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A Good Year

Director – Ridley Scott – 2006 – US – 12A – 118 mins

***1/2

A ruthless, successful Square Mile bond trader travels to Provence to sort out the estate he’s inherited from his late uncle – UK release date 27/10/2006

Back in the 1980s, British TV commercials spawned a number of hugely successful feature film directors, with Scott arguably the most talented. A great visual stylist, his impressive filmography includes the seminal (Alien, 1979; Blade Runner, 1982; Thelma & Louise, 1991), the blockbuster (1492: Conquest Of Paradise, 1992; Gladiator, 2000; Kingdom Of Heaven, 2005) and the forgotten (Black Rain, 1989; White Squall, 1996; G.I. Jane, 1997). Scott is perhaps the archetypal ‘style over content’ director: his impressive visuals often threaten to overpower everything else, yet his sense of style invariably makes anything he does worth a look. A film-maker, in other words, of extreme contradictions.

The end of that same era saw highly regarded London advertising man Peter Mayle relocate to the South Of France to pen a series of books about that region starting with the bestselling A Year In Provence.

Scott and Mayle have known each other since the eighties advertising boom.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Ridley, Ripley,
Thelma & Louise

Alien

Director – Ridley Scott – 1979 – US – X – 116 mins 35 secs

*****

Blade Runner

Director – Ridley Scott – 1982 – US – AA – 117 mins 04 secs

*****

Thelma & Louise

Director – Ridley Scott – 1991 – US – 15 – 129 mins 22 secs

*****

At the end of Alien, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), having defeated the monster, strips down to her underwear only to discover that she hasn’t defeated it at all and it’s still in the space shuttle with her in the archetypal Hollywood false ending of recent years. It begged the question, why did Ripley remove her clothing at this point if not for the obvious gratification of the male members of the audience (and, one should add, the accompanying box office returns)?

At the end of Thelma & Louise, the eponymous heroines (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon respectively), on the run after the former’s rapist has been murdered after the event by the latter, find themselves trapped between the Grand Canyon’s gaping precipice on one side of them and massed hordes of police marksmen, ready to open fire if they don’t surrender, on the other. No pandering to male voyeurism here.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Black Rain

Director – Ridley Scott – 1989 – US – 15 – 120

**

UK Release date: January 26th 1990.

On paper, Ridley Scott’s Black Rain reads like a winner: a police action thriller with Michael Douglas and sidekick Andy Garcia (then a little known star in the ascendant) as an NYPD cop hunting a villain in Japan. Where the film scores heavily is on the visual style level; this is Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) imagery without the superficial Sci-Fi mega-budget special effects overlay. Or plot. The film looks startling throughout, due in part to Scott’s collaboration with Dutch cinematographer Jan de Bont (later director of Twister, 1996, not to mention Speed, 1994, and its sequel); every frame is a thing of beauty.

Unfortunately, Scott is not shooting a Hovis commercial here, and we need a rather more substantial screenplay – such as Alien (1979) or the extraordinary Thelma & Louise (1991) – than the flimsy sketch on which Scott hangs his current images. Generally, though, Michael Douglas – and the rest of the cast including the versatile Kate Capshaw (Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Steven Spielberg, 1984) – are wasted.

Things start off well enough with a leather-jacketed Michael Douglas racing his cycle against a fellow biker along a New York quayside.… Read the rest