Rambling Man: Ondine and the Strange Career of Neil Jordan

Director Neil Jordan

Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan is maddening. For every film as terrific as In Dreams,  The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, The End of the Affair, and The Good Thief, he'll make an equally dreary film such as High Spirits, We're No Angels, Breakfast On Pluto, The Brave One, his short film Not I (more on that in second) and, yes, The Crying Game (more on that in a sec too). I've never been able to get a handle on him as a director. Perhaps that's a good thing because it means there is an unpredictability about him. But it can also mean he has a complete lack of focus. Jordan also jumps from genre to genre. He'll follow a horror film (Interview With the Vampire – never seen it, so I won't comment) with his disappointing Irish historical drama, Michael Collins. Or he'll make a terrific, underrated caper picture like The Good Thief and then follow it with a barely released disaster like Breakfast On Pluto.

Neglected Gems #5: The Good Thief (2002)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End (1997) didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Another Earth, Ballast) acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Neglected Gem #64: In Dreams (1999)

In Dreams is sensuously creepy and compelling. Annette Bening plays Claire Cooper, an adaptor and illustrator of fairy tales, who suddenly finds her head filled with horrifying images she can neither prevent nor interpret, though she knows they’re linked up with the disappearance of a little girl. When the child’s body turns up, she realizes that she’s channeling a serial killer. And unlike the murderers whose crimes run like private movies in the brain of the character Antonio Banderas plays in Pedro Almodóvar’s Matador, this one is conscious of his psychic connection with Claire – his next target turns out to be her daughter, Rebecca. When she can’t stop Rebecca’s inevitable fate, Claire tries to kill herself in her car, but she survives and grows more and more removed from the people around her – her husband (Aidan Quinn), the detective (Paul Guilfoyle) in pursuit of the killer, the surgeon (Dennis Boutsikaris) and psychiatrist (Stephen Rea) who treat her – because they don’t believe her story. She becomes unmoored, stalked by a man who’s somehow managed to worm his way into her skull and is leaving her maddening hints about how he lost his own bearings and what he’s going to do next.

Story Time: Neil Jordan's Byzantium

Gemma Arterton & Saoirse Ronan in Byzantium

More than a quarter of a century after he made Mona Lisa, Neil Jordan’s movies still have a mesmeric narrative pull – the pull of stories out of The Arabian Nights. He doesn’t command the respect he once did: no one went to see Ondine, his marvelous update of the legend about the romance between a fisherman and a water spirit, and his latest, vampire tale Byzantium, opened in only a handful of cities. (It’s now on DVD.) But that’s not Jordan’s fault – he’s never stopped being a master filmmaker and a master storyteller. Byzantium, adapted by Moira Ruffini from her play, is astonishing. Its protagonist is Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan), who travels with Clara (Gemma Arterton), whom she describes in her voice-over narration as “my secret, my muse.” They’re mother-and-daughter vampires, which means that they look like sisters – Clara hasn’t aged since her early twenties, Eleanor since her adolescence. Clara is the pragmatist who supports them by whoring and thievery, while sensitive Eleanor is at odds with the life she’s been thrown into. Clara gave birth to her when she was working in a brothel in the early nineteenth century and had to give her up (or kill her, which she didn’t have the heart for), so Eleanor was raised in a Catholic orphanage where she was taught not to lie. Clara thrives on lying, and she’s brilliant at it, while her daughter is haunted by the fact that her entire life is a lie built around a secret she’s forbidden to reveal. But she can’t help herself – she writes the story of her life and her mother’s on sheets of paper and then lets them float away on the wind.

Marlowe and Boston Strangler: Mythologies

Jessica Lange in Marlowe.

The Irish writer John Banville’s The Black-Eyed Blonde, published in 2014 and the source of the new Neil Jordan picture Marlowe, is a Raymond Chandler reset of no special distinction except a rather puzzling one. (Banville’s other output is divided between high-flown literary works like The Sea – an exquisite piece of writing – and a series of mysteries, written under the pen name Benjamin Black, that feature a pathologist named Garret Quirke.) At the climax of this tale, set in late-1950s L.A., of the disappearance of a shady Hollywood agent named Nico Peterson, which Peterson’s lover, the wealthy Clare Cavendish, has hired Marlowe to solve, a potent figure out of the gumshoe’s past, a drinking buddy named Terry Lennox, resurfaces. Lennox is the pivotal character in one of Chandler’s later books, The Long Goodbye, which begins with Marlowe’s agreeing to drive him to Tijuana, no questions asked, after the murder of his wife, and ends with the detective’s helping him to establish a new identity in Mexico. The point of The Black-Eyed Blonde, as far as I can tell, is to punish Terry – to turn him into a thoroughgoing villain. But Robert Altman and his screenwriter, Leigh Brackett (who had collaborated with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman on the most famous Marlowe film, The Big Sleep), already did that in the brilliant 1973 movie of The Long Goodbye, where Marlowe is played by Elliott Gould and Terry by the ballplayer Jim Bouton, and where the story ends very differently.

