Rob Roy (1995): review: 7/10

Rob Roy lives in a little house with his wifie Mary and three children, much like any regular suburban couple. His hair is unkempt and somewhat greasy and he is very down to earth and a super with a claymore. Though he's a fighter he's a sensitive guy too and loves his children and has a new-man style relationship with Mary, the red-headed wifie.

He also has capitalistic leanings and so he borrows some money from a local lord to make a cattle deal, but sadly this money is stolen by a vicious, camp wig-wearer (who, despite his sword-fighting abilities turns out to be a really bad egg,: if not bisexual, certainly effeminate with highly dubious taste for wigs and lilac, a rapist, and a liar and and Englishman), who is quite nasty like all the nobs except for the guy from whom he borrowed the money for the cows who is merely supid.

Anyway, after this robbery, and appalled by the general skulduggery around him, Rob turns into a rebel. The film ends with an excellent swordfight.

A poker-faced swashbuckler, the film takes itself rather seriously. The camp fellow does not quite provide light relief tha a good villian should , being wicked in ways which are too vile for amusement and though well made, one does wonder who the film really is for.

Land and Freedom (1995): review- 3/10

A girl discovers letters and clippings among the posessions of her recently deceased grandfather. These tell the story of his involvement, as a young communist, with the fight against Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War and his increasing sense of disillusion.

At the heart of the film is a lengthy political debate among villagers and combatants: this is little more than an exchange of slogans. Indeed, the whole film suffers from naivity and fails to examine the issues behind the Spanish Civil War or to show why a young working-class Liverpudlian with no Spanish or combat experience would take the extraordinary step of going to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

As so often in Loach films, the acting is often weak, and the film fails as a simple character study.

Smoke (1995): review- 2/10

Talk based picture centred round Keitel's cigar shop in New York and the characters who pass through there.

The film is in-necessarily slow, and becomes boring. This is for various reasons but:

1. The plot does not contain sufficient tension; indeed it just seems to be made up arbitrarily as it goes along. Ergo, it's boring. This is not the same as slow.

2. Harvey Keitel is the only one who can really hold the screen, and the characters are too blank to sustain sympathy.

3. Lighting and scenography aren't used with any imagination- thie film has the washed out look of a cheap tv soap and lacks atmosphere. Where is the use of music also? We want more than a few bars of Tom Waits.

4. The interlacing of lives is too contrived and it's hard to sense that the young black man is really in danger.

5. Lacks the sense of existential revelation which, I think , must play a part in all good art- certainly the existential art Noir-esque of Auster. That is to ask, where is the sense of magic, or the question, what lies beneath it all?

It's peculiar that these difficulties should have arisen from a Paul Auster penned film, given how very well he does atmosphere and narrative and existential questions in his books.

Al di là delle nuvole [Beyond the Clouds] (1995): review- 2/10

The more desperately cinema tries to be an art form, the more firmly it lodges itself up its own anus.

Malkovich wanders around looking as if someone stole his toupee, introducing and occasionally narrating this insipid arty porn-kitsch which shows women taking their panties off in various cloudy European cities.

Sometimes this is quite diverting, but lord it does drag on!