It’s taken me a long time but I’m finally, slowly, recently coming to the realisation that I really just don’t like Ridley Scott in general – that is, that the movies of his that I tend to love … and yes, when I like a Ridley Scott movie, I really like it … they always tend to be the ones that everyone else see as failures for him. Of the hits, only Thelma and Louise stands out for me – I’m still working through the Blade Runner Final Cut set hoping for an epiphany but it’s not looking good – add Hannibal and Matchstick Men and that’s about it for me.

With those last two in mind, particularly Matchstick Men, I actually looked forward to seeing this one, because it seemed to fit the magic mould. I’d much prefer to see Scott applying his technical sheen to a loopy, down to earth story like this than anything he did in Gladiator, American Gangster, and worst of all Kingdom of Heaven. The same goes for Russell Crowe – I don’t give a damn about the accent, I’d much prefer to see him as loose as he is here than his more commercially successful man act … I mean he truly glows in places of this movie, you can feel the France getting to him like it gets to anyone.

In short, I was far from let down. In fact, I barely stopped laughing for the whole movie. It’s barely got a thing to say worth saying, but like Matchstick Men it’s just an undeniably talented director (yeh, don’t get me wrong – I just don’t like most of his movies lol) letting rip on a story completely unworthy of that talent; and to me, the product is far more desirable than any of his more “worthy” feats. You can practically feel the breeze and smell the twilight air in some scenes here, rustic France probably hasn’t looked so inviting since Jean De Florette and Manon des Sources. The soundtrack is random as hell, the girls are beautiful, the wine’s surprisingly, hilariously rotten … what can I say but I’ll be coming back for more of this one for sure.

Well, finally, I loved this one so much it went over A Clockwork Orange in my 1971 list and thus shot straight to the top of my favourite movies of all time … kinda knew that’d happen sooner or later. Again, there’s little to say that I haven’t said below or that others haven’t said before, but I noticed a couple of cute things this time around worth mentioning, both of them costume related; the way Harold is dressed exactly the same as the psychiatrist in their first meeting, and the way Maude is dressed almost exactly the same as a little girl walking in the same way as her behind her at one of the early funerals … Maude, though, carrying that bright yellow umbrella that makes her look more like the little girl, lol. It’s just an absolutely beautiful movie I could quote or talk about scenes from for hours. “For me, they will always be glorious birds …” – “Most of life’s sorrow comes from people who are this – but allow themselves to be treated like that …” I probably should’ve saved it for Valentine’s Day … though that’s reserved for Hannibal still this year One day I’ll write a much longer review … for now, just consider it an even higher recommendation, if you’ve not seen it yet, than I gave for Beautiful Girls a few weeks ago.

January 5th, 2006:

I’m surprised by how much I said in my first review of this (below). I really can’t think of much to say about it right now, I need to watch it so many more times. I want to know ths movie by heart. Everything about it is perfect. Its offbeat take on life, death, and love is beyond compare. Maude is one of the greatest movie characters ever.

18th October 2004:

Someone recommended this movie to me a while ago and I already knew about it and knew it was a movie I wanted to see, and after that recommendation, I wanted to see it even more. I don’t know why it took me till now to finally see it.

I was barely even in the right frame of mind to watch it, nevertheless it belongs forever in my top 100 movies of all time. It’s only just at 100 after a first viewing but I just know it’s going to rise and rise. These two characters are people I want to hang with forever. Harold and Maude belongs in that group of movies that just tell you to grab life by the balls. It’s almost terrifying in that aspect, Maude is so free-spirited she would make almost anyone on earth feel somewhat lifeless.

And the soundtrack by Cat Stevens … well, it’s awesome, but more than anything makes me want to hear more Cat Stevens. Why is this soundtrack never uttered in the same breath as Simon and Garfunkel’s The Graduate and Aimee Mann’s Magnolia? I see something of Cameron Crowe’s influence coming from this movie too, I wonder if he’s ever mentioned it on a commentary anywhere – I’m going to have to watch Almost Famous again.

Definitely one of the most romantic movies of all time.

Ah! I only just spotted on the IMDb that this actually came from a novel by Anthony Schaffer which explains a lot … had I known this I might’ve watched it even sooner than I have knowing it features Hayley Mills, albeit in a role so small her opening credit bizarrely reads, “Guest starring …” lol. But hers is one of those roles that, though small in screentime, is felt overwhelmingly at all times. She’s as beautiful a presence here as she has been anywhere – I think for me it all really clicks when it cuts back to her in Forbush’s last monologue, about all living creatures relying in some way or other on others, even (and there it cuts to Mills back at home) humans. It’s such a great moment, her face just sells what could easily be quite a corny message.

Much of the film is footage of the penguins themselves and there’s a sense in which it’s almost part-documentary, the story being fairly thin on the ground and really just being this portrait of man, and quelle man in John Hurt’s performance – Forbush being the kind of guy who won’t go to Antarctica without a few cases of Krug champagne and other fineries, declaring in a radio call that the electric blanket is the last thing he’s missing in the bed department, lol. It’s an amazing performance that goes from surprisingly young and feisty for Hurt through to something bordering on madness and finally despair only to come back full circle, completely changed; the last shot of Hurt returning to Mills is so simple but at the same time absolutely beautiful. It’s definitely a movie I’ll come back to.

Part of me sat depressed through this thinking I couldn’t have picked a worse movie to end 2007 with (of movies actually released in ‘07, at least). But maybe it’s actually the perfect choice. Curtis Hanson knows how to put a movie together, and like so many movies this year, too many by my reckoning, this is on the technical side perfectly acceptable. To make a card game of any kind even watchable is some achievement in itself. Here they even throw some golf in for good measure.

