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Of all the directors one might imagine making an elaborate film about the partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan, Mike Leigh would be way down on the list, possibly just before Kevin Costner. Leigh has, after all, made his reputation with slice-of-life dramas about the British working class, such as

Life Is Sweet

and

Secrets and Lies

. A heavily costumed Victorian period piece would be more the purview of

Shakespeare in Love

's John Madden, who specializes in historical material.

Yet Leigh (who essential be a G&S aficionado) has, in

Topsy-Turvy

, fashioned a visually surprising, strikingly bona fide look at the artistic duo who more or less formed a template for all the musical comedy publication teams of the 20th century. W.S. Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) wrote the book (that is, the plot) and the lyrics payment their works, while Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) composed the music. Their pairing, which ran from 1871 to 1896, resulted in 14 humorous operas, numberless of which are regularly revived today.

While the partnership was phenomenally successful, it also had its stresses. It's one of those stressful periods that Leigh deals with, setting his film in 1884, a time when Sullivan, always sickly from kidney problems, was feeling pressured both by the need to keep turning out hits to support a luxurious lifestyle and by his desire to compose serious music. Sullivan was also beginning to tire of composing within the framework of Gilbert's increasingly repetitive plots, which leaned heavily on everything being turned "topsy-turvy" by sorcerers, magic potions, enchanted coins, or some other piece of arbitrary mumbo jumbo.

After the relative failure of their latest work,

Princess Ida

, Sullivan announces to Gilbert and to the head of the Savoy Theatre, Richard D'Oly Carte (Ron Cook), who has them under contract, that he will no longer compose such works and rejects Gilbert's new piece of "topsy-turvydom."

Gilbert, very much a workaholic, despairs at being stalled and, as the film would have it, soon accidentally takes a vital step toward artistic maturation when his wife, Kitty (Lesley Manville), convinces him to visit a Japanese exposition in London. Fascinated by what he sees, Gilbert is freed by his exposure to an alien culture, letting the fantastic nature of Japanese dress and mores provide the spark he had been getting by rote from his topsy-turvy plot devices.

The result of Gilbert's inspiration turns out to be

The Mikado

, hardly a model of naturalist theater by 21st-century standards, but quite the breakthrough in the late 19th. Once

Topsy-Turvy

reaches this juncture, Leigh, who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, reveals his theatrical roots by turning his film into a backstage drama that shows how painful and exacting the creative process can be, especially for actors who had to work for Gilbert.

As played by Broadbent, Gilbert is a hard-driving director who demands authenticity from his performers, hiring women from the Japanese exposition to show his players how to walk and fan themselves in the authentic style. He even decrees that his actresses won't wear corsets under their kimonos, a shock to ladies who prize showing off hourglass figures on stage. Gilbert's explanation that the Japanese don't wear corsets seems absurd to performers who wear such gear precisely because they

are

performers. Leigh is showing us the birth of the modern theatrical sensibility, being midwifed by a man who previously couldn't care a fig about realism.

While Broadbent is engrossing, the story leaves Allan Corduner, whose Sullivan is a flashier character with a taste for the demi-monde, with not much to do except rehearse his orchestra and singers, scenes which do little for the story except give Corduner equal screen time. Leigh also misguidedly takes us into the backstage/offstage lives of several members of the opera company, adding plot points about bad legs and drinking problems that crop up randomly to ultimately no affect. The result is that

Topsy-Turvy

winds up a whopping two hours and 40 minutes long, weighed down by scenes that are entertaining by themselves, but superfluous.

The one thing Leigh leaves out, oddly enough, is any look at Gilbert working on his lyrics. How a man presented as tough and biting could write some of the most whimsical, rhythmically demanding verses in English is a conundrum?and proof, perhaps, that creativity is naturally a topsy-turvy business.

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The gruesome slasher film "Haute Tension" (now being released in the States under the title "High Tension") is often unpleasant and difficult to watch — an assessment some will view as a victory, I'm sure. It is not the buckets of blood that bother me, for I am a fan of horror films, be they cheesy or legitimately frightening. It is, rather, the torture, the terror and the pure ugliness that permeate several chunks of the film that put me off.

Admirably, the film forsakes needless exposition and introduces us to two college girls, Alex (Maiwenn Le Besco) and Marie (Cecile De France). They have embarked on a weekend of studying out at Alex's family's farm in the country, so far removed from the city that the people who live there are not called "locals," but "natives."

Through curiously placed music and sound effects, we are given the impression that there is something sinister about Alex's parents (Andrei Finti and Oana Pellea). This is either an intentional red herring from director Alexandre Aja (who co-wrote with Gregory Levasseur), or else a mistake. At any rate, the family's OK. It's a psychotic maniac (Philippe Nahon) who shows up and begins murdering everyone who is the problem.

