Juan Wayne - Hollywood Superstar (2004)

D. Roberto Martinez (although, disappointingly, not the one who now manages Everton)
Colour


I like ‘Juan Wayne – Hollywood Superstar’, a film which exists in bright sunshine but also manages a harsh grittiness that Ken Loach would actually salivate over. It’s a film with dreams of Hollywood stardom (could that title scream ‘wannabe’ anymore?) but also has its fingers dirty with the drudgery of hard low paid work. It’s a film which very much positions itself as lying in the gutter and staring at the stars – although these aren’t the kind of stars you’d generally see from Griffith Observatory.
Part expose of the underclass that exists in the shadows of the bright lights in Beverly Hills; part satire of Hollywood and the fame hungry; part raucous sex comedy: the micro budget ‘Juan Wayne – Hollywood Superstar’ is not short of ambition, it has bags of ambition, sacks of ambition, bulging suitcases of ambition. Unfortunately that’s way too much ambition for such a small film and so it frequently overreaches. But then a film which has too many ideas is always more fun than a film meandering along on too few.


Juan works three jobs, one as a pool boy for a wealthy Hollywood producer who seems to be on the skids, one as a tour guide driving people to the outside of houses he can only dream of going into, and one as a barman in a gay club. His ability to juggle these jobs, the stoic way he accepts every insult and piece of shit that's thrown at him is the best of the film. Hector Gonzalez, who plays the lead, carries it off with a great deal of charm and panache, smiling a never dented grin even when clearly aware that he’s clinging onto the scabby underside of the Hollywood dream.

Less successful are the Hollywood satire sequences, with Juan going for auditions for crap looking acting roles and suffering embarrassing incidents in front of casting agents. I'm sure these scenes come from a real place, the kind of place where jobbing Hollywood actors sit around and discuss the sheer living hell of their existences, but really they're the kind of thing Joey on ‘Friends’ used to get up to every four weeks or so. We've seen it all before (and can see it again and again on Comedy Central, who make E4’s use of ‘Friends’ seem sparing) and really YOU CAN have too much of a good thing.

The worst though are the sections devoted to his illicit and snatched liaisons with the wife of the Hollywood producer whose career may very well be on the skids. If for whatever odd reason you wanted to see a bawdy low-stakes comedy with plenty of nearly being caught with the trousers down moments, then you've come to the right place. It’s tedious and disappointing in a film which elsewhere is so very much alive. But then I suppose even this is representative of Hollywood as a whole: there may just be a market for social expose, there sometimes is a market for satire, but sex most definitely sells.

The Beatles: The Future (1976)

D. Winston O’Boogie/Apollo C. Vermouth
B&W, with flashes of bright and scary psychedelic colour


Here’s an absolutely bizarre and barely seen movie which is exactly the kind of film this blog is duty-bound to bring to wider attention. ‘The Beatles: The Future’ is a surreal faux documentary which looks at what would have happened if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Constructed using fake talking head clips, fake footage of The Beatles and even really amateurish cartoons, this is a head-spinning montage which revels in love for the 1960s and disappointment in the 1970s. Clearly the filmmakers believed the 1960s was the ushering of a utopia which cruelly never actually happened, and that the 1970s (which when this began filming were only three years old) were struggling to cope with all that failed promise. The Beatles were of course the great symbol of the 1960s and perhaps another group of filmmakers would have used their continuing presence as the salve that the decade needed; another film would have suggested that if The Beatles were still around the 1970s would have been much brighter and better. But that’s not what this movie does. Yes, The Beatles were part of the more hopeful age of the 1960s, but if they’d stayed around for the following decade they’d have been tarnished along with everything else.


The Beatles – none of whom are really played by the same actors from one scene to the next, let alone right away from the movie (so working out who is who is can be a trifle hard) – are instead portrayed as doing all the ridiculous 1970s rock star stuff. This is a movie which comes to slaughter, rather than praise, its idols. The not so fab four preach a Marxian tune of shared belongings, but move to Monaco to stop paying taxes; they talk peace, whilst employing thuggish bodyguards; they festoon themselves in ridiculous kaftans and shawls, demanding attention even as they claim to be “just four ordinary lads from Liverpool” (the accents are atrocious btw); and when they do play a concert, it’s a pompous three hour event in front of the pyramids at sunset which proves disastrous, leading to a stampeded “where eight people and fourteen beautiful camels died tragically”. They also have other more Beatles-centric concerns, with Yoko and Linda very much to the fore so that the band end up releasing albums as ‘The Beatles Collective’; including a four disk number, the side Ringo is in charge of apparently benefiting from actually being some fun.


