Two terrible movies in a single day!

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I came home from a walk the other day to find Partner watching a Roman costume epic on Roku. It was fairly modern, obviously, and Malcolm McDowell was prancing and hooting in a toga. “'Caligula'?” I asked, taking off my hat and coat.

“Yep,” he said without taking his eyes from the screen. “You missed it when he killed John Gielgud. And that other British guy.”

I settled down and watched the rest of it with him. Oh my brothers and sisters, this is one for the archives. I didn't see it when it was new, back in 1979; I remember the huge amount of publicity it received – it was X-rated! It was the most sexually-charged and explicit movie ever made for public release!

Now, seen more than thirty years after its first release, it seems tame.

Some of the performances are excellent. McDowell (who has gone from playing fey maniacs like Caligula and Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” to playing Grandpa on “Phineas and Ferb” - not to mention Metallo in the Superman cartoons!) is priceless: staring and bizarre, somewhere between crazy and evil and calculating and desperately bored. Helen Mirren as his stately bloodthirsty wife Caesonia is a revelation; it's no wonder she matured into such an excellent actress.

But the orgy scenes are silly. You can show all the boob and crotch you like, but it really does make a difference what you do with it. Here, it's like Something Dirty a fourth-grader would draw on the wall behind the school. Naturally, it ends with Caligula's death; he's laying there, and you think: so what? He was a murderous lunatic, and somebody finally up and killed him. No lessons to be learned here!

But the costumes! And the banquets! I'd see it again, just for the atmosphere of excess. You can see everyone thinking: “We're being very very wicked.” But I'm glad I've seen it, and I will definitely see it again. It goes in the treasure chest with the other really unfortunately dreadful movies which are – surprise! - fun to watch.

Later that evening, we went to Lincoln Cinemaworld and saw “Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star.”

What can I tell you? I like stupid comedies, and this one (judging by the TV trailers) was stupidissimo. Nick Swardson with gigantic buck teeth! Don Johnson, with his Miami Vice hair twenty-five years later! Christina Ricci, owlish and lovely! It's an Adam Sandler production, so you know what to expect, if you've ever seen “Happy Gilmore” or “The Waterboy” (the latter is a personal favorite). Lots of embarrassing jokes about body functions, and people yelling for no reason, and pathetic characters who are ultimately vindicated. As Bucky says after his first (explosive, and hilarious) orgasm: “My brain is sparkling!”

So: two really terrible movies in one day.

But they were terrible for different reasons, and I very much enjoyed both of them.

Go figure.

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Movie review: "The Debt"

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Partner and I saw “The Debt” this past weekend. We mostly went for Helen Mirren, who is good in pretty much anything she does. (If you haven't seen “The Queen,” drop your needlepoint and rush out to rent it, or something.) For once, I didn't know the movie's plot in advance; I only knew generally that it involved some Israeli Mossad agents who were reactivated to complete some unfinished business.

Who doesn't like a spy thriller? A good spy thriller, I mean, with a little subtlety: good, and evil, and the huge gray area in-between. And huge symbols: the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. Drab central-European landscapes and nondescript cities – Prague? Budapest? Berlin? Churches, dilapidated castles . . .

You know I hate suspense. I usually make a point of learning the ending in advance, just so I don't have to suffer. Well, I didn't see this one coming, so for once I had the pleasure of being surprised. The movie has a very neat twist about halfway through, which I did not expect.

But: the story is morally very cut-and-dried, good and evil, Mossad versus Nazi-butcher-in-hiding: how much more clear-cut can you get? We know who's good and who's evil.

But, then again, no we don't.

There are some big plot holes here, which require some major suspension of disbelief.

But, in this movie, it's all about the casting.

Each of the three main characters is seen in 1965 and in 1997, and so we require two actors for each. David, the sensitive soul, is Sam Worthington (who spent most of his time as a blue long-tailed alien in “Avatar”), and also Ciaran Hinds, who was the imperious Julius Caesar in the TV series “Rome.” Both are staring and vulnerable and very moving. Stefan, the pushy officious leader, is Marton Csokas, who was Celeborn in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and who's very good (and also very handsome, and nice in a tight t-shirt) here, and also as Tom Wilkinson, that really stellar actor who can do pretty much anything. And Rachel, the key member of the group, is Jessica Chastain (whom I only recently met in “The Help,” as a vulnerable young housewife), and in later life, Helen Mirren, about whom I need say very little.

Lovely, all six of them.

But I need to say a word about the wonderful (and heretofore unknown to me) Danish actor Jesper Christensen.

His was a difficult role: a reworking of the Josef Mengele story. We first meet him as a doctor in East Berlin in 1965, and he is considerate and gentle and kind. We know he has butchered babies and children, back in the concentration camps; we try to keep all of that in mind. But he is enormously manipulative, and ultimately vicious. He uses his voice, his soft gentle reasonable voice, to accomplish everything. Early on in the movie, I thought: My god, he's the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He's using words to make these nice young people doubt themselves, and do things they shouldn't do.

This movie: it's a good old time in the cinema. There are some nasty bloody scenes, but you can shield your eyes. I did.

Go see it.

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