I'd heard about David Thewlis's performance in the Mike Leigh film Naked for years. He won major critics awards in America for it but until recently due to distribution problems this has remained one of Mike Leigh's least seen films in this country despite having quite the reputation abroad. This is the weakest Mike Leigh film I've ever seen, he has problems with the tone (going for farce in the final 20 mins) and doesn't create any inherently dramatic situations, rather having his mouthy manc character spout off endless rants and try to have rough sex with anything that moves. Thewlis is fine, but nothing special and the only real high point or reason to see the film is the late Katrin Cartlidge who is as divine as ever. It's a miserable film about misogynists (rather than being a misogynistic film, there is a subtle difference) and as such will put a lot of people off, but this is only recommended if you're really into Mike Leigh or you just got dumped by someone and want to see men take their revenge on the women in this film for you.
Lovefilm also sent me Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht which was directed by Werner Herzog and has a cracking cast consisting of Bruno Ganz as Harker, Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy. The film is interesting as far as it goes and the scenes between Kinski and Ganz have an eeriness which hits the tone spot on. Sadly this is not fully sustained as when the story shifts towards Dracula and Lucy it becomes more ponderous and plodding, the mystique losing its grip. It remains one of the better and also more different versions of the story and worth checking out if you're a fan of the people involved or the material.
I had the misfortune to see The Go-Between on sky the other night, my history teacher had tried to show this to us in A-Level English (even though we weren't doing the book) but after one double lesson we gave up. I should have deferred to my previous teenager self. 40 minutes had passed and barely anything had happened, the story is bland, turgid and repetetive and the direction is iffy with the cross-cutting to a later time zone as the film progresses. It fails to engage as a drama, the characterisation is distilled to the absolute minimum and even Alan Bates and Julie Christie can't elevate the material to a watchable level. Impossible to recommend this one, it was a real slog.
Staying with Julie, my final lovefilm rental (as they screwed me with Elizabeth R, which I'll talk about in a moment, I've cancelled my subscription) was Billy Liar. This is another of those quirky 60s British films that have a reputation that I liked but can't really see the fuss for. Tom Courtenay is engaging for the most part as the eponymous character but the storylines are samey and only Christie breaks up the monotomy of his continual delusions and lies. The direction is interesting, melding the fantasy and reality together but it is overdone by the end. Decent watch but wouldn't go out of my way to see it again.
That's it for the films, but there's some tv to talk about. I caught Recount on More4 which is a film starring Kevin Spacey and Tom Wilkinson about the 2000 US presidential debacle in Florida. Good film, fine ensemble, very biased in its viewpoint but entertaining, interesting and watchable. More4 is also showing John Adams, a mini-series on the 2nd president of the United States. It's starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney and it's very good so far (up to episode 3 of 7). I finally finished Elizabeth R, Jackson is phenomenal in 2 of the episodes, extremely good in another 2 and "just" good in another 2. Definitive indeed, I've no idea why this miniseries is so obscure here. I've also discovered the recesses of british tv where The Closer and The Colbert Report are showing, plus I just found out the bbc switched days for Medium and started the series a month ago so am not happy with tv in general but that's another rant for another time.