Howl (2010)

I liked Howl because it reminds me of my creative writing class and writing in general because the first things I remember writing creatively was poetry. Admittedly, my stuff was never deemed revolutionary or obscene but I've always felt ahead of my time. Howl skips across the filmic styles- from re-inacted documentary to musical biopic to period piece to courtroom drama, in telling the true story of Allen Finsbury and his book Howl and how it was the centre of a court-case on obscenity charges. The film seems weightless as it flits from Ginsberg (methodically played by James Franco) reading Howl to Ginsberg discussing the time to the courtroom.
Maybe this constant mix of setting and style would make other films seem convoluted or confusing but it works in this case.
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, prolific gay documentary filmmakers seem to be to divine all the of this mixing and transform it into something literate despite not having worked a whole lot with actors. I'm not sure if working with actors after 20years in documentaries would be easier or harder!  but they managed to pull together this cast including Jon Hamm, David Strathaven and Jeff Daniel for the courtroom stuff as well as the Franco.
I guess I preferred the interview/documentry style stuff and would have preferred more of that and less of the courtroom stuff but the courtroom stuff gets cut away from before it becomes repetitive and I guess a little courtroom drama used sparingly goes a long way. It's interesting to watch because it takes you not into the mind of a poet but into the time of a society on the cusp of a significant change in popular culture; where the 50's Beat Generation where warming up for the Peace, Love and Understanding of the 60's...

I watched Howl (2010) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)...

Season Of The Witch (2011)

With Bad Lieutenant and KickAss as well as other stuff but mainly the above, Nicholas Cage was on a good streak last year. With forgettable tut like Season of the Witch, he may as well hope the skids are as cosy as when he left them.
I make no bones about the Nicholas Cage I Like on celluloid- the balls-out, pin-drop pupils, bad jokes, strutting, 'menk-tal' one,the sensitive but tough family man one can run the marathon.
Now I know the guy's got kids and needs to pick up a check but can't imagine he made that much on a film made in Eastern Europe and where Ron Pearlman is the second lead (no offence Ron. ); he decided to make this off his own back, that is certain.
I'm sure it has to do with the fact he likes all this swords and scorcery BS and I can take it, when it's done well but there's nothing at all original about this film- there's something about the church trying witches at the time of the Crusades or something going on.. I wasn't paying a heckload of attention. They have to transport a suspected witch to somewhere because... Some guff.
On the the other hand, a lot of goodly British actors are picking up a cheque like Stephen Graham and Stephen Campbell Moore and the whole reason for the rental, the man himself- Robert Sheehan. Honestly, i could tell this movie would be a schnore but I knew he was in it and well that was enough for me, but for some dumb reason- they're all talking in these generalised American accents!? Sheesh- what gives? They throw him no meaty bones and thereby he's grasping at straws for stuff to do.
But more fool me for expecting something decent from an obviously undecent film. This film makes Drive Angry look like A Clockwork Orange and Drive Angry was a greesy demo showing reel for hard R rated 3D exploitation flicks (I still think of it fondly)...

I watched Season Of The Witch (2011) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Howl (2010)...

Chungking Express (1994)

This is my take on the Wong Kar Wai astetic:- he takes the Hollywood/Western (social) love story and delivers it in Eastern packaging/photography. Now I'm not saying there's anything specifically wrong with that- they're very cute movies but I don't understand the hype.
On the new BluRay that distributor Artificial Eye has put out, i was reminded of something. In the later 90's, after the success of Pulp Fiction- Tarantino had the idea of distributing unseen or forgotten movies under a label called Rolling Thunder. I found this out a couple years ago, when i rented an old Grindhouse movie called Switchblade Sisters in Canada, which was under that banner as was Kitano's Sonatine, Canadian cult movie-Hard Core Logo and ChungKing Express; and Tarantino made an introduction to the movie for the DVD, which appears on the BluRay. As he tells it, Wong's films are unique in Chinese cinema because he tells these dramatic love stories in a market populated by action.
Basically, Chungking Express is 2 love stories that mediate on loneliness and finding love. The first one concerns a young naive cop who's mourning his last relationship and a shady woman in blonde wig, who seems to be involved in smuggling guys from India to Hong Kong. It's all very non-linear and since it's obviously in Chinese difficult to pick up (for me at least) to pick up the threads of what's going on; she's strutting around with a purpose without actually doing or saying much and he seems to be buying tins of pineapple (!?) - they get together sort of but... It doesn't really land (to me.)
The 2nd story is far more linear and far more simple to follow. It concerns another cop, who's a little older and a little more together (played by Tony Leung, a Wong favorite and memorable from as the bent cop from Infernal Affairs) and the cute girl that works at the fast food joint, he frequents everyday. Their story is far more traditional in the sense, that we know they should get together but he is in denial about the failure of his last relationship and isn't ready to move on-you get the picture.
The girl, played by Faye Wong is completely delightful with her short hair and bopping to California Dreaming and Faye Wong's own Chinese version of Dreams by The Cranberries, which is similarly delightful because it's musically exact and her vocals make the song even software and more cuddly to listen to.
I think there's a lot of subtlety that got lost in translation for me in watching this and maybe it didn't work for me as well as I'd hoped because it was a bad mixture of romance which is generally undemanding to watch and in a foreign language, which obviously requires a lot of attention but it is a very pretty film to watch.

