Dennis Hopper got an Oscar for his supporting role to Gene Hackman’s high-school basketball coach in David Anspaugh’s heart-tugging 1986 tale of sport-equals-life heroics. This was based on a real basketball comeback fight in ’50s Indiana and released as Hoosiers in the US. Aptly enough, Hopper was fresh back from his own decade-long trip through chemical hell at the time. Sentimental slush, but redeemed by a knockout cast of veteran heavyweights.
La Peau Douce
Sandwiched, chronologically, in between Jules Et Jim (1962) and Fahrenheit 451 (1964), La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin) is an intriguing anomaly in the Fran
A Perfect World
With director Eastwood Oscar-hot from Unforgiven and star Costner hit-hot from The Bodyguard and JFK, 1993’s A Perfect World should’ve been a smash. Yet there’s a darkness to the story of possibly psychotic boy-befriending recidivist Costner that simply killed the movie at the box office. On re-examination, it’s a fascinating film, a blatant conflict of arch American sentimentality and subversive menace. And Costner’s great in it, too.
The Son’s Room
Nanni Moretti’s Cannes-winner is restrained and moving, with the Italian writer/director forsaking his comic urges to examine how a teenage son’s death affects a family. Moretti plays the father, a psychoanalyst who, grieving, loses interest in his patients. Awkward emotions are deftly handled: Hollywood should watch this and learn.
Cary On Charming
To Catch A Thief 
RETAIL DVD (PARAMOUNT HOME ENTERTAINMENT, FULL SCREEN)
Houseboat 
RETAIL DVD (PARAMOUNT HOME ENTERTAINMENT, FULL SCREEN)
Cary Grant, rated by no less imaginative an authority than David Thomson as the greatest screen actor of all time, stars in three outrageously enjoyable humdingers. The magnificent His Girl Friday is fast as a cheetah, its quips flying furiously as Grant and Rosalind Russell jockey for position in Howard Hawks’ newspaper-world romantic comedy, a 1940 remake of The Front Page. Verbal gymnastics that cinema’s long since dumbed down from. That no one delivers a line with as many disingenuous ambiguities as Grant is reaffirmed in Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief (1955). Otherwise it’s slow and flawed in pitch, not one of Hitch’s best, but Grant as a retired Riviera cat-burglar is inspired casting, and Grace Kelly’s never what you’d call hard to watch. Sophia Loren is an ageing foil for Grant in ’58’s Houseboat, more of a soft family movie, flatly directed by Melville Shavelson, with kids galore. Even so, Grant twinkles.
Shots In The Dark
By the time clint eastwood’s unforgiven was released in 1990, the western was in sharp decline. A Hollywood staple for so many decades, it had been superseded by special-effects technology and glossy hi-tech action films like Star Wars, The Terminator and the Die Hard films. The ’80s had been a particularly poor time for westerns?Michael Cimino’s 1980 mega-flop Heaven’s Gate had trashed both studio and public interest in the genre and lightweight fare such as Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado (1985) and brat pack western Young Guns (1988) did little to exhume the form. But then along came Kevin Costner’s multi-Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves in 1990?and the western was hot again. In fact, Eastwood had been sitting on the Unforgiven script for some 20 years, waiting until he had “enough miles” on him to play William Munny, the film’s ageing former killer, lured out of retirement for one last job.
Munny was once “the meanest Goddamn son of a bitch alive”, a brutal killing machine whose murderous exploits have since passed into legend. In some respects, you could argue that Eastwood?60 when he made Unforgiven?is trading on his own mythology and the characters who made him famous; hearing him described as a “son-of-a-bitchin’, cold-blooded assassin”, Munny sounds like a composite of The Man With No Name and Harry Callahan.
As the film opens, Munny is mired in hopeless poverty. An aspiring gunfighter, the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), lures him back into his old ways with the promise of half a $1000 bounty raised by a group of vengeful prostitutes in the frontier town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, who’re seeking retribution for the mutilation of one of their own. Hooking up with his old back-watcher Ned Logan (Freeman), Munny and the Schofield Kid head to Big Whiskey where they wind up in confrontation with the town’s sheriff?the sly and sadistic Little Bill Daggett, a man determined to uphold the law by any means necessary (Hackman based Little Bill on Daryl Gates, the LAPD chief during the Rodney King riots and OJ Simpson murder trial). All the while, Munny is haunted by his past (“it’s a helluva thing, killing a man”), burdened by a terrible remorse about what he once was and desperate not to walk down that path again. But events conspire against him, and by the end he finds himself embarking on a murderous, personal vendetta against Little Bill and his deputies. Once a killer, always a killer.