Neglected Gems #3: Code 46 (2003)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End (1997) didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Wendy and Lucy, Ballast) have acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

The highly prolific and inventive British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People, 9 Songs, A Mighty Heart) displays his prodigious talents with another startlingly original movie, this time mining, quite successfully, the science fiction genre. Set in the near future, at a time when most of humanity is forced to live in designated zones, Code 46 begins with a dream sequence voiced by Maria (Samantha Morton), a Shanghai factory worker. It's a dream that ends with her arrival at a mysterious, unclear destination. Soon after, William (Tim Robbins), an ace intelligence expert outfitted with an empathy virus that gives him mind-reading powers, arrives to investigate her workplace. Someone there is illegally making and selling 'papelles,' a combination passport/visa that allow their holders to leave their designated areas, which they are otherwise forbidden to do. When William and Maria fall for each other, they are forced to confront their mundane, controlled existences and, possibly, take a chance on something better.

Neglected Gem #10: Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why The Lord of the Rings’s Peter Jackson’s mock 1995 documentary Forgotten Silver didn’t become the cult hit it should have been. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

The long-running, bloody Bosnian conflict is the backdrop for this forceful anti-war drama, which opens and closes with newsreel footage of politicians dedicating monuments to friendship among Yugoslavia 's various factions. In each case, the dignitary cutting the ribbon cuts himself instead. That gives an idea of the tone of this cleverly named film, which largely takes place in an abandoned tunnel in which a group of Serbs are besieged by Muslim soldiers. But the movie opens in a hospital ward where the tunnel survivors try to keep their old hatreds alive. It also flashes backward to the pre-war relationship between a Serb named Milan (Dragan Bjelogric) and a Muslim named Halil (Nikola Pejakovic) who later become bitter enemies. With some scenes worthy of Vonnegut at his most hallucinatory, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame, ably guided by director Srdjan Dragojevic, barrels its way forward, forcing the audience to pay attention. The film, which won the best film award at the Stockholm fest and was Yugoslavia 's foreign-language Oscar entry, is somewhat clichéd and a little more pro-Serb than necessary, but it packs a genuine punch.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He teaches regular courses at Ryerson University 's LIFE Institute, where he just finished teaching a course on the work of Steven Spielberg. He is currently teaching a course there on the films of Sidney Lumet, which began on Friday, Feb. 10, 2012.

Neglected Gem #17: Forgotten Silver (1995)

Peter Jackson and Costa Botes in Forgotten Silver.

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Wendy and Lucy, Ballast) have acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

New Zealand film pioneer Colin McKenzie receives his due from two of his countrymen in this documentary, which unearths his ‘lost’ 1917 silent film Salome and shines a light on a remarkable career that saw McKenzie pioneer the use of sound and colour in motion pictures years before Hollywood did the same. The only problem is that McKenzie never existed, a ‘fact’ that allows co-directors/co-scripter’s Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) and Costa Botes to spoof the whole craze for discovering obscure films and restoring the reputation of neglected filmmakers.

With the usual experts dutifully trotted out to pay homage to McKenzie, including film historian Leonard Maltin and then Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, Forgotten Silver, which was made for New Zealand TV, emerges as an uncanny deadpan take on the typical PBS or A&E biography. Utilizing wonderful ‘faked’ footage from McKenzie's life, it's the flip ‘serious’ side of This is Spinal Tap – and just as entertaining.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto . He teaches regular courses at Ryerson University 's LIFE Institute, and is currently teaching a course on American cinema of the 70s.

