Category: Filmography

Dir: Joseph Brutsman
Star: Michael Des Barres, Rosanna Arquette, Nastassja Kinski, Eva Jenícková

Beyond one of the most click-baity titles in cinematic history, lurks something slightly more than the soft-porn bonkathon which it would appear to be, and is instead trying to offer a psychological portrait of the titular character. This is the not-exactly subtly named Sammy Horn (Des Barres), a restaurant owner bearing some resemblance to a certain celebrity chef whose name might rhyme with Bordon Hamsay, sharing similar hair and a quick temper. Project Kinski legal advisers counsel me to stress that is all they have in common.

Horn has a lovely wife, Grace (Arquette), and a charming young child, but this does not stop in the slightest from trying to bed every woman to cross his path. That list includes workers in his restaurant, women he meets in bars, his doctor’s receptionist, hookers he hires, strip-club bartenders, even Grace’s sister is fair game for Sammy’s lust. This all causes no end of problems: he gets arrested after a particularly vocal sex session in the bathroom of a restaurant, and has a scary moment when his doctor tells him Grace is HIV-positive. The lies and deceit he’s forced into with his wife don’t help, and in the end he realizes he has a problem and seeks help.

That comes in the form of therapist Dr. Jane Bordeaux (Kinski), to whom he details his recent exploits, as she listens and frowns – I guess she’s trying to establish a motive and figure out how Horn can control his urges. While I didn’t notice at the time, it strikes me as not exactly much of a stretch to find a parallel between Sammy and Nastassja’s father, Klaus, whose fleshly appetites were the stuff of legend (at least, in his self-penned memories – who can say how close these came to the reality?). Perhaps playing a therapist was a coping mechanism of some kind for the daughter? Hey, it’s not much more dubious than the psychology this has to offer, and would at least explain Kinski’s presence. Now, if only we could find a similar excuse for Arquette…

It is, certainly, a title likely to mislead, especially since the two lead actresses remain more or less completely attached to their clothes. There’s no shortage of sex, to be sure, but it’s not by anyone of whom you’ll ever have heard.  It’s also a bit of a time-capsule, offering a glimpse of an era when aggressive sexual behavior was rather more acceptable. From a 2016 viewpoint, Horn comes over as predatory, at the very least – arguably even, to borrow a quote from Cersei Lannister, “a bit of a rapist”, since gaining consent hardly seems to be on his to-do list before grabbing on to his next target. You could also make the case he abuses his power, such as with a sous chef at his restaurant. But Horn is not actually an unsympathetic character, and Des Barres’s portrayal gives a bit more depth to him than you’d expected.

There is an odd subplot, which seems to be trying to enhance the positive side. Horn is taking his family to the movies, and gets in an altercation with the ticket-taker, that ends with the latter being fired. The now-unemployed man starts stalking Horn, with bad intentions, but a confrontation in an alley behind the restaurant ends in Horn offering his assailant a job – albeit with a warning to keep his temper in check. I was expecting something more to follow, yet nothing ever comes of this thereafter. It’s oddly affecting, perhaps a result of it being one of the few scenes where Horn is actually communicating with another human being, rather than trying to get into their pants.

Even the sequences between him and Dr. Bordeaux don’t possess much in the way of apparent honesty: as therapists go, she doesn’t seem particularly interested in locating the cause of his addiction, or offering any kind of significant treatment. Well, unless “staring disapprovingly” is what passes for mental health care these days. It’s certainly an easy enough role for Kinski, who only appears in a single location (her office) and likely dashed off her entire performance in less than a week. To be honest, it’s more of a backdrop to allow for the film’s main purpose, which appears to be wish fulfillment for middle-aged men: Horn is not exactly a hunk, yet still appears to be capable of getting any woman (save Dr. Bordeaux) onto his genitals, in the time it takes the rest of us to boil an egg.

What’s a little odd though, is the relatively restrained nature of the sex scenes, which, if enthusiastic (to the point where I felt compelled to lower the volume!), contain a much higher amount of clothing then I was expecting. It’s still certainly not a family film, but if you are expecting the soft-core bonkathon mentioned earlier, you’re going to end up disappointed, even if every woman in it, is more or less uniformly attractive. As such, it seems almost to possess a split personality: partly wanting to be a serious drama about addiction, yet clothed in the trappings of a late-night cable television movie. Probably inevitably, it manages to fall short on both fronts.

That all said, I didn’t hate this as much as many reviews I’ve read. It would be easy for a film on the topic to take a hypocritical approach, both condemning the protagonist’s behavior, while salaciously exploiting it, yet that doesn’t seem to happen here. For all the storyline flaws, Des Barres’s portrayal of Horn is a surprisingly effective one. He’s a bundle of contradictory feelings, behavior and traits – if not consistent, by any stretch, it may well be a more accurate portrayal of most people’s frailties and failings than many Hollywood creations.

