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Dom Hemingway

My appreciation of the career trajectories of Richard E Grant and Jude Law has been nigh on inversely proportional. One started out practically assaulting you with contemptible energy and then coasted on the good will that brought, not just from an adoring public fanbase but also impressionable media peers, for a fair while. The other also attracted superficially affirmative responses. His model-prettiness resulted in indiscriminate casting, and for a long while he didn’t seem to fully mesh with the pictures of which he was a part; he sat above them, sullen or blank.

In the early ‘90s Grant could do no wrong, even though he frequently did. My first conscious experience of him came a few years earlier, via his unlikely heroic time traveller in Warlock. Withnail & I made him an icon to a generation of students (and beyond, of course). Withnail has only been surpassed in status by the Dude, such is the glamour of shameless but witty debauchery. I eagerly sought out anything Grant appeared in. Sometimes this paid off (How to Get Ahead in Advertising) at others I was left indifferent (L.A. Story, Mountains on the Moon). And then came Hudson Hawk, the last word in over-the-top Richard E. Grant performances (“What can I say? I’m the villain!”) Sublime as that box office disaster is, it was the beginning of the end for Richard as a rising star. With Nails, his entertaining journal of Hollywood flirtations and his La-La Land pals (Steve Martin, Winona Ryder – who loved Withnail, quite understandably), is perhaps the only real fruit borne of that sojourn. He can say he worked with Coppola and Scorsese, but only his (first) film with Altman leaves much impression. Over the rest of the decade there was the odd pleasant surprise (the Oscar-winning short Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life, Keep the Aspidistra Flying), but he finished up the decade as a really not that much fun-at-all TV The Scarlet Pimpernel and doing a Comic Relief bit as Doctor Who (a role I foolishly once thought he’d be perfect for). I gave up on him. And I haven’t seen much since that has persuadaded me otherwise. He made a bizarrely appropriate Michael Heseltine in his two minutes of screen time in The Iron Lady, but his recent villainous turn in nu-Doctor Who just cemented the realisation that hardly anyone has cast him to his strengths in 20 years. Now though, miraculously, Grant seems to be back as the Grant we know and love in our mind’s eye. The bitter, splenetically funny Grant. Bilious and given to undisguised, superior disdain. It may be a false dawn, of course; how many chances has Bruce Willis had to return to the witty guy he once was, but never failed to disappoint? But as Dom Hemingway’s best mate, Dickie, Grant at least has the chance to be a flash in the pan.

Law has managed a near reverse of his contemporary Ewan McGregor. McGregor was getting the pick of the roles, but he was unable to retain the iconic status that came with his first two Danny Boyle collaborations. There was the odd Law film that stood out (Gigolo Joe in A.I., Brad in I Heart Huckabees) but his feted appearances for Anthony Minghella (and later not so) seemed too consciously self-important all-round, and his “classic” leading man roles (eXistenZ, Enemy at the Gates) or attempts to go dark (Road to Perdition) didn’t quite fly. I wouldn’t go as far as calling him a terrible cunt, but he didn’t impress. In the last few years though, he’s suddenly become an actor I look forward to seeing. Maybe those ropey Michael Caine remakes were a necessary enema. Maybe, now he’s receding a bit, and his boyishness is becoming a bit more lined, he’s being seen for roles he wouldn’t have before. But he also seems to be more relaxed. His Dr Watson is a perfect foil for Robert Downey Jr. His roles for Steven Soderbergh have played on perceptions of him, from making him rather down at heel and nerdy to stroking intellectual rather than physical vanity. He was by far the best thing it the middling Anna Karenina. And now, he seems to have fully embraced his potential for seedy disarray; his titular role in Dom Hemingway looks like a career high.

I could be wrong, of course. And the trailer for Don Hemingway is full of promise but not quite there. Advance word is pretty damn positive, however. And if it’s even just nearly as good as Richard Shephard’s The Matador, which did marvellous things for Pierce Brosnan as an anti-Bond hit man, it should be a treat. Grant has said “If Withnail had gone into crime, this is where he might have ended up”. That’s all the enticement I need.

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No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

That’s what people call necromancer’s weather.

The Changes (1975) This adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novel trilogy carries a degree of cult nostalgia cachet due to it being one of those more “adult” 1970s children’s serials (see also The Children of the Stones , The Owl Service ). I was too young to see it on its initial screening – or at any rate, too young to remember it – but it’s easy to see why it lingered in the minds of those who did. Well, the first episode, anyway. Not for nothing is The Changes seen as a precursor to The Survivors in the rural apocalypse sub-genre – see also the decidedly nastier No Blade of Grass – as following a fairly gripping opener, it drifts off into the realm of plodding travelogue.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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