I watched ChungKing Express (1994)
on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Dazed & Confused (1993)...

Permissive (1970)

First off, I love these films that the BFI put out on their Flipside label like Private Road and Man of Violence. It's not that these film are very good but they illustrate unconsciously, a time where Britain (or London) made modest  arty or exploitative films on the cheap. We still do but that's due to a home video market. These films are before that. I can only imagine these films were sponsored by, made in and for London. Their appeal is distinctly colocuial- there are no stars in them... no international ones, at least and when they do have exploitable content, it's not really anything too major. To me, their charm is in the fact, they stand as a time capsule that transport you back to the style, taste and 'mores' of a few generations behind us.
Permissive is essentially, the tale of a young girl,who becomes involved with a band and being, for lack of a better word, a groupie. Now this film is hardly worth your time; it's predictable, populated with non-actors and it's horribly dated but it did take me back to when I was really excited into a certain band and got involved with other intense fans. Dear reader, they were the best of times and they were the worst of times. I loved spending time with these people and yet we were all in competition, to prove our worth and that we were bigger fans than others and such and so on. The great success of this film is that it successfully achieves that feeling of competition mixed with a sense of of belonging. Like I say, the movie's band was a real band called Forever More and i'm sure they had a few hits... Not enough to co-opt a movie, mind you but one of their songs I recognised a sample from a Talib Kweli song, Beautiful Struggle. There's no mention of the original in the liner notes of Mr Kweli's album. Which is an ironic conclusion to a film that was forgotten, brushed off and forgotten just as easily...

I watched Permissive (1970) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with ChungKing Express (1988)...

Cop Out (2010)

I'm generally a fan of Kevin Smith. I think like a lot of my generation (maybe mostly, the one before mine) we thought his movies were brilliant when we were in our late teens. I used to love him between the ages of 16 and 20. I remember strongly where I was the first times I saw Clerks (New years eve 1999, on FilmFour when it was a subscription channel), Chasing Amy on Sky Movies, Dogma at the UCI Cardiff, on Boxing Day. I finegelled my way across the US border, from Canada on holiday to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back when i was 17 because it was 18 in Canada. So like I say, a certified fan but i think apart from Clerks and Chasing Amy, hs movies are quite juvenile or more so than care to hold in high regard anymore. But I don't hate him or anything and I like to see whatever he's working on. The movie he made before Cop Out, Zack and Miri was pretty funny and good-enough but based on Clerks, this man was supposed to be the comic book fan-boy equivalent of Tarantino - they shared the same home at Miramax and both had the best line on pop culture shit-talking but i think he second guess his fans on the comic book stuff and naughty talk with Jay and Silent Bob and left out the drama and heart in Chasing Amy.
Anyway, when i heard he was making a big Bruce Willis cop comedy, i was sure that was a step forward for him in finding a broader audience and more recognition. I mean I think it's always interesting to see what small budget directors do when they work on that scale.
Of course what I didn't understand was that this was essentially a directing/work assignment for him and he had little to nothing to do with writing it. Now the thing is that despite being generally known for his raunchy comedy, he's not the greatest visionary director and i'm sure he'd defer to that too... so then there's nothing for him to contribute here other than pick up a cheque and spent time gaining experience of working in the studio system and as such it shows.
Apart from the NY state setting and 80's hip hop soundtrack, this could have been anybody's movie and it just reeks to me of a missed opportunity. A lot of people teared into Cop Out and Smith was just as vocal about the critics and I'm not interested in doing that but my biggest disappointments is obviously how seemingly removed Kevin Smith is from this movie and i know he is because it's boring and laugh-free and he almost can't be blamed for that.
I still think the guy can still write better than most Hollywood writers and believe that and if he was really interested in a mercenary endeavour, he should be writing films he's not directing not visa versa.
I am hopeful for his horror-thriller about the Westborough Baptist Church, Red State for later this year. It seems like the sort of meaty thing that would challenge him...

