Good-natured and well-presented doc about a Scottish competition to make the best bowl of oats. Watched with K, who uses more ingredients than are permitted by competition rules to consistently make better bowls of oats than any of the ones in the movie.
Tag: scotland
The Body Snatcher (1945, Robert Wise)
Following up Curse of the Cat People, it’s clear that Wise didn’t have a firm handle on things yet. The whole aspect that this is Scotland in the 1800s is very weak, while the plot is just the Burke and Hare story but set two years later, so the characters being murdered keep redundantly mentioning the more famous murders.
Karloff is the local snatcher, bringing bodies to medical school for Dr. Henry Daniell (Kirk Douglas’s brother in Lust for Life). Lugosi plays an idiot foreigner who gets killed shortly after the singing homeless girl. The doctor gets spooked and dies in a rainy carriage crash, and that’s the end of that. I think the last Val Lewton horror I’ve got left is Bedlam, another Karloff period piece, oh boy.
Frilly doctor is standing pig-center:
Frank vs. Drac:
Beats (2019, Brian Welsh)
There were some beats I actually know in this, including some by Liquid Liquid, whose music was ancient when this takes place, the reissues still a couple years off. Two loser kids, a dark mophair with downturned mouth called Johnno, and fuckup Spanner with a drug-dealing bully brother, just wanna go to raves, at the time when Britain is trying to make dance music illegal. The notorious law-loophole soundtrack with no repetitive parts comes into play. Black and white except for the little red lights on stereos, and psych-freakout imagery when the kids take their pills.
There’s violence and breakups and hurt feelings and reconciliations – the whole coming-of-age teen period drama isn’t my thing, but I kept watching for the cool accents. The kids finally have their party, a moment of bliss, but the cops and the drug dealers are both descending, the plot needing to pummel the vibes, making it no better than the government order to punish ravers. It’s got nothing on the Michael Smiley episode of Spaced. Spanner ended up on Bridgerton and Johnno’s on some kinda submarine mystery.
Wild Rose (2018, Tom Harper)
A loser mom in Scotland dreams of being a country singer – it’s not the worst premise, but then her extremely well-meaning employer Sophie Okonedo wants to help this dream come true, as fiery Jessie Buckley undermines her own success at every opportunity, and the movie becomes an overly-smiley, Disney version of a John Carney plot (so, it becomes Begin Again).
Jessie is a loser because she gives up on everything, including her own family, as long-suffering mom Julie Walters reminds her, but when Jessie finally goes to Nashville assuming she’s be dramatically discovered by talent scouts within a couple days, sees the sad reality of the open-mic scene there, and gives up on this dream to return home, it’s a triumph. Anyway, the climactic Mary Steenburgen song is sure to get nominated, and Jessie (Chernobyl, Michael Pearce’s Beast) is already winning things. Director Tom Harper has already followed up with The Aeronauts (LWL: “the longest 100 minutes you’ll spend in a cinema this year”).
Storm in a Teacup (1937, Ian Dalrymple & Victor Saville)
Honestly, even just a month after watching 78/52, Vivian Leigh did not look familiar here. I have a Vivan Leigh facial recognition problem. We both enjoyed seeing the young, fiery, sexy version of Rex Harrison, who plays an extremely principled reporter who falls for the daughter of the mayor he’s attacking in print. The mayor is the sort of cartoonishly blinkered rich asshole who finally gets in trouble for ordering the death of a poor woman’s dog. Codirector Dalrymple was better known for his writing, for which he got two oscar nominations the following year.
Poor dogless Sara Allgood, in montage-dissolve against a raging storm:
Rex and Viv:
Mayor Cecil Parker gives his big speech… have I mentioned this is set in Scotland?
Sunset Song (2015, Terence Davies)
Starring the lovely, ever-suffering Agyness Deyn, who recently played Aphrodite, as Chris. It’s more recognizably a Davies movie than The Deep Blue Sea was, because it centers around a piece of shit domineering father (Peter Mullan of War Horse, Children of Men) for the first half, then he’s dead (a la Distant Voices, Still Lives) so we focus on a husband Ewan (Kevin Guthrie) who might become a piece of shit domineering father – but doesn’t, because he’s shot for cowardice while at war. Opens with Chris’s mom poisoning herself and her young twins because she’s become pregnant again. So it’s basically a domestic horror movie.
Beautiful lighting, and per Davies tradition, some terrific crossfades. I turned on the subtitles half the time to make out the accents… and even then I sometimes have trouble. “I’m going to live on at Blawearie a while and not roup the gear at once. Could you see to that with the factor?”
