Peterloo

Popped down to the Luna in Leederville this morning to catch Mike Leigh's latest film, Peterloo. This is a seemingly accurate retelling of the 1819 massacre that took place in St. Peter's Field in Manchester, where the constabulary and the army waded into a crowd of thousands with sabres and bayonets. The people were there to hear a famous orator, Henry Hunt, call for national suffrage and to put pressure on the government and the royals. 18 of the crowd were killed and hundreds of others wounded. The knock-on effects of this catastrophe on the reform movement appear negligible, though it did bring about the creation of The Guardian newspaper.

History 101 over. Onto the film itself. It's around 2 and a half hours long and it feels every minute of that. The build-up to the massacre involves an awful lot of piss and wind with politicians spewing interminable chunks all over the shop, in the (presumably) wanky vernacular of the day. Oh do tell, sir. On the other side of the class divide the Northern workers welcome back troops from the Napoleonic Wars to poverty and a music-free My Fair Lady setting. See thee, Father!

All these goings-on are performed with the broadest brush strokes I've seen in a Mike Leigh film. Some of the characters wouldn't look out of place in a British seaside panto. From the pompous, jaw-wobbling, spittle-flecked magistrates, to the salt-of-the-earth Northern povvos, to toffee-encrusted Southern law reformers, to vomit-gargling, areshole Prince Regents, all the stereotypes are here. Said Regent is actually played by Tim McInerrny, who's had some experience with royal toffs in Blackadder 2. There's even a young soldier who seems to be auditioning badly for Dunkirk. Neil Bell, who plays prominent reformer Samuel Bamford, gives the only real stand-out performance here, though Rory Kinnear does alright as Hunt.

It's such a surprise that Leigh has turned out this film in this way. The minimalism of many of his previous films is there but not much of the realism. Everything feels so overblown and cliched. Vincent Franklin, usually pretty good, plays one of the magistrates like Rowley Birkin QC from The Fast Show. It seems odd to me that the guy responsible for some of the best British films of the recent past could turn in something as uninspiring and misjudged as Peterloo.


See also:

Mike Leigh at his best with Naked (1993) and Secrets & Lies (1996). David Thewlis or Timothy Spall would have improved the film above, no end.

SPOILERS BE RIDDLEDETH HEREIN!!

Listen to "Peterloo" on Spreaker.

Bullitt

Caught this gem at the Innaloo Event Cinemas Hollywood Classics season. I think it was the first time to see it on the big screen but I might be mistaken. Bullitt really holds up as a tight, mean 'police vs mafia vs politicians' crime drama with one of the best car chases in cinema history and the best actor in cinema history. Steve McQueen moves through this film like a handsome, cool as fuck shark, slightly hungry but mostly just dealing with minnows and plankton and wherever else I can take this analogy.

Directed by Peter Yates in 1968, Bullitt follows the story of a botched protection assignment given to Lieutenant Frank Bullitt at the behest of slimy polly, Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn (his second of three films with McQueen). Set in San Francisco, it uses the street scenes to great effect, especially in the famous Mustang car chase. McQueen did most of his own driving in this and many other films, as he was a notorious rev-head and pretty adept at it too.

I reckon it was from around this time that McQueen really refined his prowess. In the late 50s and early 60s he had delivered performances that asked for levity or a kind of  reverence for the leads - Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me, Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven and even Jackie Gleason in Soldier in the Rain. But from the late 60s onwards he was his own force, not needing to tailor his style for anyone and it shows in how confident he is in this period. In Bullitt, there's a sense of lightness in his interactions with girlfriend Cathy, played by Jacqueline Bisset, but it's not frivolous or goofy, like he leaned towards earlier in his career. This was all well and good and McQueen's ability for comedy was generally overlooked, but the gravity of his acting grew from around The Sand Pebbles onwards. Disclaimer - I haven't seen The Reivers and this looks like a pretty nuttily dated film, so all this might be bollocks. But I've seen all of his work after that and though some of the films may be dull, his weightiness carries a lot of them.

So Bullitt is a must-see for those of you who have only seen The Great Escape and maybe The Towering Inferno on TV. If only to witness the best actor in history in his prime. It's a great 'what if' to wonder how McQueen's career might have progressed had he not died at the age of 50 in 1980. I like to imagine him growing gruff and grizzled and competing for roles with Newman, Redford, Eastwood, Hackman and even the 'younger' guys like Bruce Willis, Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford. McQueen in Unforgiven or Die Hard may have been interesting...

See also: The ten best Steve McQueen films - 10 to 1:

10. Nevada Smith (1966)

9. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

8. The Towering Inferno (1970)

7. Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)

6. The Cincinatti Kid (1965)

5. The Sand Pebbles (1966)

4. The Getaway (1972)

3. Bullitt (1968)

2. The Magnificent Seven (1960)

1. The Great Escape (1963)

Avengers: Endgame

Wacko, here it is. The final installment of the silly-money earning, big screen, long-form TV series that is Marvel's Avengers. This is the End(of the)game. But is it really? Lots of stuff to say here, mostly positive, some negative, but I reckon it's nigh on impossible to write about this without blabbing plot points so I'll save the nitty gritty for the podcast.

Instead, let me just tell you the 3 hour run-time pretty much flew past, I teared up three times (once unashamedly), there's a nice little nod to an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and another to The Big Lebowski!

Regarding the film itself, the central plan of how to undo the Infinity War damage is crowd-pleasingly clever and the six original Avengers get their moment to shine, being completely 'dust-free' at the end of the previous film.

The final act of the film is fairly epic as these things go - extremely well balanced between pathos and bluster. And no need to worry about this being the 'end'. Why stop milking this cash cow when Endgame has taken nearly 2 billion American dollars in about a week and a half!?

Ok, that's about all I can muster without accidentally letting slip that Thanos wins again or something like that. Oh, shit. Sorry. Of course he doesn't. Or does he?

See also: Two of the best Marvel films, The Russos' Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014) and Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok (2017).

MASSIVE SPOILERS IN POD!!!!

Listen to "Avengers: Endgame" on Spreaker.