I watched Cop Out (2010) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Bad Teacher (2011)...

Le Mepris (1964)

Things haven't been particularly pretentious around for a while, so I gotta go Godard. Le Mepris was the product of Godard's producer, seeing that Brigitte Barford was becoming close friends with him and that would be his best chance to make some money for once, since she was the most famous woman in the world at the time. In a way it worked- it was also Godard's most successful film upon release.
But this not only has to do with Bardot, it's Godard's best photographed film but it's still pretty aimless in story and narrative. No bad thing but you need to be a cinematic icon to land that sort of thing.
The crux of the piece is that this Hollywood producer wants this writer to draft him a movie version of The Odyssey and it makes his wife (Bardot) treat him with Le Mepris (trans.- CONTEMPT!)
Godard must love listening to people converse more than any other filmmaker. His films are 90% that.
What was strange for me while watching this movie was I had, unconsciously, turned on the English version of the film as well as the English subtitles (I watch most films at home with subtitles given the choice) but after 5mins of watching the film, i realised that the subtitles were not matching up with what was being said on screen...
Then I started thinking 'Ohhh. Godard is subverting the use of subtitles to use as a tool for showing what these characters are thinking as opposed to what they are thinking. *Referential clap* I look forward to the extras where this practice is explained...'
And after the film has finished and i'm navigating through the extras, there's nothing regarding the subtitles. I check Wikipedia-nothing. Relevant BluRay Review-nothings. Which makes it even more curious...

I watched Les Mepris (1964) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Violent Cop (1989)...

Rubber (2010)

Do you want to see a film by Mr Oizo?, the mastermind behind those Levi jeans adverts with the Flat Eric puppet that we all loved in... *checks notes*.... 1999! Feels like yesterday. Well, maybe the day before yesterday.
Anyway, the deal is this, he's made a movie about a Satanic tyre.
Stay with me- the tyre has psychokinetic power to blow stuff up and and likes generally killing as many people as possible. It's not an puppet or CGI- it's a rubber tyre.
No, obviously it doesn't talk.
I think this not-everyday story of a murderous tyre would be enough but we get these additional points, where an 'audience' with binoculars are watching the proceding for reasons unknown...
Me, i have a soft spot for most forms of 4th wall demolition.
There's this great preface to the start of the film delivered by one character, about the causality of films and fiction in general - "why was ET brown? Why were the lovers in Love Story attracted to each other?-No reason."
Now if you decided to commit to watch a film about a killer tyre... i don't think you need a warning about logic or the lack therein and as much as i really like the 'audience' concept (something that incidentally makes less sense than if they'd said nothing), i suspect that it has more to do with Mr Oizo (aka Quentin Dupieux) have not much to say about a killer tyre. Other than it's a tyre and... well you get the picture.

I watched Rubber (2010) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Enter The Void (2009)...

Chico and Rita (2010)

I guess what you'd call Chico and Rita is an animated adult love story but there's a lot going on in that description. I get kinda wary when i see 'adult' next to the word 'animated'. I guess for me, animation is still the vestige of kids television for the most part but then again, if this was a live action film- I'm certain it would have escaped my interest and though, animation is not the format at the forefront of of your thinking when you think of love-stories, i for one rhinoceros it looks more beautiful than any live action film could look.
As far as the story, it couldn't be more pat; boy finds girl, girl plays hard-to-get, they get together, boy loses girl and so on and so forth but that's the only real set-back of the film; the animation just pops and the kind of 'digital-painted' process they use is just sumptuous to watch. Any frame could be a hi-def modern-day impressionist painting and springing for the BluRay in this case, to watch the film is certainly worth it.
And since the film is about a piano-player and a singer in Cuba, the way they marry visually the jazzy/big band music to these wonderful visuals is nigh-on-perfect.
Getting back to the 'adult' stuff, it is just a prolonged scene of sexualised female nudity and frankly, i don't see why it's really necessary. It only seems to limit the reach of the films audience further and doesn't add anything to the love story but the love story for all it's premeditation is quite effective and works very well within the film. Chico and Rita is entertaining because it's continuously feeding your eyes hearty meals of colour and expression and it's as emotive as it is delightful.