I’m on M. D’Angelo’s side here, and I’ll add that the juxtaposition mentioned below was already done very well in Distant Voices, Still Lives:
Whatever Gibbons’ novel means to Davies — and it must mean a lot, as he reportedly spent many years struggling to get this film made — it doesn’t come across, except perhaps in the occasional juxtaposition of brutality and joyous group song. A few stray moments of piercing beauty toward the end (which also complicate what had previously seemed like the tediously downbeat trajectory of Chris’ marriage) can’t redeem the unrewarding slog that precedes them.
As far as beautifully shot but disappointing Davies films I watched this year go, I preferred The Deep Blue Sea, and as far as films I watched this month where soldiers get shot for cowardice in World War One, I’ll take Paths of Glory.
Always difficult to adapt poetry to the screen, so including words from the book as narration is nice. “So that was her marriage – not like waking from a dream, but like going into one. And she wasn’t sure, not for days, what things she had dreamt and what actually done.” Previously filmed as a 1971 miniseries, by the same director who shot Testament of Youth, which was also remade last year.
The Angels’ Share (2012, Ken Loach)
A unexpectedly cheerful Scotland fantasy from Mr. Loach. He sets up the grim realism: new dad Robbie is a habitual fuckup living out a cycle of violence and poverty – but then over the credits we get a semi-comic montage of other young fuckups being assigned community service, including hilariously dense baldie Albert, compulsive shoplifter Mo, and less-distinguishable Rhino (William Ruane of Loach’s Sweet Sixteen). The four end up in a work program under whiskey enthusiast Harry (John Henshaw of Red Riding), and Robbie (Paul Brannigan, whom Katy thinks is hot, soon to appear in Jonathan Glazer’s first film since Birth) proves to have a fine nose for whisky.
Harry is full of empathy for his young charges, especially Robbie, and Robbie also has his girl Leonie (and, to a much lesser extent, her dad) on his side, so we’re all set for a heartwarming story where Robbie grows away from his violent past and gets a whiskey-related job with collector Roger Allam (Peter Mannion in The Thick of It season 2; Katy says he looks too much like Christopher Hitchens). And we get that, but after one last heist, as the four pilfer some of the rarest whisky in the world from a recently-discovered cask on its eve of auction. Movie might be giving its hopeless protag too easy of a ride out of the slums, too many side characters willing to spend their time, love and money on him, but for a director whose work is usually called “miserablism,” it’s forgiveable.
Brave (2012, Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman)
Princess Merida, with the most awesome red hair I’ve seen in any movie, doesn’t want to be won in a contest by the first-born sons of the tribal leaders, so she competes to win her own freedom. That night, as the good-natured annual party (led by her father the Bear King) threatens to devolve into full-on war, Merida creeps away and asks a witch to change her controlling mother. So mom is changed into a bear. Now Merida has to save her mom from her bear-hunting father, and break the spell, and figure out what to do about the marriage thing before war breaks out.
Katy called it “rambunctious” and said she likes at least ten other Pixar features more than this one. We both felt a bit chastised for not recognizing the film’s full greatness after reading L. Loofbourow’s brilliant article Just Another Princess Movie.
Late director Mark Andrews helmed Pixar’s One Man Band and co-wrote John Carter of Mars, replacing original writer/director Brenda Chapman (co-dir. of Prince of Egypt).
La Luna (2011, Enrico Casarosa)
The moon is covered with tiny shooting stars, and as it rises each night, a couple of boatmen lean a ladder against it, climb up and sweep them into place to form the proper crescent shape. More golden light and wide-eyed wonder than is typical for Pixar. Writer/director Casarosa was an artist on Ratatouille and Up. Too-big music by Michael Giacchino (Super 8, Cars 2). Katy and I liked it.
Burke and Hare (2011, John Landis)
Perfect example of a movie that works in theory, but lacks something essential. Strong performances by good comic actors (I was happily surprised by Andy Serkis), funny situations and dialogue, strong historical interest, and good energy. So why is it such an average movie? Blame Landis?
Simon “Burke” Pegg tries to buy the favor of feminist actress Isla Fisher, while Hare is content with his wife Lucky (Spaced star Jessica Hynes). The intrigue revolves around head doctors at competing medical schools – old-school Tim Curry, who gets the law on his side, and Tom Wilkinson, who resorts to hiring our heroes to provide him bodies on which to experiment (leading to the undignified death of poor Christopher Lee). Bill Bailey plays a narrating executioner and David Hayman is a gangster who wants protection money but ends up dead in the operating theater. Movie closes on a present-day shot of Burke’s skeleton, still preserved in Edinburgh – perfect ending to a historical black comedy.
I haven’t much to say, so thought I’d end by stealing a native Edinburgh perspective from Shadowplay, but damn it, they haven’t watched this one yet.
