Right, going out to the cinema later so I'll get these out of the way now, first up a couple of biopics, then a couple of helpings of schmaltz. I finally got around to seeing Melvin and Howard, which I've been intrigued about for years due to Mary Steenburgen's performance as she won the Oscar, Golden globe and every major critics award for it. It's a take on the real life story of a man who claimed to have given someone claiming to be Howard Hughes a lift in the desert and then discovered a will naming him one of Hughes' beneficiaries. The acting all round is fine but nothing out of the ordinary (and the praise Steenburgen received is simply mind-boggling) as is pretty much every aspect of the film technically. It's a Jonathan Demme movie so as usual there's no specific style to speak of, it's just one of those gentle, watchable little American films with neither much wrong with, or a lot going for it.

After that highly questionable piece of cinema in terms of historical accuracy comes an absolutely risible one in those terms, namely Jesse James. Starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as Jesse and Frank James (respectively), it's a mythologising romanticisation which borders on hagiography making the notorious outlaw as sympathetic and blameless as humanly possible. Power is decidedly limp as the gunslinger and Fonda utterly wasted in a nothing role as his brother. Nancy Kelly works her socks off and really delivers in a couple of scenes, but it's one of those functional, generic old westerns which passes the time rather than entertains or informs.

Fashion alert...

Yesterday I caught the latter 2/3rds of Heartburn, which I've wanted to see for a while as it stars Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. That it is directed by Mike Nichols and written by Nora Ephron should have immediately sent up the warning signs. Missed the opening act, but from where I caught up with it it was very obviously written, cheesily directed (it's SO 80s ), but saved by a very game Streep. Jack was ... well not "Jack", but definitely in snooze-mode and it was hilarious to see a young Kevin Spacey as a punk robber, but outside of Streep not much of value.

From there I caught the director's cut of Cinema Paradiso. Now I'd seen the original version about 8 years ago and thought it was quite good but underwhelming given its reputation. On approaching this (long overdue) rewatch it had got to the point the only part of it I could actively remember was the kisses being cut out of the films the projectionist shows, so it's basically a fresh viewing. The first hour I wasn't in love with the tone of the film and the boy (Salvatore Cascio, who incredibly won a BAFTA for this ) was the wrong side of cute, frequently punchable. For the second hour they actually managed to find someone to play the teenage version of our protagonist who makes Orlando Bloom look like Richard Burton . When it came to the final part though I began to recognise more aspects from my first viewing and whilst extremely manipulative it really does work. The shocking thing was that the extended scenes not originally there completely made the film for me and without them I would have been decidedly underwhelmed.

It's so strange because I can completely see the argument that adding these takes away from the focus of the relationship between the boy and the cinema projectionist (played very nicely by Philippe Noiret), and I actually do think the way the romantic relationship in the middle section was drawn was rather hackneyed. Despite all that though, the whole of the 3rd act really hits home emotionally on multiple levels and it's just such a shame the two hours that preceeded it were so schmaltzy and loose in tone and unhinged by the performances of the actors playing the younger versions. So 2/3rds just about watchable, but without that extended final act (which bumps the film into the quite good range) it would be rather tedious.