Is there anything new to say about John Boorman's Point Blank redux

Back in January, I asked whether there was anything new to say about a film I hold very dear, John Boorman’s 1967 classic, Point Blank. This was prompted reading Eric G Wilson’s November 2023 BFI Classics monograph on Point Blank, which contained a lot of new information and made connections with numerous films, many of which I have not seen. For those who have subscribed since, you can check out the post in question here.

Enough said about that, I thought.

But once again, never say never, because I was recently contacted by Emmy award winning editor Alan Berry about a new documentary he had made on Point Blank. There is a lot in Berry’s doco that fans of the film will know. But, apart from being beautifully put together, it also contains a hell of a lot of new to me information about the Point Blank, its cast and its production.

This includes material about Point Blank’s genesis, details about the film’s production and the shoot on the former prison island of Alcatraz, just how intentional some of the film’s queer subtext is, and was Marvin really late on set for the first day of shooting because he had been on a bender with Ella Fitzgerald the night before?

Anyway, as I think a lot of you will get a kick out of it, I’m posting it here for readers to check out. I could say this the last I’ll have to say on the Point Blank, but why make a promise I might not keep.

What else have I been watching?

Quite a lot, as it turns out, and I have thoughts on much of it.

Ripley (2024)

I am not going to enter into the controversy in a teacup that is this article about people not wanting to watch the latest Patricia Highsmith adaptation because it is in black and white. It is Netflix not the local Cinematheque. I will just say that for me the sumptuous black and White photography is the only reason I am watching it. It looks absolutely amazing Otherwise, so far I have found it somewhat flat and uninspiring, and the producers could have shaved at least an episode off the running time by eliminating some of Andrew Scott's long intense stares into the distance, at other men, at shirts he likes, at the Italian countryside, etc. It is just where the culture seems to be at the moment that nothing is left to the imagination and subtext, in this instance, Ripley’s latent queerness and desire to be more cultures and materially well of than he is, has to become central text.

Late Night With the Devil (2023)

Come for the loving homage to the era of late night seventies television talk shows, the stunning aesthetics & the wealth of seventies cultural references & minutiae. But plotwise, I thought it was pretty pedestrian & predictable. I enjoyed it but by no means thought this Australian horror was as spectacular as a lot of other people seem to think.

The Border (1982)

It has been my considered opinion that Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger is Jack Nicholson’s least known best role. But Tony Richardson’s The Border gives it a run for its money. Nicholson is great as a corrupt guard on the US/Mexican border who starts to question what he is doing after he becomes involved with a young Mexican woman (Elpidia Carrillo in her first big role) whose baby has been kidnapped to sell to a rich white couple. As the young folks say, the themes in this film are very now. It also has Harvey Keitel and a weird turn by Warren Oates as Nicholson’s border patrol boss. Now, a lot of people responded to my comments on social media to say that The Pledge (2001) is Nicholson’s best least known role. To which I retort, no, that film is pretty well known and quite highly regarded critically.

Blood Money (1980)

Melbourne Cinematheque recently did a one night tribute to 90 year-old Australian actor John Flaus. Three of his short Melbourne set films, Queensland (1976), Yackety Yack (1974) & the gritty crime thriller, Blood Money (1980). If you haven’t heard of Bloody Money, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Clocking in at just over 62 minutes, it’s an unpolished little gem of a heist gone wrong film and almost completely unavailable. Flaus plays Pete Shields, an aging Sydney criminal who experiences an emotional epiphany after a diamond robbery he’s involved in goes violently wrong and his doctor informs him he’s got terminal cancer. He returns to his hometown of Melbourne to deal with unfinished criminal business and emotional complications related to his little brother Brian (a very young Bryan Brown) and Brian’s wife, Jeannie, who Shields had an affair with years ago.

The film is supposed to contain an homage to Melville’s Le Samouraï but, if so, I missed it. Instead, I picked up a definite Get Carter vibe, including the ending where Shields, having exchanged the daughter for the cash, is gunned in a remote quarry (spoiler I know, sorry). Not the greatest local crime film ever made, but Director Chris Fitchett gives it a grainy realism and hardboiled vibe which is unusual in an Australian film. Watching it again this week, I couldn’t help but speculate on how much better it would have been if Ruane had just had more money and time to do it.

The Pigeon Tunnel (2023)

If you like John Le Carré, this documentary about the late master of espionage fiction is essential viewing. Le Carré emerges from it as a writer of real perception & surprising humour. It is also a great documentary about the craft of fiction, deception and the Cold War. It helped a lot that I had just seen A Perfect Spy, the 1987 television series based on Le Carré’s autobiographical book of the same name, the events in which Le Carré talks a lot about in the documentary.

Pre-orders open for Revolution in 35mm Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960-1990

The new book I have co-edited with the wonderful New York-based film critic, Samm Deighan, is available for pre-order at the website of the publisher, PM Press.

I’m very proud of this book, which is also going to be beautifully illustrated in full colour, and in addition to writing by Samm and myself, includes terrific essays from another twelve writers and critics.

Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960-1990 covers an incredibly broad and diverse body of cinema, spanning from the Algerian war of independence and the early wave of post-colonial struggles that reshaped the Global South, through the collapse of Soviet Communism in the late ‘80s.

It focuses on films related to the rise of protest movements by students, workers, and leftist groups, as well as broader countercultural movements, Black Power, the rise of feminism, and so on. The book also includes films that explore the splinter groups that engaged in violent, urban guerrilla struggles throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as the promise of widespread radical social transformation failed to materialize: the Weathermen, the Black Liberation Army and the Symbionese Liberation Army in the United States, the Red Army Faction in West Germany and Japan, and Italy’s Red Brigades.

Many of these movements were deeply connected with and expressed their values through art, literature, popular culture, and, of course, cinema. Twelve authors, including academics and well know film critics, deliver a diverse examination of how filmmakers around the world reacted to the political violence and resistance movements of the period and how this was expressed on screen. This includes looking at the financing, distribution, and screening of these films, audience and critical reaction, the attempted censorship or suppression of much of this work, and how directors and producers eluded these restrictions.