The script, by David Webb Peoples, is unremittingly bleak; an intense, complex meditation on the corrupting nature of violence. It was written in the mid-’70s, with the moral fall-out from the previous decade still hanging heavy in the air, and Peoples admits on the documentary accompanying this DVD release that his screenplay was partly inspired by Taxi Driver and Glendon Swarthout’s novel The Shootist (which, when filmed in 1976 by Don Siegel, provided John Wayne with his final starring role). There’s no black and white, no moral certainties here?”The world isn’t as simple as the good guys always win,” Peoples says.
Peoples’ script also acknowledges and yet refutes standard western conventions. Violence is shown at its most distressing, never more so than in the beatings Little Bill?who’s outlawed guns in Big Whiskey?metes out to bounty hunter English Bob (Harris) and Munny. Through Munny, Eastwood offers an alternative to the traditional image of the western hero?we see him fall of his horse, sit grief-stricken by his wife’s grave, get drunk as soon as he reaches Big Whiskey, admit he’s scared of dying and seem visibly burdened by the ghosts in his past.
Eastwood?as director and star?rises brilliantly to the occasion. With Jack Green’s sombre cinematography conveying the darkness and fatality inherent in Peoples’ script, Eastwood turns Unforgiven into a languid death-bed lament for the western itself, a final word on the genre in which he made his name.
Stamp Of Approval
A stand-out hit among the current new wave of globally f
Don’t Say A Word
Brazenly preposterous Manhattan thriller follows clinical psychologist Michael Douglas as he tries desperately to extract the location of a stolen jewel from the mind of trauma patient Brittany Murphy to satisfy the demands of crazed kidnapper Sean Bean. Eminently ludicrous stuff, but wonderfully anchored by Douglas’ trademark beleaguered male schtick.
Metropolis
Lovingly restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi classic with another 20 minutes’ worth of footage, plus the original music score, so even if you know the movie well you’re in for treats and surprises. If you don’t, you’ll discover incredible visuals, the sexiest robot ever made and a core message?capitalism without compassion sucks?that’s as fresh now as in 1926.
The Business Of Strangers
Passable psychodrama as up-tight corporate suit Julia (Stockard Channing) and haughty PA Paula (Julia Stiles) play out malicious power games in a hotel suite. This often lacks the wit and IQ required for a nerve-jangling thriller, but the assured leads provide seductive intrigue.
Men In Black II
The law of diminishing returns applies as Barry Sonnenfeld hacks out a scant sequel to the initially promising sci-fi spoof. Will Smith must again save the human race from oddly-shaped monsters and hedonistic worms, and so restores Tommy Lee Jones’ erased memories. Lara Flynn Boyle replaces Linda Fiorentino, who bailed. Wisely, it’d seem. Funny in flashes.
Singles
Set in grunge-era Seattle, Cameron Crowe’s quick-off-the-mark 1992 romantic ensemble comedy managed to corral members of Pearl Jam into the mix alongside Bridget Fonda, Matt Dillon, Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott. Crowe falls short of his masterful memoir Almost Famous, partly as Scott and Sedgwick are too stiff for the central rock’n’romance plot, but this is still a charming historical snapshot.
The Weight Of Water
Kathryn Bigelow’s lavish direction can’t keep this creaky adventure afloat. Catherine McCormack is Jean, a photo-journalist researching a century-old double murder while rekindling her relationship to Thomas (Sean Penn) on a sailing trip. A clich
The Ages Of Lulu
Bigas Luna’s 1990 film deals with, yes, sex, but like most Spanish movies it does so unapologetically and flamboyantly. A teenager is corrupted by her brother’s friend: later they marry, but by now the libido of Lulu (Francesca Neri) is out of control. Sounds like Channel 5 fare, sure, but as with Jam
Frankie & Johnny
Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer are the short order cook and waitress in a New York diner in Garry Marshall’s romantic drama. The stars ensure that it’s at least watchable, but the chemistry between them is nowhere near as intense as it was in Scarface, a few years earlier.
While Guitars Gently Weep
The Concert For George Harrison
Royal Albert Hall, London
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29 2002
Before the show began, Hare Krishna devotees chanted outside as celebrities emerged from their limos. Ticket touts sold
Josh Pearson – Upstairs At The Spitz, London Wednesday December 4 2002
You can’t see his fearsome, feral face any more. It’s covered by a beard so vast and wild at first you think Josh Pearson’s become a mountain man, until he raises his eyes to the heavens, and that forked, dark growth makes his head so huge he just looks like a mountain. He’s making his solo debut in London, because the second album with his band of apocalyptic Texans, Lift To Experience, has been holed and gashed on the road to completion (crises of confidence and heroin are mentioned), so he broke off to write another album, minus their storm-guitar protection, in seven days. Nothing in the songs could be changed after that?it would test if he was really a writer. Playing them tonight will test him again.