But to stretch this over a two hour period, with only a threadbare “man is logic, woman is emotion,” romantical conflict thing in the way of story? And then to cast Drew Barrymore and criminally underuse her? And then, in its last half hour, its entire last half hour, I swear … it switches to pretty much exactly what you’ll find if you accidentally switch to Channel 5 in the early hours of any given morning – a televised poker game, literally nothing more except Eric Bana has a hand and Drew Barrymore’s watching. It’s worse than the end of International Velvet, lol. It’s just incredible.

One is duty bound to use any pun available when dealing with movies like this, I’m afraid – Unlucky you if you made the same choice as I did in ending the year on this losing hand. This is the most depressing movie I’ve seen all year, exemplified perhaps best by the moment long after the final poker game is over when I found myself nearly screaming at the TV, “Oh my f**king god! They’re still talking!” Thank God for Music and Lyrics, or I’d be really questioning my love for Drew. It’s still a real letdown though.

The blandness continues … this one had its moments before I zoned out entirely, and you can’t really complain about the pairing of Diane Lane and John Cusack, not to mention Elizabeth Perkins and Stockard Channing in support … but like, literally, there’s not a lot more to be said about it. It’s just conventional rom-com all the way, and let’s face it, even fans of that genre will be able to pick a day’s worth of more preferable viewing.

Again, as with The Brave One – and in this case it’s even more bizarre ‘cos i love Cameron Crowe heaps more than Neil Jordan – I really didn’t come to this movie expecting the director’s signature to be such a notable presence. Crowe’s flair for the ethereal seems so honed in more recent projects like Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous that I really didn’t expect much if anything here but an enjoyably superior 80s teen comedy – at worst John Hughes, at best perhaps the same year’s Heathers.

But Crowe is really overwhelmingly present here in his first work as director, perhaps most particularly in the beautifully quirky ending. I don’t think I’ve ever been told “everything’s gonna be alright” in so unexpected a fashion, lol. Then there’s the singing in the car like Jerry Mcguire, the threat of a plane crash from Almost Famous again. Crowe really started as he meant to go on. This has its lulls but for a first movie, for a first viewing, there’s plenty to bring me back. It certainly made more of an impression on me than his last Elizabethtown.

I would’ve watched this eventually just for the presence of Julie Christie, but I stepped it up the to-watch list after hearing a brief summary of the plot on (of all things) Smodcast (never let it be said Kevin Smith doesn’t talk about mature things, lol) ... I figured this could be something like The Notebook. But this movie is much more complicated, difficult, possibly even cruel, than that or just about anything that’s come before it. Right from the start, the quietness, the stillness, the focus on age in this movie, almost reminded me of some Ingmar Bergman movies I’ve seen – Christie almost even has the look of Liv Ullmann at times. It’s too much for me to say anything but it’s a beautiful movie after one watch – everyone is focussing on Julie Christie as the star of the movie but really everyone else in the cast deserves as much attention and I found the movie to be more the story of her husband, played by Gordon Pinsent. Thinking about it now, in fact, it’s quite stunning how Sarah Polley as writer-director handles the POV of both characters, and I think that’s why the movie left me so confused. Christie’s performance is so good because sometimes the movie is seen through Pinsent’s eyes and his view of the situation is at times quite disturbingly paranoid. I left the movie more on this viewing on his side, but at the same time finding it hard to believe what seemed to be the case, that Christie’s disease wasn’t entirely what it at first seemed. One thing’s for sure, this is a stunning debut for Polley which will have people talking more frankly about what is perhaps the most difficult of diseases for many years to come.

“If it’s corny, or if it’s going to ruin your outfit, you don’t have to wear it.”
“I like corny. I’m looking for corny in my life.”

Maybe it’s the higher threshold for cheese thing that comes with the time of year – but it’s not like I’d ever have watched this at any other time, so we’ll never know – but though there are so many things wrong with this movie, not least the Cameron Diaz side of the story (though Jude Law and his two girls eventually brighten it no end, I still need to ask – was this movie made by two entirely different film makers each side of the Atlantic?), I don’t know if there was a moment here where I wasn’t either smiling, laughing or fighting back tears.

I honestly thought I would absolutely hate this movie, not just from reviews I’d read but also from my general hatred of anything that overuses male/female stereotypes (I know, I know – but we’ve all got our hang-ups, and that’s mine). I started the movie almost already annoyed, particularly when I saw the running time of 2 hours 15. But it was somewhere during Kate Winslet’s little crying session following Rufus Sewell’s “dumping” of her, my attention started to veer more towards the screen, and within about 10 minutes, I could barely look away.

It reminded me of the novel I picked up on a whim a few years ago and fell completely in love with, Robyn Sisman’s Weekend in Paris – Kate Winslet’s character is so much like Molly there I kept thinking the only thing that would’ve made the movie better would’ve been if they’d scrapped the Diaz side completely and just done that adaptation, lol. Rufus Sewell is fantastic as a guy who basically amounts to her little trap in life. She can’t look at him without falling in love again, but though he’ll cross an ocean to surprise her, he’s beyond loathsome in the way he always lets her down. Winslet’s final “gumption” scene resonated with me on a level that surprised me.

The movie is all about surprises – people surprising themselves and each other, sometimes pleasant surprises, sometimes not so pleasant. That’s life. Hans Zimmer’s score is very catchy, even integrating with Jack Black’s composer character quite beautifully at times (incidentally, I really didn’t think I’d be so impressed by Black as I was here – his irrepressible self slips in sometimes, but more often than not he’s downright dapper), and the Eli Wallach subplot is a little classy icing on a very Christmassy treat, one of my biggest movie surprises of the year to be honest