I watched Chico and Rita (2010) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)...

Les Diaboliques (1954)

Classy film time. And it's French, which makes it doubly classy. Les Diaboliques is the signature film of Henri-Georges Clouzot, the French Hitchcock. It's the story of the wife and mistress of a real bastard (I believe his name was Jean-Luc Bastardo) who plot to kill him and thereby do the world a favour. It's no hyperbole- this is man who runs a private school and serves the kids rotten food and leaves everyone else wanting while he wants for nothing as well as subjecting these 2 women to mental and physical abuse. The one he's married to- he's using her for her money and the 'other' woman will always be just that.
I knew nothing about Clouzot before this film but this film is completely Hitchcock-ian, to the point that i knew he would be dubbed the 'French Hitchcock'. The guy is playing every note of the Hitchcock songbook- duplicitous leading characters, characters with percieved mental illness, comic background characters, red herrings and more.
So it's for this reason, that Les Diaboliques can't resonate with me the way it would have done had I seen it 50years ago. Unfortunately, it's another casualty of 'me seeing the things that were inspired by it' in the meantime and so the ending was telegraphed to me from about 5mins in.
Which is not to say that the rest of the 2hrs was insufferable but it wasn't as if you could appreciate in a Columbo-way either.
What is good is that, the film spends less time concentrated on the run-up to the murder; that's over after the first 40mins but more on the aftermath of the act and trying to continue without arousing suspicion and I really appreciated that when the obligatory police/investigator starts asking questions it's so light and uninvasive, that he might as well have not bothered at all; i love that sort of subversion on the genre.
But though it's well acted and quite funny in parts, in that Hitchcock-style of dark humour- I must insist that these sorts of things do depend heavily, almost unfairly so on the ending and since i'd seen this ending, in admittedly lesser endeavours like ITV dramas and episodes of... well basically anything featuring a police person or a mystery, it severely reduced the impact of this French crime classic for me but it's not to blame either. It's a Force majeure of sorts...

I watched Les Diaboliques (1954) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Hanna (2011) ...

Game of Death (2011)

If you're wondering why I'm watching, Game Of Death- a Wesley Snipes vehicle- Yeah- it's a Wesley Snipes vehicle. 'Game Of Death' could be anything couldn't it? any number of films are called that. Maddening.
Anyway, if you're wondering why I'm watching Game Of Death, it's not any masochistic need to watch DTV tut or curiosity about what Snipes does to pay a tax bill these days. (Is he/was he in jail?... certainly a jail marked 'Self-Loathing, Emotional Limbo and Creative Unfulfillment' no doubt or Blade 3 - ZING!)
No, my main draw to this film was Zoe Bell, the super-woman/stunt icon, most famous for playing herself in Tarantino's Death Proof.  She has such a magnetic personality; this was apparent in the documentary on female stuntwomen, Double Dare but i suppose Hollywood isn't THAT liberal and isn't ready for a total ass-kicking femme like Bell. So she has to make tut like this.
I wasn't expecting to be blown away- I don't usually watch these sort DTV Seagal/Lundgren/Van Rammed sorta fare but i thought it would have moments of vicariously enjoyment. I know these are low budget efforts but shouldn't that make you want to build on more creative/ idiosyncratic elements like writing and visuals?
Well more fool me, for wanting to give a Wesley Snipes film a shot. This was boring. BORING. Action films by their very nature have to be exciting, engaging and/or thrilling. This film never gets out of 1st year and actually, it's more like someone having a anxiety attack in the driveway.
I'd love to tell you what the story of this film is, but I couldn't tell you there's a doublecross thing where everybody in Snipes team have turned on him or something. It is ACTUALLY confusing because his team are meant to conduct assassinations but the rogue people keep threatening to kill the bad-guy from License To Kill, and you think 'wait-don't you want him dead? Why doesn't Wesley just egg them on?'
It's mostly set in a hospital, people are running around with guns like it's a work team-building paintball day, and they get shot a bit-hang on, I just read that back and i'm making it sound relatively exciting - Don't.. It's not.
There comes the point where Ernie Hudson pops in and you think, 'great, the guy from Ghostbusters'- he's not around for long.
I'll say that Zoe gets to be bad and she's watchable; that's alright but that's the only polite diplomatic thing I can tell you.
It's not even 'stupid or kisch' bad. It's like 90mins of Wesley Snipes creeping around a ward, like dosed inmate who's stolen a doctor's coat.
AGAIN i'm making it sound vaguely interesting.  I'd suggest you please stay away but, you already know better to try didn't you...

