Stan & Ollie

The film opens in 1937 but only to remind us, not that we really needed telling, that back in the day Laurel and Hardy were one of the biggest (if not the biggest) comedy stars in the world and absolutely everybody loved them.

All is not perfect though. Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan), the more savvy of the two, is not happy that they are paid less than other comedy stars such as Charlie Chaplin. He wants to break with their agent Hal Roach (Danny Huston) but the fact he and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) have separate contracts which expire at different times make this difficult as does Ollie’s reluctance to rock the boat. In the end they briefly go their separate ways. Ollie gets a new partner and even makes a movie without Stan.

Fast forward sixteen years to 1953 and the pair have been back together for some time but their time in the limelight has been and gone. As almost a last throw of the dice they come to Britain to do a tour and to try to revive their careers. If it all goes well they hope to be able to make another movie.

The film covers this tour as they play to half empty halls and stay in some seriously seedy accommodation. Their promoter Bernie Delfont (Rufus Jones) is no help, he has his mind now firmly on newcomers such as Norman Wisdom and Abbott and Costello.

To boost ticket sales they are asked to perform embarrassing publicity stunts such as judging a beauty contest etc. Meanwhile Stan has the fruitless task getting hold of the producer who is supposedly financing their new film but the film isn’t going to happen because as the tour has shown, sadly they are no longer the draw they once were.

Towards the end of the tour they are joined by their wives, Lucille Hardy (Shirley Henderson) and Ida Kitaeva Hardy (Nina Arianda). Who are a double-act in their own right.

The two are by now at their lowest ebb and when Ollie is taken ill he decides to pack it all in. Stan is then paired up with a new partner to complete the tour but he knows it’s not the same. The pair of them may have had their rocky moments but really they both know can’t perform without each other. Soon Ollie climbs off his sick bed against doctor’s order, and his wife’s, to complete the tour.

It’s a lovely film, a nice homage to Laurel and Hardy but a sad one too. Not at all what I was expecting and all the better for that. Both Reilly and Coogan play their parts brilliantly and capture the various mannerisms of the two characters. Highly recommended.

Philomena

‘Philomena’ is adapted from Martin Sixsmith's book ‘The Lost Child of Philomena Lee’ and is directed by Stephen Frears.

Back in the day, when she just a mere girl, Philomena Lee (played as a youngster by Sophie Kennedy Clark) had sex with a boy at a fairground, before she even knew what sex was. She also didn't know what a pregnancy was but she soon found out. As this was Ireland in the 1950s for this unforgivable sin she was locked up in a convent where she gave birth to a son, whom she called Anthony.

Actually she wasn't such a mere girl really, she was 18, but as I've already said this was Ireland in the 1950s and "the thing is, I didn't even know I had a clitoris." Which is what the older Philomena (Judy Dench) tells former BBC journalist Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) fifty years on. This is how Sixsmith, unsure of what to do after being sacked as a government adviser, apart from writing a book on Russian history, ends up doing a human interest story, something he thought was beneath him as he assists Philomena in searching for her son.

The pair of them head back to the convent where they confront the nuns to find out what happened to Anthony after he was removed from the convent at the age of three. The nuns weave a shroud of deceit to cover their tracks including telling them that all the records of the adopted children were destroyed in an ‘accidental’ fire. That is apart from the form they asked her to sign which waived her parental rights which has been lovingly preserved.

Sixsmith finds that a convenient conversation in the local pub is more help than the nuns. The landlord pours scorn on the 'fire' theory and tells them that aside from subjecting the inmates to what amounted to slavery, the convent ran a nice sideline in selling the girls' children to rich Americans. Which is what happened to Anthony.

Sixsmith makes use of his contacts in the USA and they both head over there to find out more. What they find is that the adopted Anthony was renamed Michael Hess and on the internet Sixsmith finds out that Michael worked as a high-ranking official in the Reagan administration, all the time hiding the fact he was homosexual and sadly died of AIDS nine years ago. 

They track down and visit his adopted sister Mary, who was taken from the convent with him. Then they find Michael's partner who won’t at first talk to them but eventually Philomena convinces him to do so. He reveals that Michael did try to find his mother in Ireland and even went to the convent to speak to the nuns. None of which the nuns admitted to as they continued to blatantly lie even fifty years on. Also it was his final wish to be buried there.

So they head back to the convent again, see the grave, and confront the sister who was in charge back then, Sister Hildegarde (Barbara Jefford), who is still unrepentant. Philomena, incredibly, forgives her. FFS.

I’m impressed by the film. It's enthralling, not unduly sentimental and it doesn't have a happy ending, not really. Judi Dench is Judi Dench, of course, flawless. Steve Coogan, who is everywhere right now, is well... Steve Coogan. I’m still not convinced by his acting ability, he always seems very one dimensional and here he again appears to mainly play himself.

More to his style perhaps is the fact he co-produced as well as co-wrote the film but he does seem to have sneakily re-jigged Sixsmith’s book. The screenplay has turned the sequence of events on its head and in the process built a bigger part for Cougan. I don't think keeping to the original story would have made any difference to the impact of the film but it would have produced two leading actresses in Dench and Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays Philomena's daughter Jane and only a minor role for Cougan.

The Look Of Love

The Look Of Love is a biopic by Michael Winterbottom about Geoffrey Quinn aka Paul Raymond. Raymond was of course a famous entrepreneur... ok, so perhaps he was a porn baron, the self proclaimed King of Soho.

The film opens with Raymond (Steve Coogan) mourning the loss of his beloved daughter, watching old video recordings and reflecting back on his life, as in flashback we get the Paul Raymond story.

Raymond went from humble beginnings in Liverpool to being a success in London where he put on a show featuring nude models as statues, the law prevented nudes moving around on stage at that time. Then he moved on to greater success with his Gentlemen’s Clubs, the sex comedy Pyjama Tops and Men Only magazine. With each new project he pushed further against the boundaries of public decency.

He was though a shrewd businessman, who ignored the countless bad reviews and criticisms. He simply got on with making money, lots of it, and was smart enough to reinvest it in property; most notably in Soho and he became Britain's richest man.

Initially helping him run his business was his wife Jean (Anna Friel) but he wasn't a man who was good at relationships. Whether that was with his own children or with the women in his life and there were plenty of them. 

At first Jean tolerated his countless affairs with the women who worked for him. That is until he meets Amber (Tamsin Egerton), who later becomes Fiona Richmond and the editor of Men Only, his relationship with her results in the largest divorce settlement in British history.

Amber’s advantage over Jean was that she had no problem with three in the bed romps, as long as she was part of them. Well at first she didn’t, eventually she leaves him too.

Meanwhile he is mostly ambivalent to the existence of his children, save for his Daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) and it is his relationship with her that is central to most of the story. He dotes on her but even there he condones the drug habit that ultimately kills her.

Although Raymond was fascinating figure, he wasn't a terribly likeable one and despite the money, the women on tap and the power, he never seemed genuinely happy. Except that is when he was with his daughter and he gives her a leg up to her death. After which he became a virtual recluse until his own death.

The film is an interesting watch but a bit lifeless. Surprisingly it lacks drama and even plot, possibly the process of condensing his colourful life down to first be book sized and then further to be film sized didn’t leave much, other than a long list of bullet points. The film ended up being more informative than entertaining.