I Know Where I’m Going (1945)

Joan comes face to face with the fly in her ointment (image: jon rubin FlickrCC)

In a word: stoic
Movie Pieces rating: 4/5

Upper lips are stiff and conversations are hearty in Powell and Pressburger’s atmospheric wartime romance I Know Where I’m Going set in the Scottish Highlands.

Joan Webster (Wendy Hillier) is stubborn, ambitious and always focussed (she knows where she’s going) and after doing a stint as a London working girl has landed herself a very rich, rather old, Scottish laird as a fiancé. Heading up to the Isle of Kiloran to be married it looks as though life will continue to bend to her will…but the wild magic of the Scottish highlands, and the eccentric bunch of characters she meets, offer a tantalising alternative.

Funny, fast-paced and as bracing as a breath of island air, this film is as fresh as if it were made yesterday.

Notes
Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Writers: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Cinematographer: Erwin Hiller

Hot Fuzz

Dir: Edgar Wright. UK. 2007

Hot Fuzz (image: jocie sf FlickrCC)

The thin blue line

After 2004’s surprise hit zombie flick Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reunite in Hot Fuzz, as mismatched partners on the trail of a bloodthirsty murderer, in their take on the police procedural.

A buffed-up Pegg plays supercop Sgt. Nicholas Angel whose efficiency at dispatching villains makes him rather unpopular with his lazy, doughnut-eating colleagues.  They arrange for him to be packed off to dozy, picture-perfect Little Twittering to kick his heels for a bit and get him off their patch.

Used to operating at warp speed, his wings are clipped by his unimpressed village colleagues and his new Inspector who advises tea instead of action whenever possible (Jim Broadbent in a comically sinister turn).

But it’s not long before there’s a murderer in grim reaper form on the loose, and Nick Angel gets his chance to leap into action again.

An odd parody of generic police action films and creepy 1970s British fare like The Wicker Man or Tales of the Unexpected, Hot Fuzz never misses a chance to take a pot shot at the cinematic stereotypes. The gags (funny or not) come thick and fast which is perhaps the problem.  Amusing at times, there are just too many strands and not enough laugh out loud moments to be comedy gold.

Rating: 3/5
IMDb entry for Hot Fuzz

London to Brighton

Dir: Paul Andrew Williams. UK. 2006

London to Brighton (image: Paul Stevenson Flickr CC)

We do like to be beside the seaside

Bleak? Yes.  Hard to stomach at times? Most definitely. But this tale of a pimp, a prostitute, a gangster’s son and a feisty, young runaway doesn’t leave you completely despairing of modern times.

Shot on the cheap and using a cast of unknowns, London to Brighton covers the well-trodden Brit crime flick plot path – a deal that goes horribly wrong and the bloody, violent retribution that follows.  However the characters are so well sketched and strangely sympathetic that, despite the air of menace that shrouds the film, you are lured and cajoled into hoping for a good outcome .

Rating: 4/5
IMDb entry for London to Brighton