8. 8 1/5 (1963)

This is the first film to really feel like homework, but to be a true cinephile you don't have to like these 'grest' films, just consider them. Well I did consider it and I didn't much care for it.

It tells the story of Guido, a popular Italian film director who is struggling to find inspiration for his next movie which is due to begin shooting. Constant hassles from his wife, his mistress, his leading lady and countless film executives, cause him to escape into his memories and fantasies of the women from his past.

The lines between his fantasies and the reality often blur and it isn't the most cohesive of plots. There is some striking imagery though. The scene when he just imagines that all the women he has wronged forgive him, become his harem and help to bathe him is bonkers par excellence. Especially when it all goes tits up when they learn he sends them 'upstairs' when they get over 40! Bring on the whip! Eddra Gale as Saraghina, performing a rumba for the village kids is a sight. Strictly Come Dancing it ain't!

So no I didn't enjoy watching it, but I'm glad I did. At least Nine had some good songs in it to redeem it's terribleness!

Someone ate Fergie!

7. 42nd Street (1933)

"Jones and Barry are putting on a show!"

is the message relayed around New York in the opening scene of this old Hollywood musical. Indeed they are. 'Pretty Lady' is to star Dorothy Brock and is financed by her sugar daddy, Abner Dillon. Successful director on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Julian Marsh, is hired to ensure it's success, thus begins a calamitous pre-production.

This film is a bit of a mess, but it's shining moments do dazzle, whether it be the snappy wisecracks ("Who can forget Anytime Annie? She only said no once and then she didn't hear the question!") to the startling musical numbers. Some suspension of disbelief is required for the sudden increase in stage area during the show, but Busby Berkeley's dance routines are distracting enough. In fact they are the best thing in it. The 'let's put on a show' format doesn't have the gusto required and is dogged down by sub plots that are barely interesting. Even the overdone main story of the fresh faced new girl, played by Ruby Keeler in her film debut, rising through the ranks is uninteresting. I think this is due to the direction from Lloyd Bacon. The script is fine; moments of light hearted wise cracking banter from the chorus girls is most welcome. Una Merkel and (a pre Astaired) Ginger Rogers delivering some great lines; the dance numbers are spectacular, it's the telling of the story that seems a little lacklustre. Fortunately the actual musical has a good 20 minutes devoted to it's numbers and what numbers! No wonder Berkeley was soon contracted by Warner Brothers.

The Kaleidoscopic images Berkeley puts together are impressive, but probably not so to the show's audience, unless they were hanging from the rafters. That'd be the suspension of disbelief then! (see what I did there?)

6. The 400 Blows/Les Quatre Cent Coups (1959)

After the bucket of pretension I sat through in Godard's debut feature, I began with reluctance to watch Francois Truffaut's. Fortunately, this auteur knows something about plot and storytelling.

Poor Antoine Doinel is a touch hard done by and misunderstood. Unable to concentrate at school and neglected by his less than caring parents, he cuts class, runs away from home and takes to the streets of Paris for a short, half-hearted life of petty theft.

Allegedly his story is loosely based on Truffaut's own childhood. It is certainly told poignantly through a child's eyes and also through a love of Paris. Never have dingy bedsits, salubrious settings and even juvenile detention centres looked so beautiful. This is in part a love letter to Paris and all it's parts. It's opening shots are what Manhatten's are to New York, but after that there is no more Eiffel Tower, and the like, to be seen as he paints a pretty picture of the lesser parts!

Antoine's sad story is broken up by moments of joy. A ride on a centrefuge, a moment of family togetherness at a cinema and even in it's final scenes as he finally gets to see the coast. It's all very touching and you are behind him 100%, even in his moments of delinquence. His friendship with his one confident, Rene, is also rather tender.

It's a charming film. The ending leading to four more films of Antoine on the run. I must say that I am intrigued to know what happens to this charming little cad.