Dir: Terence Gross
Star:  Bobby Edner, Randy Quaid, Nastassja Kinski, Harry Groener

This was one in a series of five films which were made for cable television – specifically, Cinemax – around Halloween 2001. The series, called “Creature Features”, was produced by FX guru Stan Winston, and took as its inspiration monster movies made by American International Pictures in the late 1950’s. The others were The She-Creature (1956), Earth vs. the Spider, How to Make a Monster, and Teenage Caveman (all 1958), though rather than straightforward remakes, the new versions all added a more modern spin to the concepts involved, or as here, going in a completely different direction. In this case, the title also picked up a bonus definite article, its predecessor having been called simply, Day the World Ended, and was directed by B-movie master, Roger Corman. This 1955 film told of life after a nuclear apocalypse, with a household cut off from the rest of the world, having to handle other survivors, as well as a monster in the nearby woods. The remake has no such Armageddon, though does at least retain the “monster in the woods.”

Kinski plays school therapist Dr. Jennifer Stillman, who arrives in her new district, which is the small town of Sierra Vista. Almost immediately on arrival, she meets troubled young boy Ben McCann (Edner), who has just been in a fight with another kid. He was an orphan, adopted by the town’s physician, Dr. Michael McCann (Quaid). after his mother vanished, in circumstances best initially described as “murky”. The boy is now obsessed with SF comic books and B-movies [including Day the World Ended], and appears to have telekinetic powers. Ben is also convinced that his father came from outer-space, and will eventually return to rescue him. Just an over-imaginative little boy, right? So Jennifer thinks to begin with, crossing swords with his father over the need for therapy. However, sleepy little Sierra Vista is shaken out of its slumber, by a series of violent – by which, I mean, face-ripping – deaths, which leave the local sheriff (Groener) baffled. Dr. McCann, not so much, because he realizes that the victims have something in common – involvement in the disappearance of Ben’s mother.

Initially, this seems closer to another 50’s slice of SF, Invasion of the Body Snatchers [made the year after the original World], with Stillman encountering reluctance and resentment from the locals, who appear to resent her big-city ways. At one point, she says “How Tippi Hedren of me,” after being blamed for the strange things which follow her arrival, an apparent reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It drifts thereafter,  and for a bit the audience is left wondering whether the alien angle is entirely in Ben’s head, a result of his mind being corrupted by age-inappropriate entertainment. Then, the audience remembers that this series is called “Creature Features” and was produced by the guy who made the Predator – so you know the odds are slim of this being a subtle, underplayed piece of psychology, when there can be some rampaging latex-suited guy in the woods instead. And so it proves, with the second half turning into just about that, more or less. Although at the end, it heads off into “Monsters from the id” territory, and concludes without offering any true resolution at all.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing either: this is, after all, a made for cable remake of a movie whose budget, Wikipedia tells me, was $96,234.49. There’s something to be said for this kind of remake – applied to something with room for improvement, or whose core concepts spark an idea worthy of further exploration. Not sure this necessarily falls into either category. While the special effects are not bad, they have hardly taken advantage of the greater freedom offered by the cable destination, with regard to content: outside of a couple of F-bombs, this could just as easily have been something made for the SyFy channel. It’s not helped by an extended flashback sequence, revealing what actually happened to Ben’s mother, that appears to have been shot entirely with the strobe effect on the camera accidentally enabled. I’ve not clue what Gross was trying to achieve here; what I can say, though, is that whatever it was, doesn’t work.

Kinski’s portrayal is okay: I was reminded somewhat of her role in A Storm in Summer, both in its portrayal of someone who cares about a child, despite being unrelated to him, and the lack of any romantic angles for her character. However, Dr Stillman is a thoroughly unconvincing “child therapist,” not least because we don’t ever see her doing any therapy – she’s supposedly responsible for an entire school district, but as depicted here, her focus is absolutely on a single kid in a single educational establishment. It might have worked better if she had already been in place, with Dr. McCann and Ben moving to town, perhaps trying to escape the strange trail of carnage which seems to follow them, wherever they go.

It’s likely significant that you find yourself thinking of ways this could have been better, even as you are watching it. To be honest, the title also no longer makes any sense, with the apocalypse theme of the original entirely missing, and promises far more “doom” than the movie ever delivers. Quaid isn’t bad – his role reminded me somewhat of his similar one as a father harboring a dark secret, in Parents – and I was also diverted by trying to remember, from where I was familiar with Groener [the answer being his role as Mayor Wilkins from Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. Edner, meanwhile, went on to a musical career and was also a dancer in Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal video. Now you know. I guess, overall, this falls mostly into the category of harmless. I can see where it was trying to go, yet there’s hardly anything that will stick in your mind, and a relatively well-known cast (compared to some of the other Creature Features, in particular) appear to be content with not much more than showing up.

