Tinsel bits on a winter night

Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) is one of those guilty pleasures, pure candy floss, an antidote to a winter night or any night. The problem is that it hasn’t aged well. Unless I’m missing something. Because this film, based on Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel, is so cliché ridden and even anti-feminist, it’s surprising it was made then, and would it be made now? (Though the third in the series, Bridget Jones’s Baby, was released as recently as 2016.) First, we have Jones (Renée Zellweger), pace Elizabeth in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as the shriveling, low self-esteem heroine, belting out “(Don’t wanna be) all by myself” in her lonely room, describing herself as a “spinster.” She is awkward and disdained by Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and is used by Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), all the while awkward and overcoming body image problems. Sure, she gets the right man in the end but her personality is not a tribute to modern womanhood…..Meanwhile, This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984), which Kurt Cobain called “the only rock movie worth watching,” is such a brilliant satire on heavy metal bands that you could be forgiven for thinking the band in it is the real thing. Reiner plays the straight documentarian out to capture the essence of this seminal typically hedonistic group, Spinal Tap, a mashup of every metal band you’ve heard from Iron Maiden to Led Zeppelin, to hell, The Rolling Stones. In doing so it mocks a whole bunch of rock documentaries that take their subjects oh so seriously. It doesn’t necessarily take long for the satire to become obvious. But what’s great is the fake band’s seemingly real music and on-stage theatricality, with songs and absurd lyrics – though not far from the words of real bands – that sound a hell of a lot like the real thing. There’s a huge cast here, and some well-known actors and celebs like Ed Begley Jr., Fran Drescher, Patrick Macnee, Billy Crystal, Dana Carvey, Paul Shaffer and Anjelica Huston. Christopher Guest, imitating an English accent, is a hoot as main band member Nigel Tufnel…...Now, I’m all for noirs, especially of the kind made in the 1950s, but sometimes you’ve got to blow the whistle. That’s the case with Gerd Oswald’s 1957 Crime of Passion. Talk about feminism. This is a feminist prototype and a screed against marriage in the oh-so-domestic Fifties. But come on. Barbara Stanwyck as Kathy Doyle, a hard-bitten reporter, quits her job and, based on a couple of dates, marries and goes all couply bliss with hubby Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden)? And is immediately so driven out of her mind by housewives’ empty chatter she plots, highly improbably, to undermine her husband’s career? Sorry, but this has all the trappings of a rushed slapped together script.