Author: BRWC

The Story Of O: Untold Pleasures is an American erotic drama that was directed by Phil Leirness and originally released in October 2002.  It stars Danielle Ciardi, Neil Dickson, Max Parrish and Michelle Ruben and is an adaptation of the famous French erotic novel Histoire d’O by Pauline Reage.  Unsurprisingly, given that it revolves around the domination and objectification of women for male pleasure, it has been filmed many times although never as badly as this.

It tells the story of ambitious young photographer O (Cardi), whose feckless lover Rene (Parrish) introduces her to the wealthy Sir Stephen (Dickson).  Stephen happens to be a bit of a perv who likes nothing better than whipping young women across the buttocks and sponsoring ambitious young photographers.  O puts two and two together and is soon being whipped across the buttocks in exchange for the cash she needs to put her latest photograph album together.  But she finds the terms of her agreement with Stephen are affecting her relationships with Rene and model Jacqueline (Ruben).

The erotic drama was a staple of the direct-to-video scene in the 1990s and made minor stars of the likes of Shannon Whirry and Shannon Tweed.  They basically provided teenage boys and dirty old men with moving images of T&A in the pre-internet era but inexplicably tried to make out that they were ‘artistic’, which in practice meant lots of soft focus photography, billowing white sheets, doves, candles, bubble bath and all that sort of thing.  However, once the internet provided the means for infinite varieties of pornography to flood the world the requirement for erotic dramas dropped off overnight.

This version of The Story Of O came right at the fag end of that cycle and, viewed now, shows what a self-defeating sub-genre it really was.  It’s all very well showing lots of wobbling boobs and arses but, let’s face it, the Carry On series was offering that thirty years previously.  As Roman Polanski once said, if you’re making a film about a man whose head is cut off, you have to show the head getting cut off otherwise it’s like a joke without the punchline.  So if you’re making a film that’s all about sex, well, you can fill in the blanks yourself.

And speaking of blanks, the actors in erotic dramas were cast for their looks alone with the natural consequence that the acting is appalling.  Which is certainly the case here: Danielle Ciardi doesn’t for one second convince you as someone who could drive a man insane with lust and poor old Neil Dickson, who had the starring role in the flop movie version of Biggles in 1987, looks thoroughly embarrassed – as well he might – as Sir Stephen.

To do proper justice to a novel such as Histoire d’O requires either the no-holds-barred bad taste of someone like Jess Franco or the detached voyeurism of a master technician like Stanley Kubrick.  Unfortunately, director Phil Leirness is neither.  There’s plenty of nudity and some mild S&M but nothing even remotely decadent, let alone depraved.  The score gives away how bland this film really is, being the sort of music you might hear being piped through the duty free shops on a cross-channel ferry.

So ultimately The Story Of O: Untold Pleasures is nothing more than an historical example of a now all but extinct type of movie making, and a bad example at that.

It is indeed a very sobering and poignant day when a documentary can so bluntly state that everything natural that lives around us has in fact suffered from our very own human existence. Planet Ocean, as inferred by the self-descriptive title, is a feature-length documentary that explores the controversial relationship between our planet’s ocean and humankind. Critically acclaimed documentary film-maker and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertand, alongside co-director Michael Pitiot, both bring us 93 minutes of indisputably beautiful footage and a wealth of environmental knowledge and information.

From the very beginning, Planet Ocean is visually stunning. Many of the aerial-shots featured throughout are panned in such a way that they clearly demonstrate obvious passion and appreciation towards the environments shown. International underwater cinematographers that work in partnership with OMEGA provide much of the consistently beautiful and impressive imagery, showcasing truly fascinating footage of ocean-life and even the predatory rituals of some of its inhabitants. Moreover, being able to visually see captured-footage from an underwater perspective certainly aids the viewer in being able to digest much of the knowledge-heavy narration featured throughout.

Narrated by Josh Duhamel (Transformers), Universal Home Picture’s Planet Ocean begins in Shark Bay, Australia, one of many of the places that are journeyed to throughout the documentary. Slow camera-pans of crashing waves are shown as Duhamel quietly introduces us to the importance of the ocean and explains how it is firmly at the very centre of the origins of mankind. In obvious purposely-executed contrast to this opening serene imagery, shots of heavy-duty ships transporting forest logs are soon thereafter shown as the narration now tells us of the damaging effects that industrialisation and globalisation has had on the planet’s environment, even going as far as to refer to mankind as being ‘super predators’.