Dir: Giles Walker
Star: Nastassja Kinski, Stewart Bick, Victoria Snow, Jack Langedijk

Susan (Kinski) appears to have everything necessary for a great live: a successful career as an environmental designer in Chicago, and a loving husband, Alan. However, a trip to the store in a thunderstorm, for an anniversary bottle of wine, ends in tragedy for the couple as he is hit and killed by a car. Distraught, Susan throws herself wholeheartedly into her work for several years. Seeking to bring Susan out of this shell, her associate in the design company, Peggy (Snow), introduces Susan to Kevin Markson (Bick), a financial adviser who is also clever, handsome and funny – a perfect match, in fact. The pair begin a whirlwind relationship, leading to a rapid marriage after they fly down to Las Vegas for the weekend. And that’s where the problems begin.

For it isn’t long before strange things start happening: a woman, wearing a hat and dark glasses, seems to be following Susan and watching her apartment. Cryptic but threatening messages are left at her office, and things continue to escalate, with crude graffiti being scrawled, calling her a “whore” and their apartment being broken into. After the police are brought in, Kevin eventually confesses that he thinks he knows who is responsible: he had a brief dalliance with a woman he met in a bar, Leslie Seeward, and when they split up, she vowed that she would kill any other woman whom he married. She appears to be making good on the threat, and only the fortunate presence of a cemetery worker saves Susan from worse than bruising after an attack by her mother’s grave.

But Leslie also seems to be completely elusive, and even the private detective Susan hires is, at least initially, unable to make progress, as the address Kevin had for Leslie appears to be a complete dead end, with nobody knowing her there. Is Kevin telling the truth? If not, who is behind it all? Potential candidates include Peggy, as well as Justine, Susan’s younger sister; the two have a strained relationship, because by the terms of their parents’ will, Susan controls the trust fund income Justine gets. That’s a direct result of Justine’s husband being a low-life slimeball with some bad, money-burning habits, so perhaps he’s involved too? You won’t find out the truth until right at the end and… Well, I can’t honestly say I was particularly convinced by the resolution. I guess, in some ways, it “makes sense”, as long as you have a fairly loose definition of what constitutes sense.

Fragments of this reminded me of The Intruder, though that obviously has a significantly different backstory. But both are Canadian productions (Montreal standing in for “Chicago” here), and with Kinski playing a woman who may (or may not) be being stalked by an old flame of her current man. Though for some reason, I thought this actually had Kinski playing a woman who couldn’t see, so it was a bit of a surprise the whole “Blind” part of the title proves almost entirely irrelevant. I think I was perhaps confusing it with another film of the same name (at least, in the United Kingdom), starring Mia Farrow as the sightless victim of a psychotic killer. But given the tagline used on the DVD sleeve here is “Open your eyes to the terror,” I feel any resulting optic-based confusion is at least not all my fault. That matters particularly here, because this is the first Nastassja movie reviewed for the site, on which I had to spend actual money: between my existing film collection and what should be left in vague terms as “the usual sources,” I’d managed to watch everything else to this point. However, both came up short, though I was able to use an Amazon gift-card, and picked this up for less than five bucks, including shipping.

On balance, that’s likely a bit much, considering there is not much here that will merit repeat viewing: the main hook is wondering who is behind the increasingly more-violent attacks on Susan, and if you know that going in, the appeal would be sharply diminished. The performances are nothing special to write home about: Bick is particularly bland, to the extent that I can’t even remember what he looks like, and I only watched the film two days ago. Possibly the best is Gordon Pinsent as Martin Howell, the PI engaged by Susan; while he doesn’t have much screen-time, he manages to do a lot more with it, in terms of creating a character, than you’d expect. Kinski is okay. She has a vulnerable quality that is appropriate and effective for the part, yet Susan remains a cypher. I kept expecting the whole “loss of her husband” thing to be revisited, and turn into something much more significant in storyline terms, than it ever ends up being – such as the attacker being the vengeful spirit of her dead first husband. No such luck. Turns out to be nothing more than an easy ploy for cheap sympathy.

