Film

Boyhood

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11/7/14

Richard Linklater is what used to be known, in the classic days of Hollywood, as a maverick director. Which pretty much means that you never know what to expect from him next. From his assured debut with Dazed and Confused, through School of Rock and the various animated experiments he’s done, he’s kept his viewing public well and truly unbalanced. But who could have anticipated Boyhood?

The USP of this movie is that Linklater filmed his scenes over a twelve year period, using the same cast. The boy of the title is Mason (Ellar Coltrane). When we first meet him he’s a six year old, desperately trying to come to terms with the breakup of his parent’s marriage. Mom, is Patricia Arquette, an independent woman who longs for a career but is hampered by her unerring ability to choose the wrong man every time. Dad is Ethan Hawke, wild, feckless but incredibly likeable. And Mason’s sister is Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s own daughter). Storywise, what we get is a series of episodic vignettes that follows Mason and his extended family across the years, seeing everyone literally age 12 years in the process. The result is as delicious and it is extraordinarily magical. How many times have we seen three different kids brought in to represent one character? And how often have we seen actors buried under layers of latex to indicate the passing years.

Boyhood is a triumphant film, one that elicits genuine emotions, following as it does the (quite literal) rites of passage as a boy passes from childhood into manhood. And what a superbly eclectic soundtrack! After a recent drought in the cinema, this comes as a much needed drink of cool, refreshing water. Absolutely unmissable.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Theatre Of Blood

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22/08/14

Many people have a favourite Vincent Price movie and for me, it’s always been his 1973 horror-romp, Theatre of Blood. Price plays veteran actor, Edward Lionheart, seemingly returned from the dead to enact grisly vengeance upon the critics who derided his performances, each murder enacted in the style of a Shakespeare play. With a witty screenplay by Anthony Greville-Bell and suitably quirky direction from Douglas Hickcox, the movie serves as a spiritual boost for every artist who has ever suffered at the hands of critics.

A superb seventies ensemble cast includes Ian Hendry, Diana Rigg (as Lionheart’s equally unhinged daughter, Edwina) Robert Morley, Arthur Lowe, Coral Browne (or Mrs Price, as she was sometimes known), Michael Hordern and many more, while Price has great fun hamming up some of the immortal bards best-known lines. Newly released on DVD, this is too good to miss, but be warned. The scene where one character chokes to death on a pie containing his own pet poodles is not for the faint-hearted.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Ace In The Hole

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22/08/14

In 1951, writer/director Billy Wilder was riding the crest of the wave he’d generated with Sunset Boulevarde, a critically acclaimed and very successful movie. But his next film, Ace In The Hole, featured a story so vitriolic and poisonous that it almost sank his career forever.

Now rereleased in a spanking new black and white print, it couldn’t be more prescient and thoroughly deserves re-evaluation. Kirk Douglas, at the height of his considerable powers plays Chuck Tatum, a former big shot reporter who finds himself all washed up in Alberqurque and forced to take a post on a local newspaper. He’s constantly on the lookout for the big story that will propel him back to former glories and thinks he’s found it when he chances upon an accident in an old Indian mine where a luckless restaurant owner, Leo Minosa has been trapped by a cave-in. Chuck sets about creating a ‘human interest’ story about the attempt to rescue Leo and proceeds to milk it for all its worth, even taking steps to ensure that the process takes longer than it needs to.

Though nominated for an Oscar, the American public didn’t take kindly to a film that suggested that newspapers sold lies, that the general public would flock like vultures to a catastrophe and that the lure of easy money will always win out over common decency. Tatum is a vile creation, a man who will stop at nothing to further his career and pretty much every other character around him is revealed as a self-serving, gutless wonder, including Leo’s shrewish wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling). Despite it’s 1950’s setting, this is a film that still resonates today and ranks amongst Wilder’s finest achievements.

5 stars

Philip Caveney