DVD/150: NEVER LET ME GO (Mark Romanek, 2010)

Kazuo Ishiguro's heartbreaking 2005 novel became a haunting film directed by Mark Romanek and adapted by Alex Garland.

In 1978, three children live at Hailsham boarding school with it's adherance to clean living.  Kathy and Ruth are friends but when Kathy and Tommy show a growing affection, Ruth steals him away.

They are stunned when a new teacher tells them the truth: they have been cloned to become organ doners who will probably 'complete' after their third donation.

After moving into a halfway house, Ruth and Tommy drift apart while Kathy leaves to become a carer: a doner whose operations are deferred so they can 'buddy' other clones until they 'complete'.

Nine years later, Kathy discovers her friends have started donating.  A repentant Ruth dies, and as Kathy and Tommy begin a relationship, they pursue a rumour that a loving couple will get deferred.

This film lingers in your thoughts...

Shelf or charity shop? Although destined for the limbo of my DVD plastic storage box, I will definitely revisit this devastating adaptation of Ishiguro's profound novel for Romanek's autumnal tone, and the remarkable performances of Carey Mulligan as Kathy and Andrew Garfield who is genuinely heartbreaking as Tommy.  Keira Knightley has never been better than as the brittle Ruth, Sally Hawkins is touching as the teacher who cannot keep Hailsham's secret and Charlotte Rampling is chilling as the school headmistress who delivers Kathy and Tommy's killer blow.

DVD/150: DER UNTERGANG (DOWNFALL) (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)

The perfect VE Day viewing: Oliver Hirschbiegel's gruelling DER UNTERGANG which shows the downfall of the Reich with Adolf Hitler cornered in his bunker with a diminishing group of advisors, Eva Braun and staff including young Traudl Junge, a secretary, whose memoir the film is partly based on.

Hirschbiegel captures the terror on the streets of Berlin as the Russians advance and the army, are augmented by the Hitler Youth, committed to their Fuhrer to the bitter end. 

DOWNFALL's flaw is that Traudl Junge is too passive a character: she types and takes dictation but remains a blank canvess.

Bruno Ganz is stunning as Hitler; DOWNFALL was criticized for depicting Hitler in a sympathetic light but no sympathy is sought where Hitler flies into fearful rages over non-existant troops or demands the people of Germany die for being too weak.

Equally unforgettable is Corinna Harfouch's chilling, murderous Magda Goebbels.

Shelf or charity shop? Although destined for the limbo of my DVD plastic storage box, I will definitely watch this again for Ganz's towering performance, Harfouch's icy portrayal of a woman willing to kill her childen rather than have them live in a world without the Fuhrer and a bevy of fine performances by Ulrich Matthes as Goebbels, Juliane Kohler's Eva Braun, Heino Ferch as Albert Speer, Christian Berkel as the doctor Ernst-Gunther Schenck, André Hennicke as Mohnke and Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge.

DVD/150: THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN (Christopher Morahan / Jim O'Brien, 1984, tv)

Granada's "intimate epic" THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN is a landmark in 1980s tv drama, with marvellous direction and Ken Tayor's excellent adapation of Paul Scott's novels.

1942: Indian-born Hari Kumar, raised in England and Cambridge-educated, returns to Mayapore but feels stranded between two cultures. He meets gauche Daphne Manners, living in India after her father's death, and a shy but intense relationship develops but one night, during independance riots, they are attacked while making love, and Daphne is raped.

Kumar is arrested by racist police chief Ronald Merrick who despises Hari's privileged airs and Daphne's relationship with him as she once turned down Merrick's marriage proposal.

Kumar is falsely jailed on political charges while Daphne dies in childbirth.

Merrick is seconded to an army position but cannot escape the shadows of "The Manners Case" which also reach Sarah Layton, her family and friends as India's Independance looms... 

Shelf or charity shop? SHELF!!  An extraordinary achievement considering the two directors Christopher Morahan and Jim O'Brien create a marvellous consistancy of tone despite having different working methods.  It is helped immeasurably by George Fenton's atmospheric score and how the the production moves seemlessly from location work in India to studio filming in Granada's Manchester studios. And what a cast... it launched Tim Pigott-Smith, Charles Dance, Geraldine James and Art Malik deservedly into major success but not Susan Wooldridge, so effective as Daphne Manners. The older women of the Raj are wonderfully played by Rachel Kempson, Zohra Sehgal, Janet Henfrey and Fabia Drake but Peggy Ashcroft is transcendent as missionary Barbie Batchelor, losing her mind as she loses her faith and place in society. The upper-class wives are memorably played by Carol Gillies, Rosemary Leach, Rowena Cooper and Anna Cropper but Judy Parfitt is fantastic as the cruelly snobbish, glacial Mildred Layton, while Wendy Morgan is affecting as Susan Layton, starting as a spoiled daughter and ending up a shell-shocked victim of circumstance. Excellent work too from Nicholas Farrell, Nicholas Le Prevost and Warren Clarke (hilariously playing against type as a gay nurse), but it's Eric Porter who steals every scene he is in as the enigmatic Russian Count Bronowsky.