The limitations of the TV movie genre also restrict this, in terms of the passion and intensity which can be displayed here. This stands out particularly during the cemetery “attack” – quotes used advisedly, since it has to be one of the weakest excuses I’ve seen, in terms of the threat it poses to the heroine. This is an ongoing issue: you rarely get the sense that Susan is genuinely in peril, except perhaps during the final sequence, and even there your attention is diverted by the revelation of the attacker’s identity, with the resulting strain that puts on your disbelief. I suppose, as TVM’s go, these issues are more or less par for the course, but I didn’t actually know that was the provenance here, any more than I knew Kinski’s character could see. You can make a case that any resulting disappointment is my responsibility, for having nurtured unrealistic expectations, and I probably wouldn’t argue. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Star: Wes Bentley, Peter Mullan, Milla Jovovich, Nastassja Kinski

So, as I was watching this, I was working on a review that focused on how much this felt like an adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel – if Hardy had been born in Tombstone, rather than Dorset. But literally the first thing I found when post-Googling it said: “The screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce is loosely based on the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy”

Well, bugger. There goes my outline.

Ah, screw it. The basic principal still seem to hold good, even though Casterbridge is one of Hardy’s works I haven’t actually read [much though I love Tess of the D’Urbevilles, even if I confess my interest was originally perhaps less than entirely literate]. It’s social tragedy, for want of a better phrase, which feels like a pessimistic version of Charles Dickens. Reading Dickens, you tend to get the feeling that things will turn out for the best; Hardy, however, provides no such hope. Things will go from bad to worse, despite – or perhaps, because of – the characters’ best efforts otherwise. Boyce and director Winterbottom nail that here, right from the moment we first see Kinski, coughing up a storm and looking so pale, she might already be a forlorn spirit. Yeah, this is not going to end well, for anyone concerned.

And so it proves. The setting is the Californian gold-rush town of Kingdom Come, founded and ruled over by Daniel Dillon (Mullan). Into his fiefdom comes railway surveyor Donald Dalglish (Bentley), who is planning a line for the railroad, which may or may not go through the town, giving him significant leverage. Also newly arrived are Elena Burn (Kinski) and her teenage daughter Hope (Sarah Polley), with the mother seeking to meet Dillon. It turns out she was once married to him, but along with the newly-born Hope, was traded to a disgruntled miner in exchange for his claim – which ended up turning into Kingdom Come, after Dillon struck it rich. He is prepared to do right by his wife, who is now terminally ill, and only concerned about Hope’s future, not her own, and agrees to marry Elena once again. This decision sets him against his current lover, Lucia (Jovovich), who does not take kindly to being thrown to one side.

There’s certainly a loose grip of nationality present here, even past the shift of the entire story from Wessex to Old West. Bentley, born in Arkansas, plays a Scot, while an actual Scot, Mullan, portrays an Irishman. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Jovovich is inexplicably a Portuguese character, which makes Kinski’s geographical shift from Germany to Poland seem relatively trivial. Most are fine, though being so used to seeing Milla kicking zombie ass, it takes a bit of adjustment to seeing her in a petticoat, playing the owner/madam of the town’s saloon/brothel. For Kinski, of course, this is not her first time at the “tragic heroine in a Hardy novel” rodeo – I note that Winterbottom also did Jude a few years earlier – and she looks suitably wan as she slowly fades away to – and I trust I’m not spoiling this for anyone – her eventual demise. It doesn’t appear to be an enormous stretch for her talents, and I can imagine the director passing her acting notes such as “Look iller”.

With the past driving a nail through Dillon’s soul, it’s time for the present to kick in, when Dalglish announces the railroad will bypass Kingdom Come, effectively killing the town. Worse, it’ll be going through the valley below, where Lucia has now set up her shop/saloon/brothel, effectively killing off Dillon’s town. What’s a disgruntled former land-baron to do? In a sharp diversion from Casterbridge, the answer here is go out in a blaze of glory, partly as a burnt offering to atone for past misdeeds, partly as a gigantic, fiery middle-finger to everyone who has bailed on him – even though he’s not actually a bad man, by any means [especially if you contrast him with somebody like Al Swearengen from Deadwood]. Fate, it seems, just does not want to reward him with happiness. In this aspect, there’s something of a film from the other Kinski, Fitzcarraldo, and the scene where Dillon has his entire house dragged through the town’s streets, as an ostentatious wedding present to Elena, may be a particular nod to it.

It’s a grand but empty theatrical gesture, and the same could probably be said of the film as a whole. It looks lovely, in part due to the majestic grandeur of the locations (supposedly the Sierra Nevada range in California, actually the Colorado Rockies), in part the work of cinematographer Alwin Küchler. Yet, things happen too often in a vacuum, with no apparent justification than because they are a striking image. For instance, at one point, the carriage carrying Dalglish’s supply of nitroglycerin takes one too many jolts and explodes. It serves no purpose to the plot, is never referred to again, and seems to exists purely so Winterbottom can have a shot of a horse, galloping away in (digital) flames. Undeniably impressive, it’s only afterward that you realize it was an empty spectacle, one serving no purpose at all in terms of the story or character development.

