend, as though she were suffering from some form of neurosis.

The film does have some funny moments along the way, but Stacy’s actions are unattractively manipulative and, in an odd twist, she is easily manipulated by those around her. It quickly becomes obvious that Barb is anything but her friend and is using her, although the film doesn’t seem to expect us to realise this until the payoff. As objectionable as the film does become, nothing prepared me for the abjectly awful final scene that had me reaching for the sick bag.

‘Little Black Book’ is a rather peculiar film. It has a good cast and I cannot pretend not to have enjoyed some of it, up to a point. It has a 22% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 107 reviews and grossed $22 million at the box office against a production budget of $35 million.

Review posted 22 December 2009

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Ghostboat

2009-12-22T22:25:00.005Z

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Rating 2½

Directed by Stuart Orme

Written by Guy Burt, based on the novel by George E Simpson and Neal R Burger

Starring David Jason (Jack Hardy), Ian Puleston-Davies (Commander Travis), Tony Haygarth (Alan Cassidy), Julian Wadham (Captain Byrnes), James Laurenson (Admiral Nealy), Robert Whitelock (Spender), Jamie Martin (Tyler), Roger Evans (Monroe), Robert Horwell (Mason), Alan Stocks (Peterson), Lee Whitlock (Reeves), Ricky Nixon (Langdon) and Jonathan Cullen (Captain Basquine)

1981: HMS Scorpion, a World War II British submarine, suddenly surfaces in the path of a Russian merchant ship, 38 years after it disappeared in the Baltic Sea. When the hatch is opened there are no bodies found inside and the vessel shows no signs of aging or having been at the bottom of sea for such a long period of time. Commander Travis of naval intelligence is put in charge of finding out what happened and decides to follow the path of its final known voyage, taking with him Professor Jack Hardy, the only survivor of the original crew, who was picked up by the German Navy in open water, but has no memory of what happened or why he survived, and Alan Cassidy, one of the submarine’s designers. A series of strange and disconcerting events leads Hardy to the conclusion that they are caught in some kind of rift in time.

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‘Ghostboat’ is a feature-length drama production made for Yorkshire Television (ITV) that was broadcast in two parts, with a total running time in the region of 140 minutes. It stars David Jason, a staple of British Television, who is perhaps best known for his role as Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter in the much-loved BBC sit-com ‘Only Fools and Horses’, but had, between 1992 and 2008, starred as Inspector Jack Frost in the popular ITV crime drama ‘A Touch of Frost’. ‘Ghostboat’, which was first broadcast in April 2006, is based on a 1978 novel of the same name, although in the book the action takes place in the 1970s in the Pacific Ocean and the “enemy” is the Japanese. In the film the action occurs in the early 1980s, the enemy is Nazi Germany and the action takes place against a backdrop of the Cold War and the uneasy diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

The film, although rather slow moving and repetitive, is quite effectively staged, although I have read that the submarine is not authentic, something that did not affect my viewing because I know nothing about these things. It is too long and once it becomes clear what is happening and Hardy begins to piece together memories that he had previously blocked it does start to drag somewhat. I am not convinced that David Jason is particularly effective in the lead role. He doesn’t give a bad performance by any means, but he does seem a little miscast.

Ultimately it is all a little daft, but I enjoyed it. Some comparisons might be made with the 2002 film ‘Below’ and, up to a point, the 1980 film ‘The Final Countdown’.

Review posted 22 December 2009

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