ian hart - The Screengrab

Screengrab's Guilty Pleasures (Part Six)

SARAH CLYNE SUNDBERG'S GUILTY PLEASURES:

PRÊT-À-PORTER (1994)

Let me draw your attention to a film that perhaps isn't so much embarrassing as severely underappreciated. In my mid-teens my mind was similar to cheap sausage; pretty much anything went in. This included a gem unique to the early '90s — Elle Topmodel. I could not get enough of the comings and doings of Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Kate Moss (those were supermodels, lest you did not know). Meanwhile I had my angry-girl Doc Martens and parka-wearing indie cred to protect. I kept my obsession with fashion and models under wraps. Happily, there appeared a film that was art house enough so that I could see it without shame: Prêt-à-Porter. This was Robert Altman's send-up of the Paris fashion week and the fashion industry at large. At the time, I thought it was all fiction (though thrilling) and laughed my ass off at the prissy TV anchor, the egomaniac fashion designers, and the three scary-looking fashion editors, shriveled in their severe brown bobs. And last but not least, the two journalists who holed up in their hotel room, reporting the shows off the TV while screwing and getting trashed off the booze in the mini bar. That was before I knew the world well enough to realize that some things don't need to be made up. The movie also reads like a best-of '60s Euro movies with Sophia Loren, Anouk Aimée and Marcello Mastroianni knocking about on screen. I find that unlike Elle Topmodel, Prêt-à-Porter has only improved with age.

Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films (Part Six)

And now, the war films that didn't quite make our official Top 25...

HONORABLE MENTION

LAND AND FREEDOM (1995)

Land and Freedom is Ken Loach at his most unabashedly leftist and over-earnest, but by Jove it is enjoyable! It certainly helps that unlike many other Ken Loach films, Land and Freedom is not set among pale, pudgy and poorly nourished people in some post-industrial British shithole. Well, it may start and end there, but no mind, that isn't what you will remember. The story quickly whisks you off to the heady days of the Spanish Civil War. A young English Socialist goes to Spain to fight the good fight and finds himself chanting "¡No Pasarán!" among the Catalonian hills amid leftist in-fighting galore, and plenty of sexy comrades who believe in free love. As icing on the cake, Ian Hart plays our hero (you may remember him as a young John Lennon in Back Beat — if you swing that way. No one does sullen English working class desperation with quite the same verve.

Take Five: Lennon

Hollywood loves John Lennon. It loved him when he was alive, and ever since he had the good taste to die and stop being such a crazy troublemaker, it's loved him even more. Playing Lennon in the movies is almost as profitable as playing Elvis in Las Vegas; as you'll see below, there seem to be no less than two professional actors who more or less make their living portraying the charismatic ex-Beatle. Still, the gig isn't without its problems; only a few years after his death, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, helped produce a (mediocre) TV movie called John and Yoko: A Love Story. All seemed to be going well until it was discovered that Mark Lindsay, the near lookalike they'd cast to play Lennon, was actually named Mark Chapman -- which, er, just happened to be the name of John Lennon's assassin. Friday, New York and L.A. will see the premiere of The Killing of John Lennon, Andrew Piddington's big-screen directorial debut, which tells the story of that Mark Chapman, but which doesn't actually feature anyone playing John Lennon; here's a few worthwhile films that do.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964)

Although many have tried, the fact remains that nobody does a better job of playing John Lennon than John Lennon. Moreso than any of the other Beatles, Lennon's combination of unassuming good looks (in contrast to the pretty-boy cuteness of Paul McCartney) and genuine charisma (as opposed to the merely amiable Ringo Starr) made him almost as compelling a figure in real life as he was on record. Richard Lester's irresistably fun day-in-the-life pseudodocumentary is a great showpiece for Lennon's natural likeability, even if Ringo tends to get the funniest lines, and it also serves as a virtual blueprint for rock star vehicles; it continued to be echoed on down through the years, with even movies like 1997's Spice World following its basic premise and format. Lennon would make a handful of other movies before his murder in 1980, but nowhere else is it as obvious why the public so took to the Beatles back in their heyday. No subsequent hagiography, conjuration or commentary could possibly do a better job than A Hard Day's Night of illustrating exactly what it was like to be there, and why John Lennon became so important to his generation.