The result is a film that can be little more than appreciated and applauded on a technical level, since it largely fails to engage a connection between the audience and its players. It’s never quite clear with whom we are expected to empathize. Dalglish is closest to a conventional hero, and much is initially made of his burgeoning relationship with Hope. Yet he is largely shuffled to one side in the second half, in favor of Dillon – admittedly, a more interesting creature – who is initially set up as if he’s going to be the villain of the piece. Turns out, there really isn’t one: the conflict here is more internal, and it may partly be this, which keeps the film feeling as emotionally chilly as the high-altitude wilderness in which it is set.

Nastassja Kinski, director Michael Winterbottom, Sarah Polley and Milla Jovovich (Photo by J. Vespa/WireImage)

Dir: Sharon von Wietersheim
Star: Timothy Dalton, Nastassja Kinski, Kevin Zegers, Cameron Finley

I hated this exercise in anti-intellectualism with a vengeance, based as it is on the apparent principle that being an asshole is much more preferable to being smart. For, make no mistake, the former is exactly what Matt Farragher (Dalton) is, despite painfully obvious efforts to paint him as the “fun Dad”. I think the signature moment was, when waiting with his kids in their car to board a ferry, he suddenly decides he can’t be bothered to queue any more, and whizzes down along the outside. No, sir, that does not make you a wild and wacky guy. It makes you an asshole.

They are on the way to Balboa Island for a couple of weeks’ vacation. He doesn’t see much of his kids, being separated from their mother, who is an archaeologist off in Peru or something – he’s a chef, working seven days a week in his restaurant. [Again: you’re an asshole. You have kids, their upbringing should take precedence ahead of your career goals, rather than making your mother take care of them, as Matt does] However, their time-share turns out to have been double-booked, with the Weiland family. The mother there, Julia (Kinski) is a genetic scientist with a very structured approach to child-rearing, and who is also engaged to one of her work colleagues. She was also one of the people cut off by Matt’s shenanigans in the ferry queue, so they don’t like each other much.

You can probably guess where the rest of this ABC Family TV movie, originally screened in June 2000, is going. And you’d be right, if you guess the initial antagonism between Julia and Matt is going to end up turning into tolerance, and eventual love, Julia spurning the more serious-minded intentions of her current fiance, literally at the altar, for the “informality” of life with Matt. Including, presumably, his severely dickish tendencies. Really, I lost the will to live by this point, watching Matt’s goonish, occasionally borderline stalkery tendencies, which have not aged well over the 15 years since this came out. Whether it’s trying to talk Julia into letting him sleep with her, on the childish pretext of him being scared of a thunderstorm, or acting particularly creepy after a case of mistaken identity (below), it’s painful to watch. That whirring sound you hear, is James Bond, spinning in his grave.

It’s a bit of an unusual, intellectual role for Nastassja, playing a scientist – albeit one of the more attractive kind. She doesn’t disgrace herself or seem out of her depth, unlike certain actors and actresses I could mention (I’m thinking Denise Richards, nuclear physicist, in The World Is Not Enough; or, for equal opportunity purposes, Charlie Sheen, radio astronomer, in The Arrival). While certainly not the first time she has played a mother – I suppose, technically, To The Devil a Daughter was her first such role! – her family here is a good deal more functional than, say, Little Boy Blue or The Magic of Marciano. Sure, she’s a little neurotic and what would in modern terms be called a “helicopter parent”, always hovering over her offspring. But that’s perhaps preferable to Matt’s approach, which borders on neglect: “hey, if I lose these kids, I can always have some more.” It might have been interesting to contrast those two approaches, and how their kids turn out – if my own parenting is any indication, they’ll be fine, almost regardless of what you do!

But, no. This is a drippily predictable slab of PG-rated romance, interspersed with occasional moments of non-threatening dramatic tension, such as when two of the kids steal a sailboat – Matt obviously sucking at teaching the whole “personal responsibility” thing as well – and have to be rescued by the Coast Guard. The only person I really feel much sympathy for in all this, is Julia’s fiance who, while certainly engrossed in his job, doesn’t deserve to be dumped at the altar, in favor of the aging Lothario who is Mr. Farragher. This isn’t really any reflection on Dalton or Kinski or even the director: blame for this cringeworthy mess sits squarely on the shoulders of writer Eric Tuchman, who script fails to pass muster, even by the low standards of ABC Family television movies.

I thunk what irritated me most was the shallow reduction of the characters to stereotypes. Nobody here seemed like a real individual: no-one actually behaves like they do here. Obviously, this is the movies, so some slack needs to be cut, since films would be short and dull if people behaved sensibly [“The house is screaming GET OUT at us? Maybe we should, y’know, leave?”] But nor do they exhibit the same one-note tendencies which flood this film. Even the most serious person has moments of levity, and that works the other way too, not that you’d know it from this televisual treat. When the players and their actions both seem as contrived as here, occurring entirely for the purposes of a plot so obvious, you can see exactly where it’s going inside less than 10 minutes, there’s little or no incentive to watch. If it wasn’t for Kinski’s luminescent presence, I’d have changed channels before the first commercial break.