Transport back 4 billion years ago and we are shown how one of the greatest terrestrial floods originally formed the ocean and, incredibly, how powerful air-currents descending from the polar regions are capable of transporting millions of cubic-meters of water when in contact with the ocean due to the atmospheric collision with the hot air of the equator. The scientific knowledge throughout the documentary is certainly both fascinating and informative, however it is unfortunately hindered in terms of truly creating any notably enthusiastic impact due to the rather monotone and dreary tone in which it is narrated throughout. Consequently, Planet Ocean would undoubtedly be an enjoyable documentary for any environmental enthusiasts, however it would perhaps lack the spark to sustain the attention of any sitting outside that niche due to how overly-flat the delivery is.

Later in the documentary, Planet Ocean continues on to explain the detrimental effects of over-fishing and how all damaging waste gained from this is simply put back into the ocean, thus inevitably causing a rise in pollution that does little to sustain or help our environment. The documentary further describes the growth of the ship-industry as ‘relentless’, stating how the construction of large ships that size at 400 meters in ocean-space have in fact enabled the globalisation of industries due to factories being moved onto these physical creations.

In contrast to the predominantly negative and critical tone of the documentary, the music featured throughout Planet Ocean is in fact relaxing and very peaceful to listen to. Mainly consisting of soft instrumental scores that increase and decrease in intensity at suitably timed intervals, the music also aids to further highlight the sheer beauty of some of the imagery and footage shown, creating a pleasant backdrop that is enjoyable to listen to.

Although the information narrated in Planet Ocean is certainly informative, the documentary does at times perhaps over-chastise humankind in so much that it tars all of us with the same obnoxious anti-environmentalist brush. However, at the conclusion of its exploration, Planet Ocean does provide insights into possible solutions that may aid in future environmental conservation, creating a refreshing change from documentaries that simply highlight our ignorance, yet do nothing to help us change it.

La Poison is a French black comedy that was written and directed by Sacha Guitry and originally released in November 1951.  It stars Michel Simon, Jean Debucourt and Germaine Reuver, plus a multitude of French character actors.  The story concerns a wily but feckless provincial Frenchman, Monsieur Braconnier (Simon), who has come to the decision that he can no longer stand his wife (Reuver).  On the radio he hears defence barrister Monsieur Aubanel (Debucourt) boasting of his 100^th acquittal; Braconnier realises that if he can secure Aubanel’s services he might be able to literally get away with murder.

The real focus of La Poison – and the target of Guitry’s satire – is the legal system, specifically the extent to which that system is abused by the unscrupulous.  Guitry’s view of who counts as “unscrupulous” seems to extend so far that it includes pretty much everybody.  There’s no morality here:  from the top of the judicial system down to the lowliest working man, everyone has an opinion of Braconnier’s crime – and a reason for exploiting it – but no-one thinks in terms of right and wrong, only guilty or not-guilty.  Neither does anyone spare a thought for the victim, as unpleasant as she is.

There’s a context to this film which helps to explain why Guitry may have arrived at this jaundiced standpoint.  Guitry was a successful French playwright and actor who began making films of his work in the 1930s; always prolific his stream of work was only partially halted by the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of France.  That Guitry continued to work, albeit more slowly, during this period was, along with the perception that he enjoyed special favours from the Nazis, to count against him heavily once the war had ended.  Indeed, almost as soon as Paris had been liberated in 1944 Guitry was arrested and imprisoned for collaboration.  He was released after two months but banned from working.  It wasn’t until 1947, after an official investigation into his wartime activities found in his favour, that he was permitted to resume his career.

I’m ashamed to say I don’t know enough about Guitry’s work to be able to tell you whether there is a marked difference between his pre- and post-war work but the general view seems to be that the frivolity which was characteristic of his early films was replaced by a much darker tone, and La Poison is a good example of this.  It’s a very witty and amusing comedy but the theme at its heart is deadly serious and impossible to divorce from Guitry’s own experiences.  For instance, the instant opinions on Braconnier’s guilt or innocence, based as they are on little more than fragments of information, are a direct reflection of Guitry’s post-war troubles.

In purely cinematic terms the film is excellent and this blu-ray release from Eureka’s ‘Masters of Cinema’ collection presents it in pristine condition.  The scenes of provincial French life are beautifully observed and the acting is uniformly terrific, particularly Michel Simon as the increasingly garrulous M. Braconnier.  One element is especially worthy of note as it is, in my experience, unique in cinema: a five-minute sequence before the action starts where Guitry wanders around the stage sets introducing his cast and crew.  It’s quite remarkable, particularly the huge praise he lavishes on a distinctly uncomfortable-looking  Michel Simon.

