I live uncommonly alone.

The Homesman

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Tommy Lee Jones, the living embodiment of grizzled, directs his second western, but first in a period setting. The Homesman, an adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel, is a disjointed, listless affair. TLJ has more than enough material to play with, on the theme of women’s lot in the old west, but he ends up fashioning a picture that revolves around his male protagonist.

Doubtless the motives in shifting emphasis were noble ones. Rather than an empowering feminist western, this is the unvarnished way things really were, when the value of women rested on their capacity for breeding and making an obedient wife. The three mad women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter) whose state initiate the picture’s central journey have “failed” in their duties as wife and baby maker; one’s offspring have died of diphtheria, another drowns hers in an outhouse, while another fails to become pregnant despite being daily raped by her husband. Their spouses are at best neglectful and at worst habitually abusive.

Contrasting this is Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) “plain and bossy” and moneyed, who cannot lure a husband; at 31 she is near enough out to pasture. When the menfolk in her small Nebraskan farming community fail to take responsibility for delivering the women to a church in Iowa. Cuddy assumes the mantle of “homesman”, agreeing to lead the journey, and employs the services of George Briggs (TLJ) a disreputable, disheveled claim jumper she saves from lynching.

So far, so intriguing as a premise. TLJ’s is a world filled with craven men, and Briggs is only nominally a good guy. He’s purely in it for the money, quite willing to leave Cuddy and the insane women alone in the desert. Those encountered on the way are lowlifes (Tim Blake Nelson’s horseman who steals away one of them for himself) or conmen (James Spader’s hotel owner). John Lithgow’s preacher, who blesses Cuddy’s trip, is similarly quite spineless.

But the picture is unable to find a strong enough perspective. Cuddy is turned down by men who are beneath her (Evan Jones, claiming she is “too damn bossy”, Briggs himself), but she is contrastingly religiously dogmatic and sufficiently determined that she sets out solo with these women (albeit relieved to have Briggs’ help). When she commits suicide, two thirds of the way through, it is not only a shock because we don’t see it coming, but also to the narrative, one from which Jones is unable to right the ship.

We can see why she does it; in a world where here only status comes from marriage she is effectively exiled. She throws herself at Briggs the night before, who turns down her marriage proposal but submits to sexual congress. It may well appear that there is no choice for her; she can remain alone, but even if she can find someone, those she is delivering to Iowa aren’t the greatest advert for married life. Swank, partial to put upon characters ever since The Next Karate Kid, is outstanding, but Jones is unable to convey the process by which she ends up reaching her choice, such that she would derelict her duty to these women, and commit the sin of suicide.

The final ignominy of her gravestone being kicked into a river is (likely) an intentional commentary on how her suffering means nothing. Even Briggs, who comes to profess her merits (when attempting to woo a much younger and less plain Halee Steinfeld), is only impacted by her but for a passing spell. He has the freedom of lawlessness and ignoring societal mores unavailable to her. Briggs even warns Steinfeld not to go west with a man who’s made a claim on a farm he hasn’t built yet: not to get sucked into an arrangement that fosters madness. But there’s something wrong here, when the picture is bringing the male gaze around to delivering the wisdom and insights.

The mad women are merely silent and not so silent cyphers; we’re delivered flashbacks attesting to their states, but Jones has no interest in exploring their condition. Again, you can call that a reflection of the times, but it seems as much about convenience of narrative. Grace Gummer has the wherewithal to blow Blake Nelson’s head off when the scene requires it, but otherwise occupies an entirely self-involved place.

TLJ appears to be drawing on the spirit of ’70 revisionist westerns, where things just happen, so the lack of narrative closure is a commentary on both the historical neatness of the genre and absence of rules in that world. But the lack of service paid to his female characters, and the indulgence of Briggs (the kind of colourful worldy-wise character that feels intensely familiar, since TLJ could play this kind of part in his sleep) undermines the picture. TLJ has populated the sidelines with a raft of familiar faces (Lithgow, Spader, Nelson, Jesse Plemons, William Fichtner, Meryl Streep) and Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography is striking and memorable (from an early tableau of Fichtner standing amid dead cattle onwards), but his telling undermines him. The Homesman ends up disjointed and jarring in its shifts of focus.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Romulan ale should be illegal.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
(SPOILERS) Out of the ST:NG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis seems to provoke the most outrage among fans, the reasons mostly appearing to boil down to continuity and character work. In the case of the former, while I can appreciate the beef, I’m not enough of an aficionado to get too worked up. In the case of the latter, well, the less of the strained inter-relationships between this bunch that make it to the screen, the better (director Stuart Baird reportedly cut more than fifty minutes from the picture, most of it relating to underscoring the crew, leading to a quip by Stewart that while an Actor’s Cut would include the excised footage, a Director’s one would probably be even shorter). Even being largely unswayed by such concerns, though, Nemesis isn’t very good. It wants to hit the same kind of dramatic high notes as The Wrath of Khan (naturally, it’s always bloody Khan) but repeatedly drifts into an out-of-tune dirge.

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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