Dir: Tony Barbieri
Star: Cody Morgan, Nastassja Kinski, Robert Forster, Jason Cairns

I will admit to knowing next to nothing about this one going in. It involves a kid and a sailboat? Sounds like some kind of uplifting family flick. There’s probably an adorable dog involved. I suspect these preconceptions were colored by my previous Kinski film, A Storm in Summer, and I was expecting this to play out along similar lines. In reality? Yeah, there’s a kid and a sailboat. But the adorable dog? Not so much. Instead, are you looking for abuse, mental illness and a broken family? This has you covered, in spades.

James (Morgan) is a bright and imaginative kid, who lives with his devoted waitress mother, Katie (Kinski) and her abusive, loser boyfriend, Curt (Cairns). James is befriended by retired widower Henry (Forster), whom he sees down at the dock working on his boat, and becomes Henry’s assistant. Curt is run out of the house by Kate at gunpoint after his abuse turns to her son, and James tries to match his mother up with Henry, hoping for a brighter future. However, Katie has issues of her own, her mental instability finally bursting out after Curt comes back, and leaving James at the not-so tender mercies of the child-care system.

Yeah, not exactly the heartwarming story I was anticipating, though that’s more on me than anything else. Can’t doubt Barbieri’s earnestness – he wrote the screenplay as well as directing it, and it’s clearly a topic about which he feels strongly. It manages to avoid most of the pitfalls, though some of the characters are rather too obvious – Curt, in particular, could not possibly be be more of a cliched asshole if everyone involved had tried. Fortunately, Morgan delivers a natural and unaffected performance, which matters, because he’s in virtually every scene and is the film’s emotional heart. It appears his only other role was an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, which is surprising, since he shows no small promise here.

James uses his imagination as an outlet from the rough world which he inhabits, such as riffing off an ancestor – the Marciano of the title – who was a diplomat, but is elevated to the King of Italy in the boy’s mind! Though this also takes him down some dark paths, most notably, the sequence where he fantasizes about shooting Curt with the gun he finds in his mother’s drawer. [As an aside: mental illness and firearms are never a good combination…] I’d perhaps like to have seen that aspect drawn out and explored more, not least because James has a good deal from which to escape. His generally upbeat and optimistic nature is in stark contrast to the intensely bipolar personality of Katie, who can flick from loving mother to scary, scary person in an instant. Mind you, her history – not least with regard to her son – appears to be a sad saga in itself, and she’s never other than someone for whom you feel sympathetic.

It’s certainly a meaty role for Kinski and she does well with it. If the overall moral here may be, “Loving someone isn’t necessarily easy,” part of it may also be, at least from Curt’s perspective, “Don’t stick your dick in crazy.” Admittedly, you can hardly blame him or anyone else – since Curt is not the only one to share her bed – for overlooking Katie’s personality quirks. In Henry, she’s back to the “older man” scenario familiar from much of Kinski’s career, with Forster virtually two decades her senior, though in this case, it perhaps make sense, as he can offer James the father figure he has been missing his entire life, for reasons which are perhaps the most tragic thing in the entire movie. She’s less present in the second-half; after her mental implosion, Katie is committed to a psychiatric facility, and James has to negotiate, more or less unaided, the tricky world of care homes and foster families, a task with more than its own share of potential issues. He clings to the illusion that his mother is not mentally ill, and when that is crudely shattered, runs off to the only truly happy place he has known – Henry’s boat.

The film received next to no theatrical release, and still remains hard to locate. That’s a shame, as it’s a solid and well-made production, that deserves to be better known than its near-obscurity (it has less than 200 votes on the IMDb at the time of writing. You get the feeling Barbieri is perhaps writing about a topic of which he has personal experience, and there appears to be genuine passion brought to the results. This applies equally to Morgan and Kinski, who seem to be fully invested in their characters, and mention should also be made of Harry Gregson-Williams’s score, which does a good job of emphasizing the emotions involved, without overwhelming them. I must confess, I did find the ending a little too convenient for its own good, leaping straight into an ending that is also happier than much of the film would suggest. Although you are left uncertain as to whether Katie is “cured”, drugged into oblivion or merely enjoying one of her periodic upswings, as she stares out at the horizon from the boat.

In less sensitive hands, this could easily have toppled over into over-earnest schmaltz, or unconvincing soap-opera. Barbieri and his cast avoid either direction, and treat a sensitive topic with the necessary care to take the film’s somewhat clunky tagline, “Sometimes you must lose what you have… to find what you need”, and turn into something that actually makes sense by the time the end-credits roll.