I watched Game Of Death (2010) on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with 13 Assassins (2010)...

Carlos The Jackal (2010)

If you know anything about this biopic of Carlos The Jackal, then you know what I'm going to say so I'll just say it now and we'll move on...  It obviously too long. I didn't watch the 5hr version (presumably available on import from Masochists'r'Us) but this Highlights-cut, this 'Diet Carlos' cut is still 2hrs 40mins and change. It's long and though it's quite violent and otherwise stylised, it does get pretty arduous and the story get stuck in admittedly key moments without end in sight, a few times. Now I'll be democratic and say that since the film was devised to be both feature film and 5part French tv drama, that I'm certain items would be far more palettable broken up after every hour or so but if this is what was the best of that footage... i probably won't be back for seconds. Like the kidnapping of OPEC officials is a defining part of his guy's story but Carlos would have been remiss have seen filmmakers cultivate an hour out of it. Like I say, I'm sure this was good as an hour of the Carlos mini-series but it's too excessive for one sitting.
I found it strange to pick up on because i don't usually this about this aspect of  the post-production process but i noticed after an hour that this film doesn't have a soundtrack, no strings or orchestration that you might expect in the tenser scenes, to help build-ya'know-tension? But I just remembered that it does have a marginal soundtrack of new vave-y instrumentals at transitional stage of Mr The Jackal's life. Not that I dislike that sorta thing but it's kinda jarring in a film about an infamous Palestinian terrorist.
Apart from those MAJOR issues, it's quite good. Oliver Assayess has made sure it at least looks good and there's a estimated international jet-set feeling as the movie moves from London to Germany to Tripoli and Edgar Ramierez is very good in a part that requires him to change his physicality as well as grow and change on the manner of that biopics require.

I watched Carlos The Jackal (2010), on BluRay via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Dog Pound (2010)...

Lemmy (2010)

I'm no Motorhead fan but Lemmy was a must watch because i love the rock biography. I love the Slash autobio, with it's tales of that kook Axl Rose and knocking on death's door but going on to play a great show; the shit-talking about other rockers. Basically living vicariously thru these people. No, they don't detail the time they had a 24hr stop over in Deluthe but life isn't like that. We only remember the sweet victories and the crushing failures.
But what a life, Lemmy has lived. As one fan proclaims in this 2hrs of rockumentary joy, 'when the bomb drops, the only living things left will be cockroachs and Lemmy'. It's just a great insight into such an enigmatic man. There's not much of the making-amends for bad shit in the past- it's not the kinda deal. The tone is Lemmy is awesome-if they interviewed any one who didn't think so... They didn't make the cut. The only bit that's slightly like that is the bit where Lemmy is with his son and his son, who's in the band and is kinda meek and totally reverent to his old man, has to listen to his father shit-talk his mother and then hear his father tell the world that he was mainly into her for the casual sex... But that's the only moment like that- the rest is either talking heads interviews of people reminding us how awesome he is or it's showing us how awesome his life is, driving tanks, jamming with Dave Grohl, shooting the shit with Billy Bob
Thornton. I think the Billy Bob chat is my favorite bit cos Billy doesn't come across as the dick you or I might imagine.
I really want to share all the all the remembrances and stories from Lemmy but i'd be spoiling them... I will say that the guy from Megadeth reminicing about going to the Sunset Bar and Grill and watching the man playing one of those motorcycle coin-op's in coochy-cutters is as illuminating as that sounds. Only a joyless fool wouldn't want to hear about that. If in the unlikely event, i went to see Megadeth and the even more marginal situation, where i was introduced to this guy and he asks me what i thought of the show, i sternly tell him to never mind THAT shit- tell us about Lemmy's short shorts.
I guess what you learn about Lemmy is that he's a well-educated guy, who loves slot machines and World War memorabilia (either one). In every other parallel universe, if would be the guy propping up the bar, on the sick but in this one, he's the world's greatest bass player.
I'll admit 2hrs is too long for this sort of thing and it doesn't really continue the great momentum of the 1st 30mins but it's a great story of a well-lived life, comprehensively told. I'm not rushing out to buy any Motorhead records but i'd be happy to watch this all over again...

