Sunday Afternoon Films

You know what I mean by a good Sunday afternoon film. Yes you do. Certainly the Groupie and I know what we mean. So it was that on the afternoon of the Sabbath we treated ourselves to Babe. This deceptively simple movie hides its technical mastery under a cloak of easy warmth and bonhomie. It is a children's film, yes, but like all the best of that genre it plays up to our inner child. Somehow the magic was only increased by the fact that I had recorded it at Christmas - Christmas advertising can be surprisingly uplifting when viewed at fast-forward. 79/100.  

Mobbed By The Movies

These two films could hardly be more different. I watched The Irishman and The Lavender Hill Mob in quick succession. Though poles apart in tone and content, both speak of the possibilities of cinema.

First up was Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. Scorsese reunites all sorts of familiars from his repertory company of mob players, most notably Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, with Al Pacino thrown in for good measure. The result is a very long but always gripping interrogation of the ordinariness of immorality, with a neat speculation on the fate of Jimmy Hoffa lobbed in to flavour the stew. I know comparisons are odious but this movie is not as fine as Scorsese's masterpiece, Goodfellas, but it is nonetheless a major film. Pesci leaves the scenery-chewing to Pacino on this occasion - quite right too because Hoffa (Pacino) merits such a treatment. Ultimately Hoffa is too flamboyant for his own good. It is his failure to appreciate the power of quiet men that dooms him. Pesci meanwhile gives us his finest performance in an uncharacteristically subdued manner. Chilling. De Niro is, of course, superb. No surprise there. 81/100.

Scorsese paints on a huge canvass - great lashings of cinematography splurged all over the place. In contrast The Lavender Hill Mob runs for barely a third of the duration of The Irishman. That does not diminish its impact, in fact the brevity heightens the cinematic effect. The comedy is poignant, the acting artfully measured. The whole thing is a joy. No scenery-chewing is required. None is given. British, monochrome, brilliant. I can't separate the two films on merit. 81/100. 

Televisual Excrescence

I gave it a chance for two episodes but I'm sorry, I can't be doing with the BBC's new adaptation of Great Expectations. Even the presence of the sainted Olivia Colman cannot rescue this piece of gratuitous vandalism. Yes, Dickens has a lot of darkness and we can perhaps afford, in these days of artistic licence, to spice it up a bit. But the profanity (they swear like me, that is to say, like a trooper) is unnecessary and feels like dramatic self-indulgence. The final straw was the insertion (Ooh aah Mrs) of a sado-masochistic sub-plot. On the whole, what's the word I'm looking for? Got it - crap.

A Matter Of Whimsy

I did watch a film last night - Woody Allen's 1982 offering, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy. I am not quite sure what fashion says my attitude to Allen should be. Should I listen to Wagner; watch anything with Kevin Spacey in it? I decided to park any prejudice and just try to enjoy a notable film-maker. It was worth it. Not massively so but worth it.

I've been searching for the word and I've found it - whimsical. Clever, concise but a matter of whimsy. It does contain a couple of early-Allen-style physical comedy scenes which are worth the price of admission but this is not up there with Annie Hall. Thgen again, not much is. 64/100.

At This Rate I'm Going To Have To Run Bloody Miles

I feel better about myself and the world when I am running regularly. Thanks to the wonders of my chiropractor and my expensive insoles, I am free of injury most of the time these days, barring, of course, the aches and pains that come from a combination of encroaching old age and decades of reckless endeavour on the rugby field. 

So, anyway, I am here in Anglesey to get some work done and I prefaced that work with a run this morning. And what did I think about while running - not Walter Bagehot (the work I referred to) and not the divine views of the coast. No, it was that bastard Donald Trump. He was arrested yesterday on what, I'm afraid (and you will remember that I am a lawyer), seem to me to be flimsy chrages. The charges come down to his having misdescribed the money he paid to the porn star he undoubtedly shagged as 'legal expenses'. He was at his egregious self-justifying best when he returned to his lair in Florida and lamented this 'witch hunt'. I hate to say this (because the man is the  biggest stain on mainstream politics in the Western world - and these things matter) but the Democrats may have ushered themselves closer to another own-goal. Trump is a shit of the first water. But Joe Biden is as ineffectual an opponent as one might care to imagine. And if they really want to nail Trump they need something better than this. 

Good news - after a slow start, I got some of that work done and tonight I think I'll watch a film. No wine though - it's a weekday and I'm being a good boy. This midweek abstinence does my body some good but not my wallet, since I am weighed down by my increasing dependence on good Barolo and Rioja for vinous pleasure. You can't take it with you.