What an unexpectedly funny delight this is, a little gem of a movie that could well be overlooked among all the summer blockbusters, but which really deserves a much bigger audience than it will probably get.
It is based on the true story of author Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) who started a publishing feeding frenzy back in the 1970s when he claimed he had ghost written the autobiography of famous recluse Howard Hughes. He produced letters from the great man and even audiotapes of his conversations with him to verify the authenticity of the book and absolutely everyone believed him (and his publishers paid him millions of dollars for the book rights).
What no one knew was that Irving and his long-suffering researcher Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) were pulling one great big fat scam. Irving had never even met Hughes, but he wasn’t about to let that fact get in the way of his own overblown ego and sense of chutzpah. His bravado was simply astonishing as he had to layer lie upon lie as the hoax spiralled out of control.
Richard Gere is wickedly good as the man blinded by his own gobsmacking audacity who actually started to believe his own porky pies. As he struts across the screen you really have to admire his balls of steel. Irving’s ice cold cool is nicely contrasted by Suskind’s sense of barely controlled panic and once again, unsung Brit hero Alfred Molina gives a lovely, nuanced performance as a modest man simply overwhelmed by Irving’s more powerful character. Director Lasse Hallstrom uses the lightest of touches to extract maximum humour from the script and is helped enormously by a supporting cast with real depth and weight. At the time the hoax happened even Howard Hughes himself was entertained by all the shenanigans, stating while he was in Hollywood he’d never come across a script as wild or imagination-stretching. He was right, you really couldn’t make it up. Pixie Santos
This war film is one of the strangest produced in a long time. Set in Northern Italy during the last days of the Second World War, The Fallen tells the story of three very different groups of soldiers; Italians, Germans and Americans. As it becomes more and more apparent that the war is coming to an end and that the men on the front line are being left to fend for themselves, an air of desperation and manipulation seeps through the ranks, with each man handling the situation in his own particular way.
There have been countless books and documentaries detailing the legendary Smiths – with each focusing either on the relationship between Morrissey and Marr, or solely on the reclusive singer himself.Inside The Smiths is different, as it tells The Smiths story from start to finish from the perspective of the often-sidelined rhythm section, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce. Here, for the first time, they describe with refreshing candour, their time in one of the most influential bands of all time.
Over 90 minutes Flowers combines two loosely entwined stories, told in three acts, creating an involving portrait of the Cayman Islands.
After stepping on and over countless people on his way to the top of the Tory party, the mesmerising leader creates a government controlled entirely by the people, with each decision – no matter how small – being the subject of a national vote. With a hundred daily referendums the public soon become tired of having their say on everything, so when Rimmer offers them a way of life where they don’t have to decide on anything at all, it seems only natural for them to take it. Hail President Rimmer.
This explains in part the sparseness of the end result and the relative lack of personnel in the credits. The director was, however, able to persuade Vercors to allow shooting to take place in his home, which in turn enabled him to ensure that Melville stayed true to the author’s work. Scenes featuring the book at the beginning and end serve to underline the adherence of the film to the original text.
