Angels, Hitters, and Dicks

An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990) - mixed
This biopic about quirky and troubled New Zeeland author Janet Frame is both sympathetic and picturesque, and offers a rare insight into the mind of a person who may or may not be mentally ill. Frame herself (played by three actresses from child to grown-up, but mostly by Kerry Fox) comes across as a fascinating personality, but director Campion makes a weak effort to portray the characters surrounding her as little more than cardboard charicatures, from parents and teachers to literary posers in London and mean doctors.

***

Hard Times (Walter Hill, 1975) – pro
Charles Bronson is a depression-era street fighter who hooks up with loudmouth promoter James Coburn for a series of underground brawls, in this taut, lean feature that was Walter Hill's first as a writer-director. The two lead characters are archetypical - the silent, stoic fighter and the debt-ridden, over-confident promoter - but they both work well in the hands of Bronson and Coburn, and Hill makes an assured directing debut, already displaying some of the traits that would become staples of his style; most prominently, the economy of both the script and the execution. The fight scenes are equally impressive and intense, often shot with the thuds and grunts from the hitters as the only soundtrack.

***

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970) – mixed-
Fifty years after Dr. Watson's death, in compliance with his last will, his heirs unveil a previously unknown Sherlock Holmes mystery, deemed by Watson too hot to handle at the time he wrote it down, due to its delicate nature: it involves international espionage, Holmes' brother Mycroft, and hints of a softer side of the great detective. This is a rather clever device by Wilder and his screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond to kick-start a story obviously not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, but the result is pretty underwhelming. Originally intended as an epic, chronicling a number of different cases and episodes, but later chopped down to a more managable running time, it now resembles little more than a well-crafted detective story made for TV, with an unengaging plot and a disappointing showdown in Loch Ness that would be more fitting of an episode of Scooby Doo than the greatest detective in the world. Still, Robert Stephens is a good Holmes, and the scenes between him and Mycroft Holmes (Christopher Lee) are excellent in showing the brothers' mutual, and restrained, contempt for one another. Wilder directs with his usual flair, but his annoying habit of mixing drama with comedy doesn't work at all, and Colin Blakely's Watson – often reduced to comic relief – is hopeless; for a man of science and medicine, he sure is a clumsy, dim-witted moron.