Dir: Robert Wise
Star: Peter Falk, Aaron Meeks, Nastassja Kinski, Andrew McCarthy

This TV movie was the last thing to be directed by Wise before his death, and while it’s a long way short of the work for which he won multiple Oscars, running the gamut from The Haunting to The Sound of Music, it’s competent enough, helped immeasurably by a strong performance from Falk as grumpy deli owner Abel Shaddick. It’s a remake of a 1970 film; the original had Peter Ustinov in the central role, with the script for both written by Rod Serling, best known as the creator of The Twilight Zone. This is certainly nowhere near as dark or twisted; might have been kinda fun if there had been a reveal at the end, such as – oh, I don’t know – Shaddick being the Devil or something.

Instead, it’s an almost entirely predictable relationship drama. Set in 1969, the irascible Shaddick runs his deli in Fairview, a small town in upstate New York, and has almost no friends or family, his wife having died and his son having been killed late in World War II. The only person who hangs around is his ne’er-do-well nephew, Stanley (McCarthy), who stays with Abel in between get-rich-quick schemes. Seeking to impress at a party, Stanley signs up for a charity scheme which sends kids from the New York inner city out to stay for a couple of weeks vacation in places like Fairview. However, he immediately bails for Jersey City, leaving Abel to handle both the child, Herman D. Washington (Meeks), and Gloria Ross (Kinski), the local organizer of the project. Oh, and the kid is black and has baggage of his own; or, as Abel puts it, “I don’t need a three-foot tall, Ethiopian anti-Semite.”

If you’ve seen enough TV movies – and more than three is probably sufficient – you’ll be able to guess where this going. Herman is going to soften Abe’s glacial heart, and the two will come to appreciate each other, both learning to accept alternative personalities and lifestyles, overcoming the prejudices both of themselves and the local community, etc. etc.  And you will be exactly spot-on with your assessment. There isn’t a single moment here which is not telegraphed way in advance, whether it’s swimming at the local country club, or Herman’s brother fighting out in Vietnam. Really, given Serling’s amazing track record of inventive work, it’s hugely disappointing, although the race relations theme is one which was a frequent aspect, particularly in The Twilight Zone.

Fortunately, it’s salvaged by Falk, who manages to glue the lumpy and cliched aspects of the script together through his portrayal, which contrast the spiky exterior of Shaddick with the lonely old man inside. The first scene has him closing up the deli for the day, and complaining to a local cop, who is laughing hysterically at the old man; I’m not sure if this reaction was intended by Wise as a deliberate mis-step, because it’s wholly inappropriate, since Shaddick is clearly not kidding. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense at the time, and it’s only later you realize he genuinely seems to loathe his life. Of course, it takes that three-foot tall Ethiopian anti-Semite to reawaken the kinder, gentler Abe, be re-introducing him to simply joys like fishing.

For Kinski, this is a little bit of a reunion, bringing her back on screen with Falk, whom she acted alongside in Faraway, So Close. Also present, though the two don’t share any scenes, is Ruby Dee, who was Malcolm McDowell’s house-keeper in Cat People, and here plays Washington’s grandmother and guardian. The highlight, dramatically, is probably a scene where Gloria returns to the deli, and gets into a verbal fire-fight with Abe, each mounting a stoic and intransigent defense of their respective positions. The grumpy old man spits out lines such as “An act of kindness is not such a big deal when it comes in fashionable spasms during the social season,” the charitable young woman volleying back equally as hard. But it’s one of the rare cases Nastassja is in a film where she has absolutely no love interest at all. I was half-expecting her and McCarthy to get together at some point, but after Stanley has kicked off the plot, he all but vanishes from the movie.

Technically, it’s likely better than normal, and Wise takes care of proceedings with a necessarily lighter hand, turning the soft soap of the script into acceptable drama. On the other hand Cynthia Millar’s score, produced by another man with whom the Academy Awards are familiar, Elmer Bernstein, seems about as unsubtle as the story, full of violins swelling heavily to indicate when we should have the feels. I guess that kind of thing goes with the territory, I suppose, when you have a co-production between Showtime and Hallmark Entertainment. I suspect retaining the era of the original might have been a mis-step, since it robs the story of whatever contemporary power it might have at the time; it would have been quite easy to update it, say making Abe’s son killed in Vietnam and Washington’s brother fighting somewhere else. Most of the other aspects would have needed little tweaking at all – though these days, a man in his seventies taking a little kid to the movies could provoke calls to the cops!

As these things go though, it’s by no means bad. Falk is a pleasure to watch, even when he’s doing nothing more dramatic than chatting to the photo of his dead son. If there are few if any surprises to be had here, providing you aren’t expecting them, that doesn’t necessarily make for a unenjoyable time.