As wretched a decade as it otherwise was, the ’90s produced some damn fine action movies. I’m reminded of this fact by Olympus Has Fallen, a surprisingly hard-hitting and hard-R action movie whose premise fits squarely into the category of “why the hell hasn’t this been done before? Specifically in the ’90s.” It’s not great – frankly it’s a bit of a mess – but it’s a throwback to greatness and as such earns my affection, like a child dressing like his older brother who died in the accident we don’t talk about. I won’t love him much more, but I like that he tried.

Olympus Has Fallen concerns the plight of not-scottish-honest, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), an ex-etcetera hardcase who finds himself the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the ass, in a terrorist-overrun White House. The President is a hostage (Aaron ‘The Chin’ Eckhart), the villain’s foreign and the odds are not on his side.

That sounds like an awesome premise because it is, and the execution of said White House overrunning is an absolute joy; intense, wantonly violent and directed with real weight and sadistic glee by Training Day-helmer, Antoine Fuqua. It’s quite unsettlingly right-wing in place, especially in its depictions of most North Koreans as absolute fruit-and-nutcakes, but that was just part of its retro charm for me. After this and the remake of Red Dawn, North Koreans seem to be today’s equivalent of the Ruskies or Eurobastards of old.

It’s just a shame the film becomes a bit of a visual shambles after the first act. The action’s well choreographed and the sound design is joyfully crunchy but it’s near-ruined by so much of the film’s action taking place not only in darkness, but in shaky-cam’ed darkness. This not only blurs the sense of location, making each dark room of the White House look the same, but it deadens the action too. This shooting style often makes sense if the director’s trying to sweep sloppy stunt coordination under the carpet or squeeze a 12A by underplaying the violence’s visual impact, but it’s especially baffling here because this stuff’s good. Hard-15 good! There’s fucks and blood aplenty so turn the lights on, take the camera away from the guy with tremens and let us enjoy it, movie.

The other problem is that this is a movie we’ve all seen before. Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that this is a “Die-Hard in a…” movie is, for me, the core of its appeal. I love these things. Air Force One, Under Siege, Cliffhanger – you make ’em, I’ll watch ’em – and it’s been years since we’ve seen a decent attempt at a Die Hard movie, both Lockout and A Good Day To Die Hard showing up dead on arrival. The problem is, this isn’t like Die Hard, this is Die Hard. Certain plot beats are to be expected but this movie plunders so comprehensively from the original Die Hard that it barely seems legal.

– spoilers –

For example, the hero is having relationship troubles with his wife at the start of the film. I know, I know, that’s a pretty common trope, so how about these? The smart-suited villain starts his plan by shooting a middle-aged asian man in the head. The villain needs a series of codes, having his computer whiz hack the ones he can’t get. The hero has a radio to the good guys, who consist of an grey-haired prick and a sage black man. The villain and the hero trade barbs over the radio and the hero trumps the villain’s book-smarts with swearing and taunting him about how many of his men he’s killed. The hero sneaks around the inner tunnels of the building, narrowly avoiding blindly-fired bullets whilst doing so. In a show of bravado, the grey haired prick sends some swat men to their deaths despite the hero’s pleas that it’ll get them killed. The hero meets a villain who pretends to be a good guy, and they chat while having a smoke. A plan by the good guys involving helicopters goes south. The hero narrowly avoids a massive roof explosion by jumping off said roof. The villain’s original demands are just there to cover up an alternate scheme. At his lowest moment, the hero picks glass from his body whilst on the radio to the sage black man. The villains plan to use an explosion to fake their own death. The hero reconciles his marriage with his wife surrounded by ambulances. That’s taking imitation beyond flattery and into The Talented Mr Ripley territory.

Plus, it’s all shot so flatly, with mostly digital blood, and a crippling lack of charisma in the script. The structure’s all there, the plot beats are all there – ripped off wholesale but present and correct all the same – the screenplay just needed a once over from a Joss Whedon; a dialogue guy. All the archetypes are in place, they’re just not given anything characterful or fun to say. So it’s a rote copy of Die Hard, only with less personality. So why bother, right?