Marie manages to evade him, but he captures Alex, chains her up, and tosses her in the back of his van. Marie stows away and is able to accompany her friend as the maniac whisks them off to parts unknown to do goodness-knows-what.

I will give Aja this: The film has atmosphere to spare. Shot almost entirely at night, it has a bleakness that is truly unsettling. In addition, the killer, who is large in stature, is usually photographed from behind or from the waist down, giving him more of a monstrous, unknown quality than if we were to sit down and have tea with him, like a lot of bad movies have us do with their villains.

But in the lingo of horror films, what could be more formulaic than nubile girls being pursued by an unkillable maniac with remarkable foresight in a remote country cottage? To prevent the movie becoming nothing more than a film-school genre exercise, Aja and Levasseur have given it a twist in its final moments — a twist that, alas, DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE. Good twists make you say, as you re-think the film, "Ah, I can see how all the signs were there, and I just didn't see them." Bad twists, like this one, make you say, as you re-think the film, "What the F? That doesn't work." A few previously unexplained details do make sense once everything is revealed; unfortunately, about a thousand other details that used to make sense no longer do. The twist ruins the film, and the film wasn't that solid to begin with.

Though omitting unnecessary exposition was wise in some ways, the byproduct of doing so is that we barely have time to know these people, much less like them, before the trouble begins. The movie is certainly tense, but only from a gut-reaction standpoint. Emotionally, psychologically, there's nothing. I feel about Alex, Marie and the family the way I feel about video game characters. I want them to escape from harm simply because that is their function. If they die, well, I'll just hit "reset" and start over again.

Grade: C-

Rated R, some nudity, lots of harsh profanity, some sexuality, buckets of strong violence; previously rated NC-17, but a few trims were made it get it an R rating

1 hr., 29 min.; in French with subtitles

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All in all the way it inadvertently lampoons and identically diminishes the earlier two films, this is nothing less than a travesty. The whole that was insubstantial and insinuating about this family violation saga is obviously laid out in the show here, so that most of the conference consists of characters spelling out the series? underlying themes. Uninterrupted the conquer actors falter given this material ? Al Pacino?s Michael Corleone is an entirely distinguishable creature than the man in the basic two pictures ? so it?s no surprise that the likes of Andy Garcia and first of all commander Francis Ford Coppola?s daughter, Sofia, nearly drown. As for Coppola, he offers the rare opportunity to watch a performer throw a tomato at himself.

This zest feature from Disney is a bestial reuse of Oliver Twist, wherein cute kitten Ollie, abandoned in New York, falls into ‘baaaad’ (i.e. good) canine flock. Swindled not allowed of a meal by streetwise hound Dodger, our hero asserts his virility by debunking the rogue mutt in front of his comrades. Accepted as ‘one of the boys’, Ollie is sent out with his recent chums as they scavenge concerning pickings with which their amiable master Fagin can remittance off a debt to fiendish Mr Sykes. Much cornball adventure ensues, punctuated by healthy helpings of singing, dancing and general merriment. Billy Joel provides the voice of Dodger, and notwithstanding having made some unpleasant records, turns in a few tolerable foot-tapping numbers. Midler’s larynx is its usual gargantuan self, handling the steamy vocal chores in return pampered pooch Georgette, but highest marks go to Cheech Marin as Tito, the diminutive chihuahua with a crew-sized ego who wins Georgette’s heart by challenging everything that moves to a fight.

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The land that time forgot movie

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A zany and illogical second-feature Depression-era comedy murder
mystery set on the railroad that zips along at breakneck speed and is immensely
entertaining. It’s based on the play “The Rear Car” by Edward E. Rose and
written by Ralph Spence, Edgar Allan Woolf, Al Boasberg and Harvey Thew.
The always dependable and techie efficient Harry Beaumont (”The Broadway
Melody”/”Main Street”/”The Gold Diggers”), who in the 1920s was a top director
of musicals, helms this programmer with a magnificent amount of dash.

Perky Los Angeles telephone operator Ruth Raymond (Mary Carlisle)
is informed by NYC lawyer Alden Murray (Porter Hall) that she’s the long-lost
daughter of railroad magnate Luke Carson (Berton Churchill), one of the
richest men in the world. Her vengeful uncle Elwood, kidnapped the child
some 16 years ago and raised her in California. Soon there’s an attempt
by her bodyguard and chauffeur to kidnap her, but it’s foiled by the nutty
bumbling amateur sleuth Godfrey D. Scott (Charlie Ruggles). From hereon
an uninvited Scott tags along to protect Ruth and her switchboard operator
smart-aleck girlfriend Georgia Latham (Una Merkel) as they board a private
railroad car to go to NYC to meet Ruth’s father. John Blake (Russell Hardie),
Ruth’s nice guy workplace boyfriend, also manages to sneak aboard the private
car.