Actually for a musical film there’s little in the way of music. Obviously they couldn’t afford the rights to actual Beatles songs and your jobbing songsmith can’t just knock out a genuine Lennon/McCartney. So what we have here is ramshackle affair with little music and from scene to scene difficulty in telling which Beatle is which, but if you’re a Beatles fan and want to watch something which is occasionally witty and clever and pointed about the failures of heroes, then this is a bit of a slog but well worth tracking down.


My favourite scene? In 1973 when The Beatles are getting truly bad coverage, a press conference is called. John Lennon tears up poster-size covers of the NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and others – all of whom have had the temerity to criticise the band – but for each one torn up The Beatles take off an item of clothing. It ends with four chubby and hairy Beatles impersonators in a line, wearing only Y-fronts and socks, doing the kind of stamping dance which one imagines inspired Madness. I don’t know what it all means, but in it’s clearly fucking mad way, it captures the whole shabby vagabond spirit of the film.

Scotland The Feared (2009)

D. Neil Marshall
Colour


It’s a tad surprising that Neil Marshall’s satire/horror/dystopian science fiction/gaudy spectacular of a film isn’t better known, I’d have put good money on it being referenced (by both sides) in the run up to the Scottish devolution vote. I’d have thought that with the future 'Dr Who' careers of two of its stars, Whovians like myself would be all over it. But no, it seems that after ‘Dog Soldiers’ and ‘The Descent’, Marshall’s films have struggled to get recognition. And that’s a shame as for all its flaws (and they are myriad), this is a film crammed full of ideas.


In the future, the Prime Minister of the independent Scotland (Peter Capaldi – not doing full Malcolm Tucker, but still in scary if not sweary mode) is agitated about Scotland’s influence on the world stage. Oil is running out and Scotland is facing becoming a poor country, “the bastard cousin” of a still dominant England. These strifes have already reached home, with gangs of disaffected youths – known as Haggises – roaming the land. However with the discovery of a nuclear weapon left over from Colonial times (as they’re referred in the film), Capaldi decides to start a war. It’s up to plucky young reporter James MacAvoy (bland) and his intern, Karen Gillan (inexperienced as an actress, but fetchingly lovely) to stop him.


The newly minted Twelfth Doctor and Amy Pond together on celluloid, you’d have thought the Science Fiction magazines would be panting over DVDs of this. Particularly, as I’ve already noted, the vote this year is going to make it truly topical. However the reason they won’t, is that having splattered all these elements together, ‘Scotland the Feared’ struggles to make any of them work.
‘The Mouse that Roared’ satire of the premise – where Scotland attacks England’s great ally, Portugal (it’s true that the one country in Europe England/Britain has never been to war with is Portugal) goes from ludicrously satirical idea to be taken intensely seriously by all the characters very quickly. But then maybe the idea of firing a nuclear warhead at millions of innocent Portuguese can’t be played for comedy for too long.


As for the horror, the Haggises are scarily tattooed and scarily Glaswegian, but are used far too frequently. By the end it seems like any scene which has become inert can easily be resolved by having a bunch of violent skinheads crash into the room. And there are only so many times watching a drooling skinhead wield a broken bottle of McEwans is actually entertaining.


And the dystopian future stuff? Well, that’s a mix of smog coloured sky, bright neons and impressive shadows. It isn’t as original as it could be, but you can see Marshall and his cinematographer straining against the budget to create something that is undeniable futuristic and Scottish.


Which is what I like about this film, how goddamn Scottish it is. For the most part this looks like a film made for an exclusively Scottish audience. To understand all the references it helps if you have good working knowledge of Scottish indie music, the suburbs of Edinburgh and The Jacobite Rebellion. There are characters who speak like particularly indecipherable extras from Rab C. Nesbit, with not a subtitle in sight. Okay, for a more general audience there are jokes about the first presidents of Scotland being Alec Salmond, Sean Connery and Alex Ferguson – but you won’t necessarily feel a welcome in the hills if you’re a Sassenach.


