NOBODY who has heard the 1954 radio production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood will forget it.
Under Milk Wood (Cert 15; 87mins)
Richard Burton’s rumbling, sonorous tones still provoke goosebumps as he transports listeners to the fictional Welsh village of Llaregubb (say it backwards) when the dark of night creeps towards the light of dawn. It is a radio drama in which the poetic language flows with the speed of a swollen river and paints a picture of the inhabitants’ hidden desires. Making a film version has always seemed like a hiding to nothing as any images the filmmaker creates are unlikely to compete with your own vivid imagination.
Even when Burton joined the illustrious company of Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole in a 1972 screen version of Under Milk Wood it wasn’t a rousing success. Kevin Allen’s brightly coloured, hyperactive new version never quite dispels the notion that this play works best on radio.
However, Allen approaches his task with energy and affection, creating a film that has the feverish quality of a half-remembered dream. It is bawdy, eccentric and pitched somewhere between a Carry On romp and the surreal sensibility of Monty Python. This is not a film for purists: be prepared to surrender to its gaudy, earthy exuberance.
If you are in the mood for a lark and a romp then it has a good deal to offer, not least Rhys Ifans as weary seafarer Captain Cat. Ifans dares to follow Richard Burton as he narrates tales of the sloeblack, slow, black, crow black spring night and the slumbering residents of the village.
There is sincerity and feeling in his rasping voice even if it doesn’t quite match the nimble timing of Burton. As the day dawns and the town “smells of seaweed and breakfast”, we meet a range of outrageous, libidinous characters including henpecked schoolmaster Mr Pugh (Boyd Clack) who dreams of poisoning his insufferable wife but would never act on that impulse.
There is nosy postman Willy Nilly (Matthew Owen), the Reverend Eli Jenkins (William Thomas) with his abiding love of the community, Mary Ann Sailors (Sharon Morgan), who declares to one and all: “I’m 85 years, three months and a day old,” and lovely Polly Garter (Charlotte Church) who spends her life tending to washing and babies. The pleasing performance from Church suggests she could well have a future as an actress. This is a community like many others held together by gossip, religion, sex, death, respectable public façades and unruly private desires, often depicted in a graphic manner that would never have passed the censor 60 years ago.
It is a tale infused with a melancholy yearning for lost loves, missed opportunities and happy dreams that are never likely to become reality. If nothing else Allen’s weird and wonderful curio allows us to see Under Milk Wood through fresh eyes and that’s not such a bad thing.
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| Michael Peña in The Vatican Tapes |
The Vatican Tapes (Cert 15; 91mins)
Take care when cutting your next birthday cake. That’s the lesson to be learned from The Vatican Tapes, an underwhelming supernatural thriller that feels like yet another variation on The Exorcist. Angela (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is an ordinary American woman, beloved by boyfriend Pete (John Patrick Amedori) and protective dad Roger (Dougray Scott). The cut finger requires a trip to the hospital for stitches and everything changes.
Angela starts to attract evil ravens, gain strange powers and she subsequently spends a significant 40 days in a coma. Kindly priest Father Lozano (Michael Peña) eventually calls on Cardinal Bruun (Peter Andersson) to intervene and the stage is set for a showdown between faith and evil. The potential is here but the po-faced screenplay contains painful dialogue, the performances are wooden, with the exception of the ever-reliable Peña, and not a single chill runs up your spine.
Pray they are not contemplating a sequel. Black Souls HHHH (Cert 15; 109mins) Flinty Mafia thriller Black Souls feels more like a Greek tragedy as it broods on the consequences of violence and families torn apart by ancient codes of honour. The setting of the grey, lawless Calabrian Mountains is stunning and feels like stepping back in time to a more primitive, unforgiving era. It is here that Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane) dedicates himself to goat farming, distancing himself from the traditional family business of organised crime.
But his son Leo (Giuseppe Fumo) is ashamed by his father’s choice and cannot wait to fire a shot in anger. His actions attract the anger of a rival family and reignite a blood feud in which violence and death are inevitable. An intelligent, slow-burning thriller that is tightly controlled by director Francesco Munzi, Black Souls grows more gripping as it unfolds and is highly recommended if you enjoyed Gomorra or Romanzo Criminale.
VERDICT: 2/5
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| Taxi Tehran: An intriguing portrait of a city and its people |
Taxi Tehran (Cert 12A; 82mins)
The Iranian state has banned director Jafar Panahi from making films for 20 years. Taxi Tehran is the third film he has managed to complete since the ban was imposed and is easily the most optimistic of the trio. Working as a taxi driver in the streets of Tehran gives Panahi the opportunity to interact with a group of passengers including a lawyer, a supplier of bootleg DVDs and a badly injured man whose wife begs them to record his last wishes on a phone.
It feels like a series of random encounters that have been captured by a camera mounted on the dashboard of the vehicle until, slowly, you start to suspect it has all been carefully scripted and orchestrated by a playful Panahi. The result is an intriguing portrait of a city and its people in which there is a good deal of wit and wisdom in the way individuals discuss justice, freedom and the way that technology could be a force for liberation in 21st-century Iran.
VERDICT: 4/5
Fresh Dressed (Cert 15; 84mins)
As Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack cronies once sang: “You’ve either got or you haven’t got style.” Breezy, wide-ranging documentary Fresh Dressed traces the links between music and fashion in the hip-hop era and has secured an impressive roster of interviews with Sean “Puffy” Combs, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams and key designer Dapper Dan. Fresh Dressed explores the way mainstream fashion eventually embraces everything that was once edgy and underground and the difference between following trends and creating something brand new. It will mostly appeal to nostalgic fashionistas.
VERDICT: 3/5
Do I Sound Gay? (Cert 15; 77mins)
Journalist David Thorpe so disliked the sound of his own voice and that of many fellow gay men that he decided to do something about it. Newly single, Thorpe set to pondering if there was such a thing as a “gay voice”, what that meant and whether he was indulging in some form of self-hatred. His lighthearted documentary Do I Sound Gay? offers a mixture of the serious and the frivolous as he meets a speech therapist, talks to the likes of George Takei and David Sedaris and even offers a potted history of cinema’s gay stereotypes. A little more focus might have helped but it has some entertaining moments.
VERDICT: 3/5
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| Outcast: A B-movie fodder with a bizarre, overacting Nicholas Cage |
Outcast H (Cert 15; 99mins)
Nicolas Cage is currently churning out films as if his very life depends upon it. The Oscar winner has certainly chosen quantity over quality in recent years and cheesy, medieval, action-yarn Outcast does nothing to redress that. The real star is Hayden Christensen as Jacob, a war-weary knight who abandons the blood and carnage of the Crusades to head east where he becomes the protector of 14-year-old Chinese prince and imperial heir Zhao (Bill Su Jiahang).
Naturally there are other members of the imperial family scheming to ensure that Zhao never ascends to the throne which leads to lots of dicing with death, sword fights and the appearance of rascally, one-eyed Gallian (Cage) to save the day. It is B-movie fodder and leaves you hoping that a bizarre, overacting Cage finds a better use for his talent some time soon.
VERDICT: 1/5
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