It may come as a sur­prise to film buffs, but Stephen Low’s 1988 doc­u­men­tary film about the life of a fam­i­ly of beavers in Alber­ta is the most suc­cess­ful Cana­di­an film of all time. With a bud­get of one mil­lion dol­lars, it grossed over 80 mil­lion play­ing in 230 IMAX the­atres. Low’s Mon­tre­al-based pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny has pro­duced most of the top IMAX for­mat films. His much more recent film, Vol­ca­noes of the Deep Sea, was not run in many U.S. the­atres because it con­tains ref­er­ences to Evo­lu­tion (yes, rub your eyes and gasp, but that is the lev­el of imbe­cil­i­ty that things have sunk to, there). Now, noth­ing could be more quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Cana­di­an than a doc­u­men­tary about Our Friend the Beaver ― we all had to endure them repeat­ed­ly in grade school. Beaver doc­u­men­taries are prob­a­bly the equiv­a­lent for Cana­da of the West­ern for Hol­ly­wood, and the samu­rai epic for Japan. But noth­ing pre­pared me for this. The film is bril­liant. It is pow­er­ful, emo­tion­al, mov­ing. It is inspir­ing. It is beau­ti­ful. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is bril­liant. Some of the shots, if they had been devised by Kubrick or Felli­ni, would be stud­ied in film schools. The com­po­si­tion, colour, and edit­ing are superb. And the act­ing, by beavers who are appar­ent­ly pro­fes­sion­als trained at Strat­ford, is top-notch. The love scene, with young amorous beavers danc­ing in the moon­light, is among the most roman­tic ever filmed.

And it’s a doc­u­men­tary about beavers.

Hon­est. I kid you not.

Why on earth was this nom­i­nat­ed for Best Pic­ture in its year? It’s glossy, and could be rea­son­ably enter­tain­ing to some­one who does not know what a trav­es­ty of his­to­ry it is, but it isn’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly out­stand­ing film. The con­test between Catholi­cism and Protes­tantism dur­ing the Ref­or­ma­tion (in which both sides were relent­less­ly fanat­i­cal and vicious), is still played out in Eng­lish film and lit­er­a­ture to this very day. This par­tic­u­lar film is pret­ty obvi­ous in its par­ti­san­ship: Protes­tantism (sym­bol­ized by Eliz­a­beth) is good and Catholi­cism is bad. In Eng­land, there is still a kind of anti-Catholic sen­ti­ment which is played out in car­toon form in films such as this. Every cliché is there. For­eign Catholic priests skulk around in the shad­ows with sin­is­ter, swirling robes, and look like demons. A French noble­man is a scream­ing fag, minc­ing about. Eliz­a­beth spouts anachro­nis­tic sen­ti­ments of self­less patri­o­tism and “indi­vid­ual con­science”. Her exe­cu­tions and per­se­cu­tions are explained away as unfor­tu­nate zeal by sub­or­di­nates, or under­stand­able reac­tions to treach­ery, or nec­es­sary steps in a grand plan to build the future glo­ries of Eng­land (cue the Elgar march­es). Essex doesn’t real­ly mind hav­ing his head chopped off — it’s all part of true love. Mary Queen of Scots is men­tioned, briefly, but there’s no fol­low up. Such side-tak­ing is com­mon enough, and there are pro-Catholic inter­pre­ta­tions that are every bit as sil­ly. But in this film, his­tor­i­cal facts are so gross­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed that no amount of act­ing or cos­tume splen­dour can make it worth watch­ing with­out bel­ly laughs. Siskel & Ebert loved this film, but I don’t think they paid much atten­tion in high school his­to­ry class.

H. G. Wells par­tic­i­pat­ed direct­ly in this pio­neer Sci­ence Fic­tion film of 1936. The film is visu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. No expense or effort was spared in it’s art direc­tion, to put across the 1930’s vision of the future, with it’s mov­ing side­walks and colos­sal shoul­der-pads. It is also imbued with the total­i­tar­i­an atmos­phere of that era. Wells envi­sions a world war com­ing (he places it in 1940), which drags on for decades until the world is reduced to bar­barism. Then a tech­no­crat­ic force of sci­en­tist-air­men takes over the world and builds it into a “utopia”. It is all white walls and glass tub­ing. One char­ac­ter explains that their sav­age ances­tors lived “half-out-doors” before they learned the supe­ri­or­i­ty of arti­fi­cial light. Final­ly, in 2036 AD, an expe­di­tion is sent to the Moon, despite the attempt of an “anti-progress” artist to sab­o­tage the project. Read more »

I just recent­ly dis­cov­ered the fic­tion of Wal­ter Mosley [see review of “47”].  I haven’t yet read any of his “Easy Rawl­ins” series of mys­ter­ies, but I just saw this film,.made from the first one. Why had­n’t I heard of this film? It’s a superb Chan­dleresque thriller, with fine act­ing in every role. The scenes between Den­zel Wash­ing­ton and Don Chea­dle are par­tic­u­lar­ly fine. The set­ting, Los Ange­les in the 1940’s, when thou­sands of African-Amer­i­cans had recent­ly migrat­ed from the Deep South to work in the air­craft plants, is metic­u­lous­ly recre­at­ed.

It’s doubt­ful that any­one will ever match the charm that Errol Fly­nn brought to the role of Robin Hood in 1938. The film still holds up well as an enter­tain­ing adven­ture, after 68 years. It helps that it was done in the superb colour process of that era — bet­ter, but more expen­sive, than the process used in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Robin Hood tales are sup­posed to take place in the Twelfth Cen­tu­ry, but they first appear in a series of folk bal­lads that emerged cen­turies after the time, though Piers Plough­man, writ­ten in 1370, refers to “the rhymes of Robin Hood”. The Robin Hood of the film, our Robin Hood, is essen­tial­ly the one cre­at­ed by the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry chil­dren’s writer and (bril­liant) illus­tra­tor, Howard Pyle. The film is fair­ly con­sis­tent with Pyle’s Robin. But for mil­lions of peo­ple around the world Robin Hood will always be Errol Fly­nn, and the myth­i­cal hero of Britain incar­nate in a rogu­ish and rib­ald Tasmanian.