So why isn’t this a rallying film for the independence campaign? Undoubtedly because the ending makes it clear that the film doesn’t know where it lies. (Spoiler alert) ‘Scotland the Feared’ does honestly end with England sending it troops to quell the Scots and make everything safe again. After all the stuff about being proud Scots and how the country can stand up for itself, it is forcibly taken back into English hands before it can cause any more damage. It’s a genuinely odd conclusion that makes you wonder who this film is aimed at. Surely anyone who believes in the Union doesn’t want to sit through 90 minutes of strident neon flag waving for independence; while anyone who believes in devolution doesn’t want to watch a film where England bails them out.


It’s all very odd, and just proves once again that you can’t have your Dundee Cake and eat it.

Arranging My Affairs (1979)

D. Bob Spiers
Colour


Fans of ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ should seek out this rare starring role in cinema for Leonard Rossiter. Normally on the big screen he was limited to playing weary policemen in ‘Pink Panther’ sequels, or small roles in Stanley Kubrick movies, but here he is the star and centre of everything. Playing an unnamed Cabinet Minister in the British government, Rossiter is absolutely astounding. Speaking as quickly as Reggie Perrin, Rossiter presents his politician as that rare thing – an almost still whirling dervish. He doesn’t charge or race around, but clearly his mind is always whirring and spinning, with words spilling out of him so fast, constantly twisting one way or another. He obfuscates, he misleads, he tells half-truths, semi-truths and even resorts to just lying, all to get out of various jams of his own making. And it’s brilliant to watch, as Rossiter makes this man immensely likeable, even when ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are clearly just half remembered words in the dictionary. This, without a doubt, is one of the most cynical films ever made about politics and politicians.


Suddenly finding himself at risk of exposure for his various misdeeds, our political hero has a day or so to get all his affairs into order so that he can present a squeaky clean image to the general public. This includes sorting out some dubious loans from his ultra-seedy cousin (Peter Sallis, in a role which seems like the dark twisted mirror to Norman Clegg; the antichrist to Wallace); getting hold of some compromising snaps from a brothel madam (Kate O’Mara, purring over line like creamy liquor); and ending affairs with a duo of glamorous mistresses, Joanna Lumley and Lynn-Holly Johnson (both actual Bond girls) and ridiculously handsome toy-boy, Anthony Andrews (who surely must have been considered for Bond). In addition he has the attention of a blackmailer (Michael Ripper), a problem which may need more drastic measures to resolve. All the way through Rossiter talks, carving and chipping away with words, as if they can alter reality itself. This is a man who is dangling by a thread, but who won’t admit that the thread is anything other than a sturdy rope and far from dangling he is floating above serenely taking in the panorama of the situation. He sweats, undoubtedly the panic rises, but no matter how dire the predicament he doesn’t give up. He just keeps on talking and talking and talking. It’s no wonder that when his wife, Sian Phillips, stares at him it’s with a smile of pride rather than a snarl of frustration.


If we’re honest it looks more like a TV movie than an actual film. It’s made by television professionals and never really escapes that. But in Rossiter’s magnificently shifty yet sincere performance, in the seediness of the tabloids which pursue him, in the way that the political establishment rallies around and supports him when the danger is not just hammering his door but trying to climb through the window, we have an extremely cynical and wonderfully funny film which is just as horribly applicable today.

Hey, I Used To Write Books (2005)

D. Peter Bogdanovitch
Colour


I’d like to think that Robert De Niro saw the irony in making this little seen film. I’d like to think that he approached it with a degree of self-awareness about what he was doing, an understanding of what he was taking on. I hope he didn’t arrive on the first day treating it in exactly the same bored and disinterested way he no doubt treated the other fourteen films he was appearing in that year. As even though the name of the character is wrong, even though the profession is wrong, this film is almost ridiculously autobiographical for Bobby De Niro. It’s a movie which is reaching into the soul of its star and trying to display it to the world. And I just hope that Bobby figured that out, that the irony of playing this character with these problems wasn’t lost on him in his usual of haze of disinterestedly going through the motions.


Bobby is Toby Rushkin, a one-time brilliant and fêted young novelist who has hit hard times and now churns out scripts for what looks like an incredibly tacky and unfunny sitcom. (Basically it looks like a less funny, less classy, more sexist version of ‘Two and a Half Men’. It’s therefore ridiculously easy to see why the character feels such contempt for the source of his paycheques.) Bobby spends the whole film striving to get back to where he thinks he belongs, reminding himself and others around him of how big a deal he once was. This doesn’t have the effect of building him up in the way he hopes, though it just shows how far and horribly he has fallen. The title comes from the sentence he uses to justify himself; wheels out when he tumbles into the pits into self-pity; even wields as a boast as he introduces himself to new people. We follow him as he tries repeatedly to pull himself up before falling back again; whilst the whole time having to deal with his boss Andy Garcia and his on/off girlfriend Jennifer Tilly. (Yes, De Niro, Garcia and Tilly really do make a cast list which would have been a whole lot more exciting ten years earlier.) It’s a maudlin comedy, one about failure and the fear of failure and the trap of failure.


