That’s terrific. Everything is terrific.

The Skeleton Twins

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Another entry in the burgeoning field of comedy actors receiving kudos for testing their serious thesping chops in indie dramedies. Craig Johnson’s second feature, aboutg twins reuniting in the midst of deep personal disarray, is well observed but deeply unremarkable. What lifts it are the performances of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, evidencing, if any was needed, that they can bring the genuine and sensitive with the same accomplishment as their more familiar larking about.

Johnson and Mark Heyman (Black Swan) set up a tantalising “unbeknownst” opener that never really follows through with the gumption it might; synchronicitously, Magggie (Wiig) is about to take a load of pills just as she gets a call that Milo (Hader), whom she hasn’t seen in a decade, has been hospitalised following a suicide attempt.

The picture’s ensuing touchstones are a mixture of the recognisably drama-feeding (lives that never explored their potential; a home broken when their father committed suicide; a sister stuck in boring but reliable marriage to Lance (Luke Wilson), conducting impulsive affairs; a flamboyantly gay brother failing at his acting career) but occasionally surprises.

The subplot involving Milo’s illicit relationship with a former teacher (Ty Burrell) doesn’t play out quite as expected; while Maggie points to the fact that Milo was fifteen at the time and he constitutes a child molester, the most condemnatory behaviour we see is that he only really lets Milo back into his life in order to get his script passed on to Milo’s agent (a succinct means of illustrating that he was and is using Milo).

Lance is the very definition of dependable, but in Wilson’s capable hands he gradually becomes something more (his improvised conversation with Maggie about his shoes, “a hybrid of shoes and a foot”). There’s a scene with their mother (Joanna Gleeson) that probably overdoes the flaky New Ager who has zero interest in her former life (she has a new family), but is effective nevertheless (“I’m sending you the light”). It goes to the heart of the picture, that no one lives their dream life, but neither burying nor wallowing in troubles represents a path through the minefield.

As ever with movies off this ilk, resorting to shorthand clichés renders it less effective. You know the type of thing; childhood flashbacks, music montages, set piece bonding scenes. Milo working for Lance and picking up twigs delicately, rather than armfuls of branches, does indeed identify him as (in his own words) “another classic gay cliché”. The Halloween dress-up as a recreation of their childhood, only to be interrupted by Maggie realising Milo has resumed a relationship with her Rich (his teacher) runs the well-oiled route of comedy to drama and suffers from such calculation; the symbolism with the dead goldfish, saving Maggie in the pool, or the reversal of who’s driving who (coming to who’s rescue) at the end is also less than subtle. Still, the Sundance jury must have thought it was doing something very right as they gave it Best Screenplay.

As such, it’s the improvised moments that shine, as the naturalness of the stars is allowed to break out (the Marley and Me conversation, nitrous oxide in the dental office) The glorious highlight is Milo and (an initially reluctant) Maggie miming to Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.

Hader probably has the more difficult job, required to walk a line in not falling back on the merely campy. Wiig might be more impressive though, as she is required to rein it in for much of the time. To Johnson’s credit, he’s unafraid of depicting less than likeable protagonists following their own self-centred paths, others around them be damned.

While the picture is guilty at times of over statement, it allows itself the subtlety of action rather than illustration in arriving at a point where these two can only be whole by being together. Less venerable is the general trend to formula indie fare, whereby pictures follow the same equivalent beats of the big Hollywood comedies; for all its presumed edginess a picture like The Skeleton Twins is ultimately playing things just as safe.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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