The Outlaw ( Howard Hughes)I have probably seen fewer westerns than any other type of genre film. If this vanity piece was the first western one ever saw, one wouldn't be in a great hurry to see another. Hughes' inflated ego floated through Hollywood for several years. Clamor and outrage surrounded this movie, with its unequivocal "suggestive" music cues and bizarre camera angles ( courtesy of Kane camera man Gregg Toland)that drew the viewer's eye
to the generous bosom of Jane Russell. When Hughes isn't steaming up the room with Ms Russell, he's telling a version of the story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Pat's best friend Doc Holiday is cleverly played by Walter Huston. This isn't a dull film but the absence of la Russell only emphasizes Hughes' sub- Ed Wood directorial prowess.
Master and Commander ( Peter Weir)Peter Weir hit America with Witness, a sound variation of his theme of cultures colliding. He made one more picture that was on a par with his Australian films, Fearless, the tale of a man who has no business being alive ( he's survived an airliner crash)that has affinities with Phillipe Mora. Master and Commander is a precis' of the work of the popular nautical storyteller Patrick O'Brian. Weir depicts the archetypal homosocial milieu, the life of the sea, but plausibly keeps everything on a friendly basis. It's still enough to wring a tear from even the phlegmatic likes of me. Russell Crowe gives us another 3D portrait, his best after John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Paul Bettany offsets Captain Aubrey's genuine piety as the ship's doctor, an amateur naturalist whose idea of heaven is the Galapagos Islands. It's no The Last Wave or Gallipoli but a worthy film. I'm sorry I missed it in the theatres.
Dance With A Stranger ( Mike Newell)Nightclub hostess and retired prostitute Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England. Scenarist Shelagh Delaney presents the events leading to Ellis' execution as the impossible triangle of the lady, aspiring race car driver David Blakeley and unrequited lover/ protector Desmond Cussen. Blakeley is besotted
with Ellis and even breaks off an engagement to "the kind of girl my mother wants me to marry". But this is England in 1954. The kind of slumming popular among the toffs was still several years away. Ellis is played by Miranda Richardson as a collection of tics,twitches and tantrums. She conveys so much through shrieks and cries that she's almost the female Nick Nolte. I've spoilt the movie already but I hope my description of Richardson's acting drives you to find this movie and watch it anyway. There were at least two other very good British true crime films during the late 80s - early 90s, Peter Medak's
The Krays and Let Him Have It. The latter was most people's first look at Christopher Eccleston.
When it snows, I watch movies.
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