And of course it all applies to Bobby. Here is a man who used to do absolutely incredible, awe inspiring work, but who is now trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of soulless hackery. This is a story about Bobby’s own predicament, about what’s happened to him and his career. But the thing is, from his low energy and bored look in his eye, it’s not at all convincing that Bobby has figured this out. It seems almost as if this is just another job for Bobby, another paycheque, one which will be over in a couple of weeks and then he’ll head onto his next film. You watch it and want him to realise that he’s making autobiography, you want him to rise to the challenge, but it never comes off. Obviously the ‘great work to will work for food’ path is one taken by the film’s director, Peter Bogdanowitz, and I hope he at least figured out the irony of what he was doing. As the only thing Bobby appears interested in throughout this film, throughout this story which could be his life story, is whether the limo which takes him back and forth the studio is comfy enough.

Shadows of the Aliens (1984)

D. Phillippe Noir
Colour


It’s sad that this French science fiction film didn’t garner a bigger audience, as it’s a visually innovative, sharply political, gripping thriller. Whether one would describe it as enjoyable is a question we’ll throw into the air with little heed to its safety, as there are car crashes which are less bleak. But how often do you get to pick up a croissant and a glass of red wine and sit down to a science fiction movie which has something to say and is saying it in a French accent?


Our setting, as the opening caption tells us is the future, although very little is done to indicate the future. The cars, the buildings, the haircuts all scream the 1980s, so that is where we are. (Clearly Goddard’s ‘Alphaville’ is an influence.) Our setting then is the present, but not quite the present. Jean Poiret, pulling on his policeman’s overcoat, is a government sanctioned hunter. He stalks the streets of Paris hunting down aliens, who are then rounded up and taken to who knows where. Of course this being science fiction, these aliens are humanoids from outer space (recognised by their two sets of eyelids and no toes) rather than immigrants. But for the social message of the film, these are one and the same. The aliens are not wanted by France, they have never been invited in and now they have to leave.


The first half of the film then is chasing these aliens (they are never given a name) around Paris, trying to catch them but sometimes being forced to terminate them with maximum force. In the first half hour alone we have a creature thrown off a tall building into the path of a juggernaut; and one dropped into a vat of handily placed acid (of the kind which only ever exist in the movies). Poiret seems to be the type of investigator Napoleon would like, as whenever an act of violence needs to be committed, a luckily placed fire-axe or lift-shaft is nearby.


Some movies would have been content with this cat and mouse, this human and humanoid alien, some movies would have left their ambition there. But ‘Shadows of the Aliens’ decides to push things much further.


Halfway through a giant spaceship arrives on Earth, or more precisely in Paris. (The film is French, therefore Paris is the centre of the world and quite probably the universe). These are the Vervoids, a powerful alien race which hates the original aliens as much as the French do. Initially we only see the Vervoid leader, a giant and sweaty ball of rippling flesh, unable to express the simplest emotion without its entire body rippling. Realised with the aid of a puppet, this is an alien leader who is striking and menacing and bears an unmistakable resemblance to the older Orson Welles. The Vervoids are hailed as saviours. (The fact that these first aliens are never named may cause problems in this review, but not in the film. We simply have The Humans, The Vervoids and – lastly – the aliens). With the French government’s approval – in the form of uber-efficient administrator, Gerard Depardieu – they take over Paris and work together to rid these aliens on a more industrial scale. Suddenly we have gone from problems of immigration to the Vichy government and everything has turned terrifying and strange.


There is no US/British allied force to the rescue this time (this isn’t ‘Adrienne and the Astronaut’ though, such creatures as Americans do still exist). We’re told that worried phone calls have been made by the President and Prime Minister, although the tone of Depardieu’s voice makes it seem like they’re easy to ignore. Instead the Vervoids and the humans are allowed in win. Indeed at the conclusion, with most of the original aliens dead, it’s clear how much the Vervoids and humans now look like each other. They are one and the same.