Dir: Chris Menges
Star: Daniel Auteuil, Ciarán Hinds, Marianne Denicourt, Nastassja Kinski

With the recent, ongoing scandal in the UK over paedophile sex rings run by the powerful, this film has acquired a topical aspect not present on its original release. Based on the novel of the same name by Eric Leclere (available as a free download from the publisher), it’s the story of somewhat scuzzy private eye Xavier Lombard, who had to abandon his job as a Parisian cop under murky circumstances, and is now operating out of London. He’s contacted by a former colleague in the French force, Carlos (Hinds), who is now working for the wealthy Spitz family – as well as married to their daughter, Deborah (Kinski). They are in need of Xavier’s services, because the family scion, Leon, has vanished without trace. This might just be his drug habit kicking in, but when Xavier tracks down Leon’s very scared girlfriend, it becomes apparent the waters are a great deal murkier than personal addiction.

The girlfriend gives Xavier a video tape, that starts out as an innocent fairy-tale, before suddenly becoming something far more sordid. He discovers Leon, a photographer, had rescued a young boy from a child sex ring, and sent him to the safety of his girlfriend, before vanishing entirely off the grid. With the help of a high-class call-girl he knew in Paris (Denicourt), our hero poses as a paedophile interested in the ring’s “product”, and finds himself crawling down into the sewers of that appalling and highly suspect, world. It’s a journey which will take him from London to Mexico and back, expose his past and put his friends in serious danger, because the people that run this kind of thing do not take kindly to outsiders. Especially when, like Lombard, they are trying to interfere with their highly lucrative business, or worse yet, expose it to any kind of public scrutiny. Even when the Spitz’s fire him, after discovering the nature of his Parisian history, Xavier won’t quit until he finds and stops both Friedman (Bruce Greenwood), the man behind the ring and ‘The Austrian’, the worst paedophile of them all.

All told, this is probably a movie which is better at descending into hell than in climbing out of it, reaching its likely nadir, emotionally, in a scene where Xavier has just rescued another victim of the ring, only to be confronted with a dead body of someone he knows. The difference in reactions between him and the boy, the latter completely burned-out of all human emotion, is utterly chilling; he just stands there, playing Tetris on his hand-held console, while that catchy little electronic ditty plays. I’ve now had the tune stuck in my brain for about the past three days, which keeps reminding me of the movie. And it’s not the kind of film you want to be reminded of, because it’s dealing with possibly the nastiest of topics, in a fairly unflinching and generally disturbing way.

Less convincing is the way Xavier turns into some kind of Charles Bronson, Death Wish, wannabe, trotting the globe to clean up the mean streets of Nogales, where Friedman has a farm devoted to his “cash crop.” The problem is, we first see Xavier following a man’s wife. When he finds out she is indeed having an affair, rather than reporting to his client, the husband, he blackmails the woman, causing her to conclude, “You’re not a very nice person.” Since it seems she’s right, his transformation into a moralistic avenging angel seems forced. Yes, his Parisian history and the events of the film provide a certain justification for it; however, there’s no obvious point at which he is faced with putting aside his previous self-interest, and it just happens, which renders it some way short of ringing true. He either needs to be more altruistic to begin with, which would likely ring false to the original source, or go through a bigger arc to get to the point where personal safety is no longer a concern.

According to the novel, Deborah is “as proud as her looks and as cold as the family’s money,” and Kinski certainly delivers on both those counts, playing the haughty, well-off daughter, whose relationships, both with her brother and her husband, are more complex than they initially seem. She attempts to take a moral stand against Xavier, citing his history as proof of his unsuitability for the task, but by this stage, he has his suspicions about her hidden agenda, and (as shown above) doesn’t fall for it. Right up to the end, the questions remain with regard to Deborah; how much does she actually know about what is going on? Is she the innocent she professes to be? As characters go, it’s one of her smaller roles, yet is certainly pivotal to proceedings, and helps to illustrate that outward appearance is no guide to true moral character.

Director Menges is better known as a cinematographer, having won an Academy Award for his work on The Killing Fields, and also worked for the likes of Neil Jordan, Sean Penn and Ken Loach. While he unquestionably brings a photographer’s eye to proceedings, he avoids the trap, which I’ve seen a few times with cinematographers turned directors, over valuing style over substance; it perhaps helped that this was his fourth (and so far, final) film as director. There’s a feeling of Gallic intensity to this, obviously powered by Auteuil, in his first fully-English language role, though it extends to the overall feel. Not quite sure about the Irish Hinds playing a supposed Brazilian. Still, all told, this is a solid piece of new noir, picking away the scab on a thoroughly unpleasant aspect of society, and doing so without resorting to sensationalism.