Neglected Gem #9: Jupiter's Wife (1995)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why The Lord of the Rings’s Peter Jackson’s mock 1995 documentary Forgotten Silver didn’t become the cult hit it should have been. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

A sleeper at the 1995 Montreal Film Festival, Jupiter's Wife had its genesis in documentarian Michael Negroponte's curiosity about Maggie, a middle-aged homeless person he spotted in Central Park walking her four dogs. She told him tales about being the daughter of the late actor Robert Ryan and having friends among New York's upper class. Remarkably, all of her stories weren't complete fabrications, as Maggie turned out to be both more and less than she claimed.

Following her around during her daily routine, investigating her background, talking to the people who knew her, Negroponte slowly creates a unique, charming portrait of a rather special person – one who in her own way broke ground for women. Maggie's life is ultimately tragic and sad, but the accomplishment of Jupiter's Wife (shot in video and blown up to 35mm) is that it goes beyond the usual stereotypes of the homeless.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He teaches regular courses at Ryerson University's LIFE Institute, where he just finished teaching a course on the work of Steven Spielberg. He will next be teaching a course there on the films of Sidney Lumet, beginning on Friday, Feb. 10, 2012.
  

Neglected Gems #6: Stevie (2002)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End (1997) didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Another Earth, Ballast) acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Neglected Gem #20: Facing Windows (2003)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002)  failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Wendy and Lucy, Ballast) have acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Neglected Gem #11: Almost Peaceful (Un monde presque paisible) (2002)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why The Lord of the Rings’s Peter Jackson’s mock 1995 documentary Forgotten Silver didn’t become the cult hit it should have been. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Taking place immediately following World War II, Michel Deville’s Almost Peaceful is a loving, moving portrait of Jewish survivours of the Holocaust attempting to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives in Paris. Unlike better known Holocaust films (Schindler's List‚ The Pianist), which concentrate on survivors' actual, horrific experiences during the war, Almost Peaceful, based on a book by Robert Bober, is a low-key drama that never engages in graphic imagery.

Set in a tailor shop which has just been reclaimed by its owners, the film follows the business' proprietors, Albert (Simon Abkarian) and Lea (Zabou Brietman), and their employees as they rebuild their existences. One pines for family members who will never return; another finds solace in the arms of prostitutes. Others engage in their own affairs of the heart. Beautifully shot and rendered, the evocative Almost Peaceful is firmly placed in the humane tradition of French directors like François Truffaut (The 400 Blows) and Louis Malle (Au revoir les enfants), but with a heart and spirit all its own.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He teaches film courses at Ryerson University's LIFE Institute.

Neglected Gems #2: Watermarks (2004)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie. The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End (1997) didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Wendy and Lucy, Ballast) have acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the second in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Watermarks is the inspiring story of Hakoah Vienna, a Jewish athletic club formed in 1909 as a reaction to anti-Semitic policies that kept Jews out of gentile clubs in the country. The documentary, which is available on DVD, traces how some 65 years after they were forced to leave Austria, a group of Jewish women athletes return to where it all began. The goal of Hakoah (which means “strength” in Hebrew) was to prove that Jewish athletes could hold their own against their Christian counterparts, dispelling stereotypes of the weak Jew in the process. Hakoah succeeded in spades, with many of its members, in particular the women's swim team, dominating Austrian sports competitions in the 1930s. But the Anschluss, the Nazis' annexation of Austria in 1938, ended all that and forced the Hakoah members to flee for their lives.

Reuniting seven of the women swimmers, all in their 80s, Watermarks, which is directed by Israeli filmmaker Yaron Zilberman, lets them tell their history and that of their tumultuous era, illustrated with archival clips, interviews and footage of them revisiting their old haunts in Vienna. Watermarks succeeds in bringing a forgotten part of history to life. But best of all, it introduces us to some genuinely remarkable individuals who made a significant difference in their time and place.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He teaches courses at Ryerson University's LIFE Institute.

Neglected Gem #12: Nothing Personal (1995)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why The Lord of the Rings’s Peter Jackson’s mock 1995 documentary Forgotten Silver didn’t become the cult hit it should have been. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

In Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, a truce was called between the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Defense Force. As Nothing Personal makes abundantly clear, peace doesn't mean old hatreds are forgotten; as exemplified by a traitorous Protestant power-broker (Michael Gambon), it can be even unclear who the opposing sides are.