(Lein­er 2000) Dude, Where’s My Car?
(Scott 2005) King­dom of Heaven
(Dou­glas 1954) Them!
(Lester 1966) A Fun­ny Thing Hap­pened On the Way To the Forum
(Arm­strong 1999) Mid­Somer Mur­ders: Ep.9 — Blood Will Out
(Page 2002) Into the Great Pyra­mid [doc­u­men­tary series]
(von Scher­ler May­er 2002) Guru
Read more »

This is an intel­li­gent film, with char­ac­ters much more com­plex than you would expect. A youth in sub­ur­ban Long Island, liv­ing with a wid­owed father, escapes bore­dom through his friend­ship and attrac­tion to a class­mate. He is too naive and unpre­pared to con­sum­mate the rela­tion­ship, though every­one who knows them assumes they have. The oth­er boy is actu­ally pret­ty creepy, and leads him into com­mit­ting bur­glar­ies. Because of one such bur­glary, he finds him­self in an emo­tional tug-of-war with an old­er man. The sto­ry is a melo­drama, but it does not fol­low the expect­ed for­mu­las. Act­ing, pro­duc­tion val­ues, and direc­tion are all first-rate. Paul Dano gives an excel­lent lead performance.

In 1943, Germany’s UFA stu­dios spent a gigan­tic amount of mon­ey to cre­ate a film ver­sion of the absurd fan­tasy, Adven­tures of Mun­chaussen, which is loose­ly based on the extrav­a­gant “whop­pers” attrib­uted to the real life Karl Friedrich Hierony­mus, Frei­herr von Münch­hausen (1720 –1797). The film was in colour (at that time a very expen­sive process) and the spe­cial effects where the best pos­si­ble at the time. Read­ers of this site are prob­a­bly famil­iar with the fair­ly recent Ter­ry Gilliam ver­sion of the sto­ry. The von Báky film is very good. The scenes that take place on the Moon are par­tic­u­larly charm­ing. One of the odd­est things about the film is that there were sev­eral Black actors in it. What on earth was it like to be a Black actor in Berlin in 1943? What became of them? Sure­ly there is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary that could be made on this subject.

I hear (with a shud­der of hor­ror) that an Amer­i­can remake of this clas­sic British Ham­mer Stu­dios film is in pro­duc­tion. Yet anoth­er insult to a fine film that under­went more than its share of insults. The orig­i­nal was idi­ot­i­cal­ly mar­ket­ed as a shock-hor­ror pic­ture, ensur­ing that the peo­ple who would have appre­ci­at­ed it nev­er saw it and the peo­ple who saw it hat­ed it. Then it was bru­tal­ly re-cut in such a way as to make the film incom­pre­hen­si­ble. That hatch­et-job of a print cir­cu­lat­ed for years, an embar­rass­ment to the direc­tor and the stars who per­formed bril­liant­ly in it. The direc­tor even­tu­al­ly re-acquired the rights to it, and did his best to restore the orig­i­nal cut. I was present when the restored ver­sion was pre­miered in San Fran­cis­co, with the direc­tor in atten­dance. There have been two doc­u­men­taries made about this sad chain of events, nei­ther of which I’ve seen. If you rent the film, or see it on tele­vi­sion, beware of the butchered print, which still circulates.

The plot of The Wick­er Man is unique. A police­man (Edward Wood­ward) in the Scot­tish West High­lands gets a let­ter from a small island in the Hebrides. The island, under the influ­ence of a warm cur­rent, is famous for export­ing apples. The let­ter asserts that an island girl has gone miss­ing. When the police­man arrives on the island to inves­ti­gate, he dis­cov­ers two pecu­liar things: 1) every­one on the island is try­ing to hide some­thing from him, and 2) the islanders have aban­doned Chris­tian­i­ty for a revived form of ancient pagan­ism. We are giv­en, from the begin­ning, a clear pic­ture of the policeman’s char­ac­ter. He is prig­gish, pious­ly reli­gious, and a vir­gin. He is utter­ly shocked by the hap­py-go-lucky lifestyle of the neo-pagan islanders, with their joy­ful sex­u­al­i­ty, bawdy pub songs, and chil­dren danc­ing naked. Much of the back­ground is explained in his inter­changes with the island’s Laird, bril­liant­ly played by Christo­pher Lee, and with the island school­teacher (Diane Cilen­to). The police­man suf­fers the ulti­mate temp­ta­tion to his piety (and vir­gin­i­ty) in the form of the rav­ish­ing­ly beau­ti­ful tavern-keeper’s daugh­ter (Britt Ekland), and is even­tu­al­ly drawn, step-by-step, into a trap that puts him into the Wick­er Man. The trick of the film is to take a per­son that one instant­ly feels con­tempt for, and put him into a sit­u­a­tion where, even­tu­al­ly, you come to respect his view. I will not spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t seen it. Suf­fice it to say that the tale reca­pit­u­lates what must have hap­pened a thou­sand times in a thou­sand vil­lages of ancient Europe, as Chris­tian­i­ty moved into and dis­placed pagan com­mu­ni­ties. The pagan lore pre­sent­ed in the film is rea­son­ably authen­tic, giv­en the expla­na­tion that it is pre­sent­ed as an arti­fi­cial revival. The celtic music played in the film is wonderful.