Though he just has an acoustic guitar (and, for a few songs, a female fiddler), all the power of the Lifts is still his to command. On “The Clash”, as he roars and murmurs and weeps, “I just can’t get these devils off my back…oh, my God, why me?”, the guitar seems to carry his body at times, as his clawed fingers flutter over it like his hand’s some independent beast, and his dead eyes look upwards?for what?
The feeling that Pearson’s some primal, Biblical creature is undercut by hilarious tales of Texan snake-killing, told between songs in a shy stoner whine. But when on “Banished” his voice grows gigantic like a bad dream, as he sings “I spoke the truth to keep me alive, and now I’m ostracised…”, or on the head-down strum of “Six Bloody Strings”, his hair hanging in sweaty strings now, baring his teeth as he bites at its words, you know a heavenly fire is still here.
The song he’s most nervous of playing is the best, and furthest from the Lifts, a shamelessly, extravagantly loving 10-minute epic about his sister. But somewhere between the quiet needed for an acoustic show and the noise needed for an atmosphere, and the Pentecostal Texan brimstone of Pearson’s background and the blas
Borderline Genius
Alejandro Escovedo
Uncut Presents… At The Borderline, London
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 4 2002
Midway into his second-ever London performance?the hottest ticket in town after his rapturously received Barbican debut five days earlier?Escovedo dedicated a song to Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Chet Atkins and Waylon Jennings.
Accompanied by a superb band?a mind-boggling mix of delicacy and outlandish swagger?he then played “I Love It When She Walks Away”. He explained it was a composition about “falling for a girl with no sense of rhythm who moves to San Antonio to follow her dream to become a castanet player”.
As you are reeling from the song’s barely containable joyous and surreal abandon?cello sawing into a wild wiry synth, guitars blazing?you can’t help stop and wonder, is there anything this 51-year-old hero can’t do? A veteran of campaigns with Rank And File and The True Believers, as a solo artist Escovedo has staked out his musical territory for two decades. In the process, he’s become an underground king, combining Dylan’s grasp of musical history, Van Morrison’s way with exile laments and Springsteen’s vintage knack for narrative and monologue.
The range he covers is as wide as the Tex Mex and California borderlands where his ancestral song stories often take place, and as deep as the emotional torments unveiled in the harrowing “13 Years” (about his wife’s suicide) or the poignant “Wave”. The latter is a dizzying time-travelling wonder that recreates his grandfather’s farewell to Mexico in the early 1900s.
Tonight, the packed house greeted his arrival on stage with hushed, respectful silence. The songs that opened, from his Tex Mex musical By The Hand Of The Father, were poignant distillations of family history; the stately cello-centred arrangements recalling post-Velvets Cale classicism. The way “Wave” segued into “Five Hearts Breaking” shone with the sanctifying glow of The Who in their raging, spiritual glory. A wondrously eerie interpretation of The Gun Club’s “Sex Beat” simply sounded like a previously unacknowledged pinnacle of rock legend?an effortless blend of cliffhanging interplay and daredevil dramatics.
Then came the demonic howling and scowling “Burn My Clothes”, a beautifully spare and aching Townes Van Zandt salute, “Follow You Down”, and an encore which revelled in his past.
Escovedo didn’t start writing until he was 30, and covers of Mott The Hoople, Iggy Pop, Neil Young and David Bowie classics showed how he’d served an apprenticeship mining garage-band gold, but, crucially, always bringing more to the party than he took away.
He is quite simply a colossal talent, a missing part of the rock’n’roll tapestry ready to take his rightful place among the greats. And?praise the skies and pass the moonshine?he’s coming back here in April! Don’t miss out.
Thomson
Ian and David Thomson, from Nailsea in Somerset, signed to Alan McGee’s Poptones after a series of acoustic gigs in London. Can they do a Hives? Well, their debut album is harmony-laden pop-rock that recalls Something/Anything?-era Todd Rundgren and the thrilling Anglophilia of Eric Carmen’s Raspberries. “Mexican Pixilated Sun” and “Loaded Dice” are well-crafted melodies, but then it goes a bit dysfunctional and distorted with the Crazy Horse-style bittersweet ballads “Shirley McGee” and “Suicide”. Their career, like this record, could go either way.
Talib Kweli – Quality
Talib Kweli grew up in the same neighbourhood as Mos Def, they’ve often collaborated, and the two even run an education centre in Brooklyn. No surprise, then, to find Mos Def among the guests on Talib Kweli’s album, alongside Common, Res and Bilal.
Whether he’s being flippant or concerned, it’s lyrically potent stuff, and musically he deploys most of the trademark devices of modern hip hop.
Yet he also draws on a wider heritage of modern African-American music, so that on “Keynote Speaker” he almost becomes a modern-day Gil Scott-Heron, while “Waiting For The DJ” invokes the spirit of George Clinton. Refreshingly clich