Stone (2010)

Is Milla Jojovich a good actress? This might inspire more internal debate within yourself then you might expect. Sure the case for the opposition is strong - she's been involved in so many blotted on the cultural landscape- it betters belief if she can read English, the amount of times when says yes to a shitty script and some might say that she was previously at her best when she was playing on her naivety like her character in The Fifth Element.  But in Stone, she has to go toe-toe in the acting stakes with De Niro and Edward Norton, two of the... well they've been better in previous years and still capable of returning to previous glories- Jojovich has never been that good. But I'm here to tell you that maybe we shouldn't have wrote her off since-and i never thought I'd be writing these words- she acts Norton and De Niro into a corner.
The story of Stone is that De Niro plays a prison parole officer and Norton is one of his last cases before he retires. Jojovich plays Norton's wife and takes it upon herself to offer herself to De De Niro so he might look on her husband's case favorably. The strange part is she doesn't seem to mind and well- the term nymphomanic is thrown around and misused a lot but she'd probably knob a door off its hinges.
Maybe Jojovich does so well were Norton and De Niro don't is that in a highly sexual (not gratuitously sexualised though) film, a lilith thing like her can play that more credibly. No one wants to see Bobby D humping away. It makes you wonder if St. John's Ambulance were waiting on the side.. just in case.  Norton looks equally embarrassed with the 'sex stuff' that permiates through his character.
But Stone is an interesting watch because you struggle to fully understand the 3leads motives- De Niro has an extremely dysfunctional abusive relationship with his wife and it's made her an alcoholic wreck but it's not clear why he's like that. Norton seems to taking a vested interest in reforming his character but how sincere is he. Jojovich seems to be fully invested in getting her husband free but she's not that interested in being the least monogamous. These questions are as frustrating as they appear and maintain your interest. Especially Jojovich's character and congrats on your performance here. I hope it's not a fluke. 'Psycho hose beast' fits her like a... glove?  Now if we can suggest to her how to kill her husband Paul W. S. Anderson we'll really be cooking with gas...

I watched Stone (2010) on Blu-ray via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Belle De Jour (1969)...

Private Road (1970)

I only wanted to watch this movie for one reason- Bruce Robinson. 
The man made one of the finest films ever made on Gort's grim Earth- Withnail And I, a love-letter to the male of the species and one of the funniest films ever made. Never met a person who didn't love it. 
This means that the man has earned my interest in anything he's made but unfortunately his writing and directing is not as prolific as one might hope, so that means I have to widen my search to anything he's been involved in. 
So when I saw that the BFI had released Private Road, on their forgotten curiosity home video label, BFI Flipside and that it starred Bruce- it peaked my interest.  Before directing, Robinson had been an actor in the 60's and 70's. He was in Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet (where apparently the character of Uncle Monty was based on his own experiences with Zefferelli!)
In this movie, he shares the lead with Susan Penhaligon as a young couple in London, in the present-day (1970's) - learning how to live together and be all grown up and stuff. I'm sure even at the time, this concept had been done to death but this is a film of few resources- so the ramshackle nature of young life incidentally compliments the tone of the film. Like I say, it's a tale as old as time-will these two kids stick together in spite of their world and maybe this film was forgotten for because it doesn't have much to add to the formula but it's quite a light and charming watch, like a less ambitious Wed Anderson sorta thing; less stylised or comical. Incidentally it is funny how the way young people dressed in the early 70's is strikingly similar to how people dress in the early 2010's.
Susan Penhaligon is pretty good and delightful but I struggled to get past the idea that Bruce Robinson was acting well enough to necessitate him not spending that time write his future comedy masterpiece. I mean, yeah he was a cute good looking guy and passively, disarmingly charming buuuut he was no young Olivier and i have no right to say this but...  I think he did too. Hey, his best work was ahead of him. It's strange how bits of this film foreshadowed his later work like, there's a part where they go to the rural countryside, to a desolate house and they struggle to eat and kill their own food. Familiar? And then our your man goes to work in an advertising agency, pitching inane products like what's in How To Get Ahead In Advertising.
I don't usually talk about soundtracks but this film has a lovely collection of folksy songs running through it.  They date the film but in a good way; it reminds you sentiment of the time...  Private Road doesn't have much to say but it's very earnest about what it does. 
But then..  that's the youth for you...

I watched Private Road (1970) on BluRay via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Rope (1948)...