John Lynch and James Frain in Nothing Personal

 At first, it's hard to tell Nothing Personal's characters apart, because director Thaddeus O'Sullivan simply picks up everyone's lives in flux, revolving around family, socializing and politicking. Of course, that's the point: the Protestants and Catholics aren't that different from one another but, like the artificial boundaries that divide their Belfast neighbourhoods, the crevice between the creeds seems insurmountable. When Liam (John Lynch), a Catholic single father, discovers his young son has entered the ‘dangerous’ Protestant sector, he sets off after him, precipitating a confrontation with his enemies – most notably with Kenny, a young Protestant hit man (Ian Hart, who's chilling).

Loosely plotted, but very visceral, Nothing Personal gets at the constant tension, fear and potential for violent outbreak that was and still, to some degree, is the Northern Irish reality. But it also allows for the presence of decency. Nothing Personal is also concerned with the sins of the fathers becoming the sins of the sons, like the similarly themed In the Name of the Father, but, to my mind, even more so than Jim Sheridan’s movie, it better balances the personal and political.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto. He teaches regular courses at Ryerson University's LIFE Institute, and is currently teaching a course on American cinema of the 70s.

Neglected Gems #7: Childhood's End (1997)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why The Lord of the Rings’s Peter Jackson’s mock 1995 documentary Forgotten Silver didn’t become the cult hit it should have been. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

A memorable debut from Jeff Lipsky, co-founder of distributor October Films (Life is Sweet, Breaking the Waves) turned filmmaker, Childhood's End has more in common with frank, uncompromising European cinema than its softer American model. Following a group of Minneapolis teenagers, all on the cusp of adult responsibilities and challenges, Childhood's End sets out to paint a dark but still optimistic portrait of contemporary American youth. 

It's loosely plotted, picking up and dropping its characters in turn, but it never feels underwritten or sloppy. The film, which features Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) in a small role, concentrates on two main strands: the love affair between Greg (Sam Trammell, True Blood), a hotshot young photo editor, and Evelyn (Cameron Foord), a forthright older woman; and the budding relationship between Evelyn's cynical daughter Denise (Colleen Werthmann) and the painfully shy Rebecca (Heather Gottlieb). Childhood's End is a strongly presented, sexually explicit drama, strikingly well acted and often startling in its intensity. It should have marked Lipsky as a talent to watch but the film barely made a ripple and his subsequent movies, Flannel Pajamas (2006), Once More with Feeling (2009) and Twelve Thirty (2010), none of which have played in my neck of the woods, were similarly neglected.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto . He teaches regular courses at Ryerson University's LIFE Institute, and in September will be teaching a course on the work of Steven Spielberg. Also in the fall, he'll be teaching Genre Movies at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto .

Neglected Gems #4: Baran (2001)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End (1997) didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Wendy and Lucy, Ballast) acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Co-winner of the grand prize at the Montreal World Film Festival, Baran marked a stylistic leap forward for Iranian director Majid Majidi. It was also a less angry film than his previous two movies, Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise, both of which had also won the top prize in Montreal. Those films were heavier--and cruder--than Baran, which is, finally, a sweet story of unconsummated love.

Neglected Gem #8: The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (1998)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why The Lord of the Rings’s Peter Jackson’s mock 1995 documentary Forgotten Silver didn’t become the cult hit it should have been. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Adrian Grenier in The Adventures of Sebastian Cole

The Adventures of Sebastian Cole is a real find, a debut filled with unpredictable characters, an original point of view and fearlessness in both subject matter and the depiction of everyday small-town life. The titular character (Adrian Grenier, Entourage) is an aimless, modern-day Holden Caulfield, minus the cynicism. He is equally unhappy, though, mourning the sudden disintegration of his family, torn asunder when stepfather Hank (Clark Gregg) announces his intention to become a woman. Dragged to England by his bitter British mother (Margaret Colin), who has begun to drink too much, he's returned home to live with Hank/Henrietta, an arrangement that is a mixed blessing for both.

Writer/director Tod Williams doesn't push the story so much as let it unfold. He takes a chance in mixing moods, but the dominant tone is quirky satire worthy of John Irving (The World According to Garp) and just as strikingly unique.