DVD/150: TOO HOT TO HANDLE (Terence Young, 1960)

Only four years after THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT, Jayne Mansfield's career was slipping when she made TOO HOT TO HANDLE in the UK, a sexy thriller that neither thrills or is sexy.

Herbert Kretzmer's script is as bad as his LES MISERABLES lyrics and director Terence Young was being ironic when he yelled "action".

Johnny Solo runs The Pink Flamingo strip club in Soho with his headline singer Midnight Franklin (!!) and club manager Novak.  Neighbouring strip club owner Diamonds Dielli warns Johnny he has been threatened by an unknown protection gang and Johnny will be next.

Meanwhile a French reporter is writing an artictle on the club but is more interested in a stripper Who Has A Secret.

The strippers are the usual tough broads except 16 year-old 'Pony Tail' who fatally will do anything to 'make it'.  Step forward Barbara Windsor...

Never has Soho seemed so mundane...

Shelf or charity shop?  Living in the DVD limbo of a plastic storage box, I can forgive the bad direction and script, poor Leo Genn's attempt at a tough guy and the interminable badly-lit strip routines for the gloriously camp moment of Jayne Mansfield singing the title song in the famous see-through dress with strategically-placed sequins and tassels. It is the only time she looks fully alive - otherwise she talks in a breathy monotone and doesn't so much act as point her bosoms at people and follow them.  Christopher Lee is his usual dull self as two-timing club manager Novak - this was the same year he co-starred in the other UK so-bad-it's bad film with a strip club melieu BEAT GIRL... now THAT would be some double-bill!  Sadly TOO HOT TO HANDLE is only available in the b/w US release print which is 10 minutes shorter than the original colour UK print which has vanished...

 

DVD/150: GET READY 1965-1972 - THE TEMPTATIONS (David Peck / Phil Galloway, 2006)

100 fantastic minutes spent with Otis Williams, part-founder of Motown legends The Temptations and the last living member of the Classic Five line-up which included David Ruffin, Melvin Franklin, Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks.

The Temptations came together when Otis and Franklin (formerly of The Distants) joined forces with Kendricks and Williams (formerly of The Primes) but the group's success really started when they recruited the tempestuous ego of David Ruffin then the hits started coming.

The Classic Five lasted for four years before Ruffin's demands - including wanting their name changed to David Ruffin AND The Temptations - led to his dismissal, replaced by Dennis Edwards; his arrival coinciding with a new direction in sound, this time into a more hard-edged urban sound.

These tv appearances show how The Temps not only were sublime vocally but visually too with their choreographed slides, boogaloos, drops, gestures, claps and fingersnaps.

Shelf or charity shop?  Seriously??  MY GIRL, GET READY, AIN'T TOO PROUD TO BEG, YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING, I WISH IT WOULD RAIN, CLOUD NINE, BALL OF CONFUSION, JUST MY IMAGINATION, and PAPA WAS A ROLLING STONE are just some of the filmed performances but the real treasures are 15 acapella tracks straight from Motown Studio A which shows off David Ruffin and Dennis Edwards' gruff vocals, Eddie Kendricks' sweet falsetto, Paul Edwards' tenor, Melvin Franklin's bottomless bass and Otis providing the vocal glue to meld them all together,

DVD/150: THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Nearly 60 years old, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is frighteningly relevent to today's right-wing politics, a film as icy as it's main character.

A US platoon are captured in Korea by Chinese communists, and during a group brainwashing session, Raymond Shaw is selected to be a 'sleeper' assassin, dispassionately killing two of the other soldiers.

Two years later, they are released and Shaw is decorated as a hero when his colleague Major Bennett Marco - who has been hypnotized - reports that Shaw saved lives during their capture.

But Marco has recurring nightmares of Shaw's killings and when he learns another of the platoon has the same dreams, he starts to investigate.

Shaw's fame is exploited by his mother Eleanor to win her husband John Iselin - a dangerously populist Senator dominated by his ambitious wife - the nomination for Vice-President.

Shaw is 'triggered' to start killing but who is his deadly controller?

Shelf or charity shop?  Living in the plastic storage box limbo, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is kept for Frankenheimer's marvellous direction and George Axelrod's darkly satirical take on Richard Condon's novel.  Laurence Harvey's cold persona was the perfect match for Raymond Shaw, Sinatra was never better and Angela Lansbury delivers a performance of pure ice-cold malevolence - her Eleanor Iselin is as great a political villainess as I CLAUDIUS' Livia or Lady Macbeth; at the time of filming she was only three years older than 'son' Laurence Harvey! Sadly Janet Leigh is totally wasted in an unispiring role of Sinatra's girlfriend, a role so vacant that it's speculated that maybe she is a spy too.