A film to see before you die? Certainly. My faith in French New Wave has been reignited. The cinematogrophy here is masterful and every frame is a picture postcard. Jean-Pierre Léaud is splendid in the lead role. Hard to believe he was only 14. Bravo.

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

5. The 39 Steps (1935)

Robert Donat plays a Canadian holidaying in London. One night at a music hall, he meets a mysterious woman who invites herself back to his place. Very forward for the times! Turns out she is a counterespionage agent trying to stop a secret document leaving the country. Before our dapper hero finds out more, the enigmatic Miss Smith is murdered in the night and thus begins a great chase to avoid capture, clear his name and to discover what this secret is and what are the 39 steps.

This is Hitchcock's first breakthrough feature and it displays a number of themes to show up in his later films. A mysterious woman, an innocent man on the run and the introduction of the MacGuffin: a plot device used to carry the story on, but ambiguous in nature, sometimes never even revealed. Here the MacGuffin IS The 39 Steps. It's not important what they are and it's the quest for the knowledge that is the interesting part.

The whole spy plot takes a back seat really and it's the interplay between the 2 main leads that drives the film along. What starts out as a spy mystery turns into a bit of a comic caper with a spot of romance. Donat ends up being handcuffed to Madeline Carroll and their relationship is played out in a mock marriage at an isolated inn. This sparking relationship is the essence of the film and once they leave the inn, Hitchcock wastes no time in drawing the film to a neat ending.

Charles Bennett's screenplay is full of sharp witty dialogue and is perfectly paced. The film is beautifully shot with many a lingering end-scene frame.

This is an excellent movie that has certainly stood the test of time and stands shoulder to shoulder with the best of Hitchcock's oeuvre.

WHERE'S ALFRED?!

making his usual cameo



4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick's ground breaking science-fiction groundbreaker is next on the list. It's a long, winding, epic film which is essentially about evolution. It's opening act based during the origins of mankind, the final act ending in a possible next stage of evolution. How we get there is quite an odd journey.

So we start at the dawn of man where prehistoric pimates encounter a myterious black monolith which then triggers them to stop being placcid vegetarians, pick up bones and wield them as weapons. Cue bloodshed and rare steak. A seminal shot of a bone being flung into the air cuts to the future and a satellite/spaceship orbiting the earth and dancing a waltz to The Blue Danube, whilst docking into a space station. Here we meet up with scientists off to an excavation on the moon's surface where a mysterious black monolith has been found buried. As they approach it gives off a high frequency signal. Jump to 18 months later and a spaceship heading towards jupiter on a mysterious mission. Manned by Dave and Frank, with unseen scientists in stasis, the mission is sabotaged by paranoid computer Hal. Sole survivor Dave makes it though to jupiter to discover, yup, a mysterious black monolith floating in space. Cue trippy moments of Dave aging, dying in a hotel suite and then reborn through a gateway into a new stage as a 'star-child' All a bit bonkers!

The film is a big trip, but it's amazingly well thought out. It's surrounded by science fact. The look of space, the design of the craft inside and out, the technology is all highly accurate as the designers and writers worked closely with NASA. Kubrick even predicts skyping! The dawn of man act shows off some impressive make-up worn by actors/dancers who were well studied in the movements of primates. Nothing is done haphazardly.

The star of the film is the disturbed computer HAL, voiced by Douglas Rain. As the 2 concious scientists go about their days in a methodical way, it is HAL who is becoming more human, asking opinion and commenting on Dave's sketchings. This comes to a head when he discovers a plot to decommision him and survival becomes his mission. He does seem to go about it rather clunkily though. There must have been an easier way of doing them all in.

The final act is the biggest head-fuck and I still couldn't tell you what all that was about.

There are many things to enjoy about this film. It is  true spectacle to watch and the soundtrack is superb. It takes a great precident in the film as there isn't a great deal of dialogue. The jupiter mission act is the most satisfying and HAL is greatly quoteable.

I'm not sure, as a grand total of it's parts, I would herald it as a great film, but there is no denying it's influence on modern cinema.

This review can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.