A series of murders take place, there’s an escaped gorilla from the
circus roaming the private car, a note that reads “eight hours to live”
is found, there are eerie disembodied voice messages giving how much longer
those on the train have to live; and finally, the private car, with Ruth,
her father and her friends trapped inside, is uncoupled from the rest of
the train and sent tearing backward down the tracks, loaded with dynamite,
and in the path of an oncoming train. It’s Scott who saves the day, and
Luke who recognizes that it’s his brother Elwood who is responsible for
this–claiming 16 years ago he was defrauded by him.

It might not make too much sense, but it was good escapist fun. Ruggles
as the self-appointed guardian of Ruth and the self-described “deflector”
of any incidents, is a hoot and the one who makes this flick spin its wheel
in the right direction. 

There’s too much banter and bickering, and not enough imprudent humor or sexy action, in “Nothing to Be defeated,” a mildly entertaining film that tries too hard to be too many things: a well-educated interracial buddy movie, a moralistic family dramatics, a madcap thoroughfare adventure. Pic’s conquer — and most marketable — asset is the inspired pairing of leads Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence, who opus swell together, however neither gets much opening to display his influential talents. Touchstone’s midsummer comedy, released in a crowded marketplace, could enjoy a decent debut and mid-range numbers in domestic Thespian.

A variation on the male buddy pic, “Nothing to Lose” aspires to follow in the footsteps of the popular crime-adventures that have teamed black and white actors, such as Walter Hill’s “48 HRS.,” with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Nick Beame (Robbins) is a successful advertising exec and a happily married man until he comes home early one Friday afternoon to find his loving wife, Ann (Kelly Preston), in bed with a man whose face is invisible. In a state of catatonic shock, Nick drives away, barely able to control the steering wheel and nearly causing an accident while driving 15 mph on the freeway. A moment later, as he sits blank-faced at a traffic light, a fast-talking carjacker named T. Paul (Lawrence) shoves a gun in his face.

“You picked the wrong guy on the wrong day,” says Nick, turning the tables on the mugger and taking him hostage. Thus begins the first chapter of an unlikely friendship between two men who could not be more different. The yarn that follows is a hodgepodge, replete with holdups, mistaken identities and revenge fantasies against corporate America.

As if one odd couple is not enough, Nick and T. Paul’s path is periodically crisscrossed by another interracial pair of bumbling criminals, David (Rig) Lanlow (John C. McGinley) and Charlie Dunt (Giancarlo Esposito), who are also sought by the police.

Pic is meant to be a brisk, spontaneous, high-spirited comedy-adventure, but what unfolds onscreen is just another odd-couple yarn. Helmer Steve Oedekerk, who catapulted Jim Carrey to international stardom in the “Ace Ventura” films, is deft at writing individual scenes, but not a coherent script that can sustain high-voltage momentum for a feature-length movie. His erratic film vacillates between funny, offbeat episodes, tediously moralistic lectures about civic duties and warmhearted arguments about marital responsibilities.

After the first hour, Oedekerk seems suddenly to realize that his neglect of women might alienate female viewers, so he arranges for T. Paul a homecoming scene with his wife and children, and an unexpected date for Nick in what’s the fakest scene of the film.

The chief fun in this movie derives from the occasional spurts of Lawrence’s comic genius, his brilliant timing in delivering droll one-liners. Stuck with a more difficult and thankless role, the straight-faced yuppie with a dark penchant for vengeance, Robbins is decent. Gifted character actors McGinley and Esposito are quite wasted, and with the exception of Irma P. Hall, who makes a great entrance as a bossy matriarch, the women have little to do.

Donald E. Thorin’s lensing is sharp, but Malcolm Campbell’s choppy editing accentuates the excessively fractured and episodic nature of the material.

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Africa and its history are now rich pickings for foreign producers, and no picking is richer than a true rumour that pitches drained blame against black oppression in the manner of this brains trust theatre that looks to apartheid South Africa in the premature 1980s for a guide in the ills of oppression – with some Hollywood thrills thrown in for good spread around. It’s marginally disheartening that history ought to oftentimes be distant to get flowing the juices of filmmakers (and the cash of producers) but, although the campaign at its sentiment is over, ‘Catch a Fire’ still manages to claim some administrative position and offers some astonishing performances, robust images and well-versed writing so that its tale feels as fresh as it possibly could three decades later.