Post Star Wars there were a lot of science fiction films which didn’t really want to say anything, they just wanted to entertain with their brilliant light shows. This one though is desperate to say things, it wants to shout them from the rooftops, and is happy to bring in juggernauts, acid vats and rubbery Orson Welles just to get some attention. Maybe the end result is too dark to grab a huge audience, but this is undeniably a tense and thought provoking film.


And, really, where else are you going to see a giant rippling Orson Welles dominate Gerard Depardieu?

Three Cheers for Captain England (1978)

D. Joseph Losey
Colour


Henry Cavill as Superman. Christian Bale as Batman. Andrew Garfield as Spiderman. Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass. But who amongst us really remembers either Michael Crawford as Condorman, or Dirk Bogarde as Captain England? Yes, British actors have been playing superheroes for quite some time, it’s just that the heroes have got bigger.


‘Three Cheers for Captain England’ is a fascinating gem of a film, both for its searing portrayal of a certain type of Englishman, and for the way it predicts a lot that will come in more mainstream superhero adventures. At the time it was a barely released curio and maybe its influence is accidental (how many people have ever seen this after all?) but if not influential, it’s definitely prescient


Bogarde is Henry Davenport, who in the glorious 1950s fought for civilisation against chaos as Captain England. There he is: mocked up photos of the young Bogarde at the Coronation; at the Festival of Britain; and a very amusing (although not that well mocked up) snap of Captain England leading Guy Burgess and Donald McLean into custody – as if the entire spying farrago of the third man, fourth man and fifth man could have been stopped by just one super powerful and righteous Englishman. This is the kind hero Bulldog Drummond would have looked up to. This is the kind of hero James Bond would have looked up to. How he got his powers is never explained, nor really what his powers were. Clearly he could fly and was extremely strong, but we don’t know how fast he was or whether he had x-ray vision – while no lab accident or encounter with alien life is ever even hinted at. He was powerful in the same way that England was powerful and glorious. And he wasn’t alone. In the background of the fifties were other heroes – Major Tunbridge-Wells and The Cockney – but it was Captain England everyone cheered.


Now though Captain England has retired, grown into a graceful old age. Occasionally he makes chat-show appearances, but his time has gone; remembered as one of sepia, a better place when England was truly great. However he is about to gain himself a new foe, as a young man (Paul Nicholas) threatens to expose his homosexuality.


Clearly Bogarde is supposed to represent a certain type of Englishman. One who is complacent, conservative with a small c and has had rose-tinted glasses welded to his face. He is the Englishman who revels in the glorious past and doesn’t care about the present. One who knows that England is going down the toilet, but thinks there’s nothing he – even an individual as powerful as Captain England – can do about it.  Bogarde is brilliant in the role, beautifully capturing a sense of vainglorious disappointment.


Actually there are no slouches anywhere in the cast, with John Gielgud a particular hoot in his cameo as the now elderly Major Tunbridge-Wells; dressed in colonial garb and ranting at how everything these days “just isn’t on, old boy.”


And yet for all the swipes at the ruling class and middle aged and narrow minded of England, this is a superhero film. And in that brooding behind closed doors about the things he has done and what he was, we can see a lot of what Batman has become. In the cadre of costumed superheroes who have long since broken up, we see The Watchmen and The Incredibles. And in an impregnable hero with one fatal flaw, we surely substitute kryptonite for homosexuality and have a satire of Superman.


(How brilliant, though incredibly unlikely, would it be for Hollywood to fund a multi-million dollar superhero film where the hero is gay? That’s the way to reinvent your franchise right there! And no, Wonder Woman won't cut the mustard.)


This is a really perverse superhero film. One where the hero thinks decidedly small, lives in a dingy city (London has rarely looked dirtier or more provincial than this 1978 version does) and doesn’t use his powers until the end. And then we can see how much work Hollywood had to do the same year to get Christopher Reeve to fly properly as Superman. It’s not just the visible wires, it’s his shadow on the sky and the look on Bogarde’s face which seems to suggest that we all know he’s just an idiot hanging off a rig in a studio. So okay the effects don’t work, but this isn’t a film about effects. It’s a frequently brilliant superhero tale. A broken superhero, a faded superhero, an obsolete superhero, a superhero no longer that heroic or super. But a British superhero certainly, and maybe the only superhero film anywhere which doesn’t go out of its way to ape the Americans.