Movies

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday December 8, 2008

Doug Anderson

Mr And Mrs Smith

(2005) Nine, 8.30pm

Leafing idly (how else?) through the pages of Entertainment Weekly, I chanced upon a list of the 50 Sexiest Movies Ever, compiled by that esteemed journalist team of tireless experts. This film - starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the power couple of such trash tabloids - is listed at No. 3. It's a story about John and Jane, a married couple who, unbeknown to one another, are both professional assassins. With the kind of logic that only Hollywood could contrive, they discover one another's secret occupation after both are hired by rival contractors to kill the same guy - an individual known as The Tank. Having discovered one another's secret while on the case and having failed - singly or in tandem - to complete the hit, they find themselves in strife with their equally dissatisfied agencies, who cross-contract the other for failing to eliminate the original target. What a lovely situation for a bored couple! Professional pride and a competitive edge, exacerbated by growing marital indifference, create a frisson that, while not matching the bourgeois sexual eroticism in the climactic scene of Almodovar's elegant (but ineffectual) guilt trip Matador, is better than the marriage counselling sessions they've been attending. The critical scene here involves the couple frisking one another on the dance floor, surreptitiously trying to ascertain whether - and how heavily - their partner is armed. Says John to Jane as she glides her hands around his crotch: "That's all John, sweetheart!" Do they kill each other or join forces to save one another? Martial arts were mutually sustaining for Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol 2, so we can expect good sex and married bliss to ensue.

The White Tower

(1950) ABC1, 11.20pm

A melodramatic cliffhanger, literally, ensues as a group of climbers with various motivations makes its way to the summit of a dangerous mountain. Symbolism is everywhere and I'd be betting on Glenn Ford and Alida Valli to make it to the alpine peak. Who will plunge to their death? Will anyone attempt to scale the snow-covered slopes of June Clayworth?

Underwater!

(1955) ABC1, 1.10am (Wed)

The Waterworld of its day, this waterlogged old chestnut from Howard Hughes was horribly expensive to make. The production was fraught with waste and incompetence as Hughes strived to reiterate his curious breast fetishes and realise other fantasies about Jane Russell on film. Bathing suit-clad Russell stars as Theresa, a Cuban "hot tamale" swinging romantically between Richard Egan and Gilbert Roland, a couple of scuba-diving dudes who are searching for sunken chests. Half the movie's $3.5 million budget was squandered on unusable sequences filmed during an abortive shoot in Hawaii. The footage eventually used is not much better, prompting Variety to run this page-one screamer: "Janie, Make With The Lungs: Sexational RKO Cheesecake Dunk!" Mnnn! Such exquisite subtlety, eh Jeremy?

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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