Diabolical Danger

I’ll let you in on a little secret. . . The Trouble With Harry is, well, he’s dead. Alfred Hitchcock directs this cheeky black comedy about a number of villagers who discover the body of a deceased man out in the woods in picturesque New England. Though it was an American film, Hitchcock adapts a very British story (after all, it is usually Europeans who can find comedy in death) for the screen. A project he desperately wanted to get made, it finally came to fruition in 1955. The first to stumble upon the body is a little scamp of a child named Arnie Rogers (Jerry Mathers of Leave It to Beaver fame).

Much has been made of Fifty Shades of Grey. The phenomenon (be it the books or the film) has taken the world by storm, creating an ever-growing buzz around the subject of kinky sexual escapades. But, after watching the movie, I must say that it is a cold, clinical production that lacks nuance, emotion, heart, depth or eroticism. For a more engaging portrayal of the themes found in Fifty Shades, I would recommend turning to the 2002 motion picture Secretary. Following in the vein of other erotic flicks like 1972's Last Tango in Paris and 1986's 9½ Weeks (to name just two), director Steven Shainberg (who adapted Mary Gaitskill’s short story along with Erin Cressida Wilson) introduces us to our lead character: the shy, sensitive and socially uncomfortable Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Dealing with many psychological issues, she is first seen leaving an institution after being caught causing herself harm.

Dealing with the unnerving and dangerously disturbing topic of the Stockholm Syndrome, Pedro Almodóvar uses deft humour, rich engaging (as well as flawed) characters and a solid story to concoct one of the more unusual romances in film history. The title of said motion picture is Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, released in 1989 to much fanfare and equally as much controversy. The winner of several festival awards (as well as being lauded as a superb film in Spain), it received an X rating in the United States (equal to that of a hardcore pornography film) – with the MPAA disliking two scenes as well as the crime aspect of the story (which they thought could influence young males to commit kidnapping much like the main character). To paraphrase Almodóvar, he humourously exclaimed that he does not make movies expecting that the entire audience will be psychopaths. In the end, it was this movie that led the MPAA to create the new rating of NC-17, which still exists today, and if given, usually kills a movie’s box office chances much like the X rating.

Considered one of the great films of the Czech New-Wave, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders takes the viewer on an unorthodox nonlinear journey through a bizarre, sensual, dream-like fantasy world where the lead character, Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová), is just budding into womanhood. Seen through the eyes of the impressionable, pure, and innocent ingenue, we are not sure if what we are seeing is, in fact, reality, or whether it is dream (or perhaps more accurately – nightmare), or projections of what coming into adulthood is like, or some mixture of them all.

If you’re into classic rock music, there may be no better film to watch than Richard Curtis’ 2009 motion picture Pirate Radio (sometimes referred to as The Boat That Rocked), as it provides the viewer with an epic soundtrack as well as a rich retrospective look back at the chaotic era that was the 1960s. Loosely based on a true story, Curtis (who also wrote the screenplay) tells the tale of a group of rogue DJs who anchor in the waters off of Britain (in the North Sea, to be exact), playing rock `n roll music to the masses, much to the chagrin of the classical music loving establishment – wonderfully illustrating the turbulent clashes of chaos found in the 1960s.