– Shlomo Schwartzberg is a film critic, teacher and arts journalist based in Toronto . He teaches regular courses at Ryerson University's LIFE Institute, where he is currently teaching a course on the work of Steven Spielberg. Also on Monday Oct. 17, he began teaching Genre Movies at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre

Bob Hoskins: The Thrill of Acting

Bob Hoskins (1942-2014)

Bob Hoskins, who died at the end of April at the age of seventy-one, was known as The Cockney Cagney, and it’s easy to see why. He’s compact like Cagney, a little man with a loud voice, but both men aren’t merely flamboyant: their front-and-centre, pop-up quality reveals an alertness to the world and an intensely emotional interaction with it. They leap out of the gate like champion racehorses because their characters are bursting at the seams. Like Cagney’s, Hoskins’s trademark performances are about class, though in a more explicit and more complex way. Cagney’s characters didn’t generally talk about their working-class roots but they didn’t have to – the proletarian essence was in his somewhat stylized New York accent, his hoofer’s nimbleness, as assertively masculine as Gene Kelly’s, his take-no-prisoners aggressiveness, and in the fact that the actor’s home studio was Warner Brothers, which catered to the working-class neighborhoods that housed many of the theatres Warners owned. Hoskins’s characters have the same qualities (Cockney subbing for New Yorkese), but they address the issue of class all the time. Well, that’s the Brit in them; they’re fighting the battle of the classes that’s at the heart of English drama from the middle of the twentieth century onward. There’s more overlap, too, between these two marvelous actors. Both men’s acting is centered as much in their eyes as in their tight, dukes-up, punching-the-air bodies, though whereas Cagney famously had soft bedroom eyes – Olivier eyes – Hoskins’s eyes had the quality of blazing neon or exploding firecrackers. Both had a depth of feeling that, set against their missile-force immediacy, had the ability to poeticize their acting. And they both acted as if they thought it was the most thrilling job in the world. They got gloriously, extravagantly drunk on it.

Critic's Notes and Frames Vol. XV

In the recent issue of Pitchfork, Dhani Harrison describes a conversation he had with his late father about his guitar playing. “My father once said to me, ‘I play the notes you never hear,’” he remembers. “He focused on touch and control partly because he never thought he was any good, really. He knew he was good at smaller things: not hitting any off notes, not making strings buzz, not playing anything that would jar you. ‘Everyone else has played all the other bullshit,’ he would say. ‘I just play what's left.’”

I started to think about what song might illustrate best for me the notion of playing 'what's left.' On Beatles for Sale (or Beatles VI – if you grew up like me in North America), "What You're Doing" has a solo that's quite economical in that George Harrison style. The notes he plays (over-top George Martin's rumbling piano) are picked at with a brightness that gives the song some of its shimmering texture. Yet it still harmonizes with the song's melodic line even when it briefly breaks free from it. Heard here best in mono, rather than stereo, the pieces are always designed to fit the whole.

A Crowded Sunday Night: The Amazing Race, Mildred Pierce, The Killing and The Borgias

I know Sunday night is a 'good' night for TV networks to program their more adult fare, but must they put them all on at the same time? I know, in this age of PVR and On Demand, etc., etc., the need to watch a show when the networks plan it is greatly reduced. However, if you are like me and are one of those dinosaurs who still uses his VCR, what need do I have for PVR? (I've got tape, I've got a working VCR, why would I give the cable companies even more money a month for a PVR box?) Sure, there's On Demand, but I've found it unreliable (the image breaks up or it takes forever to download), and unlike the past, now that I've gone digital, I can't watch one show and tape another, so I'm stuck. It's either watch them while they're on, or at least in the case of AMC's The Killing tape the 1AM repeat and watch it the next day. Full confession, one of the shows, Mildred Pierce, was given to me on disc by a friend who actually gets HBO Canada, but I'm still in a quandary. You see, the one and only reality show, The Amazing Race, I watch is also on on Sunday evenings. So, from 8pm until 12am, it's a marathon.

So, here is how the schedule would be if I had to watch Mildred Pierce on initial broadcast: 8pm, The Amazing Race; 9pm, Mildred Pierce; 10pm to 11:10pm, The Borgias; 11pm (and miss 10 minutes) or 1am repeat, The Killing. It's a bit wearying. Fortunately, my other favourite adult show, Endgame -- starring Shawn Doyle as a sort-of Russian Nero Wolfe who suffers from agoraphobia and solves all his the mysteries by never leaving the hotel he's holed up in -- broadcasts on Monday nights. Endgame works because of Doyle's wonderful performance, but that's for another day. To my Sunday shows. I like them all, although none of them are perfect. But they are adult and are trying to get at some interesting things. They don't always succeed, but this one evening is far more entertaining than the last four months of feature film releases.