The story of Patrick Chamusso is a cracking an individual. He was a 31-year-precious ANC activist in 1981 when he planted a blow up at his former workplace, the Secunda oil refinery in the north-east of South Africa, under orders from the ANC. But what’s peculiar upon Chamusso is that his conversion to radical politics came only months earlier. In 1980, he was enjoying a lifetime as a straw boss and blood man when he was wrongfully accused of executing an earlier bombing. After weeks of questioning and torture, during which shilly-shally his wife Euphuistic was brutalised by the police and perhaps raped, Chamusso responded by joining the organisation of which the police had first suspected him of being a associate.

Phillip Noyce – working from a well-informed and vulnerable script from Shawn Slovo, who in 1988 wrote ‘A World Apart’ about her childhood as the daughter of an ANC activist – adds a simple framework to proceedings, subtly betraying his qualifications in both high-energy Hollywood along such as ‘Patriot Games’ (1992) and more abundant films such as ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ (2002). As a combination of styles, this has its uncomfortable effects, not least when the integument enters in toto completely-on go out after mode in the definitive act – a method which rubs against much of the friendly work that Noyce does to paint an intelligent sketch of home and work life object of both Chamusso and his dramatic nemesis Nic Vos, a fictional colonel in the police force who acts as our window on the Afrikaan origin.

Noyce imports his leads from across the Atlantic: Derek Luke (‘Antwone Fisher’) plays Chamusso with compassion, while Tim Robbins is Vos and mostly avoids villainous tics (although some of Noyce’s more flashy shots don’t improve his cause). The characterisation of Vos is a delicate balance: Noyce tries hard to make him a human but surely it’s a amusement to advance, as he does, that Vos is an eyot of allied empathy among harder souls?

The film is at its best when making the most of the conflicts at the heart of apartheid.There’s a disturbing scene in which Vos brings Chamusso under arrest to deliver lunch at home with his lineage. And the high purport of the obscure is when Noyce cuts powerfully between two rituals: the awarding of a medal to Vos and the burial of murdered ANC fighters in Mozambique. On the down side, a trite epilogue suggestive of South Africa’s process of actuality and reconciliation could require been scrapped entirely.

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In the premature 1980s, there was no mist actress quite so amiably regarded as Meryl Streep. She had immediately made an enormous impression with her immature parts in The Deer Hunter and Manhattan. In between Best Actress Oscars&reg championing Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie’s Preferred, she helped cement her name with the double-dealing role in this picture.

Based on the unusual by John Fowles (master of the impenetrable tome), the much simplified photograph version centers on the making of a submission spitting image set in Victorian times, starring Anna (Streep) and Mike (Jeremy Irons). Anna and Mike respectively sleep around Sarah Woodruff and Charles Smithson in the dusting within the screen. Smithson, engaged to Ernestina Freeman (Lynsey Baxter), finds himself beneath the waves the spell of Woodruff, referred to variously as Disaster and The French Lieutenant’s…”Woman.” At the same era, the statement of the affair between Anna and Mike is interwoven with the made-up thriller to give it importance and to further sublime the general idea of life imitating ingenuity.

The current dress part of the story gets pretty straitened shrift here, since so much continual time requirement, necessarily, be devoted to the mystery of Sarah and her French Lieutenant, as well as the surprising turns that the imaginary rumour takes. The modern experiences thus can be little less than linear and on track, without any real narrative fat or character situation to be allowed. The end effect does prove to be c finish unlikely well enough, to whatever manner, because the modern vignettes are normally so carefully composed (noted playwright Howard Pinter did the screenplay) for maximum at bottom. Much is sinistral to the imagination of the viewer, regardless, in both stories, as only is pink to ponder over distant the motives of Anna and Sarah without much in the way of clues.

Streep obviously has the easier time here, differentiating herself as an American actress playing a British character; it’s thus fairly straightforward for her to initiate two remarkable characters within a stir. Irons has a much harder time of it, blurring the lines between Mike and the character Mike plays. The always principled Leo McKern has a nice bit as the doctor from whom Smithson seeks guidance. Patience Collier is gleefully nasty as the religious old miss who hires Sarah as a enchiridion and uses every opportunity to humiliate Sarah for her sordid close by. Few harridans in picture are more terrifying.

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The melding of the imaginary story pencil-mark and the events in the actors’ lives is emphasized by profit of the camera. In one VIP instance, Anna and Mike are rehearsing a tantrum in which Anna falls. As she does, the film cuts immediately to them in costume and in peculiarity enacting the changeless milieu. The meaning of this is less faultless. Do the creators determine that we consider layer as being identical for all practical purposes with reality?

The spasm and disappointments of romance, as OK as the problematical decisions that we make when under the influence of fib, come off admirably here. The production design is plenteous and quite lovely.