But I did still like it. The premise is bombastic, exploited well, and as long as you lower those expectations you’ll walk away happy enough. I guess it’s just endemic of the PG-13 toothless era of action flicks that a few Fucks and some decently vicious gunshots to the head are enough to squeak a recommendation out of a film that would’ve been laughed out of cinemas in the ’90s.

It’s a bittersweet pleasure really, because what this movie did above all else was just remind me of stuff I miss. I miss blood-packs. I miss people dropping f-bombs like they were about to die or something – because they were! I miss movies that knew kids were going to find a way to see them anyway and never blunted their teeth to reach that more ‘lucrative’ younger rating. Olympus Has Fallen is certainly a step towards that cherished ’90s style, even if only a baby step, so if you have the money to spare why not check it out. Or just watch Die Hard again. Or Speed. Or Point Break. Or Die Hard 2. Or Terminator 2. Or Con Air. Or Cliffhanger. Or Air Force One. Or The Rock.

God, I miss the ’90s.

(and yes I know Die Hard was ’88)

By ‘eck, the young don’t know they’re born. Billy Liar is 50 this year but he’s been 19 forever. The original novel by Keith Waterhouse has been adapted into a perpetually performed play, a film, a TV series and a musical, not to mention numerous references in poems, songs and various other forms of pop culture. Why has the story endured so much? Well, it’s at once charmingly simple and emotionally complex, moralistic but cheeky, hilarious but bleak, and a character study that so comprehensively dissects not just one man’s near-psychopathy, but also the passive idlings of youth.

Bizarrely, the film reminds me a lot of Spring Breakers. Granted, there are marginally less tits and Franco in Billy Liar, but even half a century apart they’re both savage depictions of the reckless lengths the young will go in order to escape the mundanity of their lives and reach the idealised paradises sold to them wholesale by their cultural heroes. In Liar, Billy constantly casts off his lot as “just ordinary folk” by losing himself in dreams of being a war hero, a statesman, a man the elder generations might consider of worth. In Breakers, it’s the MTV-packaged dream of Spring Break Forever. In both films the young are pinned to their frustrating lives like an insect to a board, both flailing wildly to try and fly away.

Both films are also snapshots of their generations. Billy Liar was part of the new wave of kitchen sink dramas – a niche of naturalistic ‘just plain folk’ filmmaking that exploded in the 60s – which placed the action right in your nan’s front room. Established new wave director John Schlesinger confidently conjures scenes of working class Yorkshire, old buildings being torn down to make way for the new, Billy’s oblivious scampering towards self-destruction, and (especially when 60s starlet Julie Christie’s onscreen) the blossoming sexuality of the age found in dance halls and fumblings in the park – all of which signify the rise of a new generation, the kids who never fought a war, the progeny of the swaggering 60s, impatient and hungry. Billy works in an undertakers but, typical of the young, it’s not death he fears, but life.

And the life that awaits him as a local of Stradhoughton is depicted in a number of hilarious and bleak ways, whether it’s a hoard of mums celebrating the opening of a new supermarket with an expectant glee bordering on the cultish, or Billy’s nan, a rambling, ignored little life with nothing but a cosy chair to her name. The kitchen sink drama has always suffered from unfair accusations of being quaint, and life in Billy’s Yorkshire is indeed tame, but the film’s aware of that and it all serves as a haunting vision of what happens when dreams get smaller than the length of your street. In one gorgeous scene, Billy suffers a near breakdown in The Dance Hall, losing his mind amidst the trampling of a hundred local feet doing the congo, each one another bang on the pin that keeps him to the board.

Sir Tom Courtney’s Billy is a marvellous creation, possessing a slippery yet irresistible charm. The mischief in his eyes is infectious and he has the audience in the palm of his hand from the off, impressions and vocal character tics spilling out as thick and fast as each lie and fantasy that ping behind Billy’s eyes. In a beautiful moment, a rehearsed speech to an imaginary boss deforms into churchillian fervour and finally animalistic screeches as his imagination bends and twists from moment to moment. Crucially, it’s a performance that cracks but never softens as the film nears its resolution, and as the consequences of his deceptions start to pile up, he scampers backwards and forwards over the line between dreams and delusions, excuses and lies, boyhood japes and adult cruelty.

There will be those that cannot get past the This Is An Old Film feel, the deliberate pace and the working class anti-spectacle of the film’s setting and plot, but those that do will find Billy Liar to be a hilarious, charming and unsettling tale of wasted youth, one that feels as relevant and powerful as it did 50 long years ago. And as 25 year old manchild still clinging to his boyhood dreams, I speak with authority on this.