The Keeper (2018)

St Helens, England, 1944

I can't tell you how much of a rush that opening caption from The Keeper gave me. You see, it's not often that a film is set in my hometown. Not just my hometown, but on the very streets immediately beyond my front doorstep and within my local pub. And OK, they didn't film it here, they filmed it in rural Northern Ireland, which doesn't really look anything like here but yeah, let me have my moment.

Bert Trautmann is a legend here in St Helens. Arriving in the town as a German POW, his prowess as a goalkeeper soon caught the attention of St Helens AFC's manager Jack Friar, whilst his good looks captured the heart of Friar's daughter Margaret. Of course, being a former soldier in the Wehrmacht (and one awarded the Iron Cross to boot), Trautmann's reception in the town was initially a hostile one in the immediate aftermath of the war, and this struggle to be accepted was further magnified when he signed for Manchester City, one of the biggest clubs in England, in 1949. But Trautmann's gentlemanly conduct, his desire to move on and make the best of things, and his outstanding performances on the pitch soon won even his fiercest critics over. As a player with Man City, he will forever be remembered as 'the man who played on' when, during the 1956 FA Cup Final, he broke his neck but refused to leave the pitch until victory was secured.

It is very weird watching a film set in your hometown though, seeing locations on screen purporting to be places you know, and seeing household familiar actors portray people whose children, grandchildren and relations you also actually know to talk to. As I say, the location filming doesn't really look much like what St Helens looked like during this period (nowhere near industrial looking enough really) and the exterior location of the Junction Inn (my nearest pub) is particularly unrecognisable, I mean it's called the Junction because it's directly opposite the train station so to not factor that in was a bit remiss, but they've clearly worked from photos of the now demolished 'town ground', as us St Heleners affectionately called the team's ground, as the stands as depicted brought back memories. I often have an issue about accents and getting them right (and wrong) in films and it's fair to say that no one on the screen here really convinced me as coming from St Helens, with the possible exception of Barbara Young as Grandma Sarah. John Henshaw, who plays Jack Friar, is performing in his usual Manchester Ancoats accents, whilst Freya Mavor (playing Margaret) and the rest of the cast are doing a generic northern accent that often sounded more Yorkshire to my ears than Lancastrian. To be fair, St Helens is a strange accent these days, with no two people ever really sounding the same; some sound proper Lancastrian, whilst others sound scouse, but the former was definitely the way to go for the actors here. Did any of this detract from me appreciation of the film? No, not really. I'm just glad that they got some good details in - such as the team singing 'When the Saints Go Marching In', a St Helens anthem used for both football and rugby league - and have bothered to tell the story in the first place. It's been a long time coming; the actor Warren Clarke, a staunch Man City fan*, had long harboured a desire to make a film of Trautmann's extraordinary life and it's a shame that he didn't live to see this. 

I can't fault the performances either; David Kross is very good and believable as Trautmann, both on and off the pitch, and he possesses good chemistry with Mavor, an actress who is fast becoming a crush for me. John Henshaw is always good value, that goes without saying, but I did feel that the likes of Gary Lewis, Dervla Kirwan, Dave Johns and Julian Sands were a little wasted in their supporting roles. As a film, I wouldn't say The Keeper did anything spectacular and may hold little interest for anyone outside of the north west or those who do not follow football, but it was a very enjoyable watch that didn't seek to simply gloss over Trautmann's war record and the discomfort he felt about having to perform such a duty. I may be reading a little too much into it here, and I have to be a little careful about what I say, but in some respects The Keeper feels a little timely now as a Brexit movie. St Helens, to my eternal disappointment, was a leave voting town (as indeed were so many towns scarcely troubled by immigration and who had previously benefitted greatly from EU funding) so there's something of a contemporary resonance in seeing characters purporting to be from here (and later from Manchester) telling a German immigrant to go home and treating him with vitriol. Now obviously with the war, these people had a much greater and more genuine reason for hating a foreign migrant than any xenophobe has towards a wholly innocent one in today's climate, but I felt that the parallel was still there nonetheless and that the harmonious message of forgive and forget that the film has is one that is needed now more than ever. Then again, with the news as it is, maybe everything I view feels like it's shot through with Brexit nowadays.

*One other famous Man City fan also makes a contribution to the movie; Noel Gallagher's song, 'The Dying of the Light', plays over the closing credits.

Someone Else (2006)

Someone Else is a 2006 modern day London romcom from writer/director Col Spector. 

A few years back I caught another film of Spector's, Honeymooner, on BBC2 late one night and enjoyed it, despite the Radio Times trashing it with a one star rating that I felt was deeply unfair. Spector's style owes a debt to Woody Allen, with London standing in for the controversial auteur's beloved New York, but I don't think that emulation - which could easily be seen as pretentious in itself - is what actually irritates his critics. I think they're more concerned with the fact that he depicts a certain type of selfish, middle class, trendy creative types in his films. These are characters who, in reality, aren't really likeable and who, as the critics seem to address, aren't really likeable on screen either. But that kind of misses the point and anyway, aren't Allen's characters more or less these kind of people too? Is it a case of the critics knowing too many London types to relate to Spector's protagonists, as opposed to the free pass they give Allen because they don't personally know the same kind of New Yorkers?

Certainly Stephen Mangan's central character of David here is meant to be a bit of a berk and the sort of selfish self pitying character he excels in, so the criticism doesn't really hold much water. I guess it just depends on how much you can stomach not entirely sympathetic leads. He's the kind of bloke who believes that, as the strapline says, 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the bed'. To that end, he throws over his lovely, sensible girlfriend Lisa (Susan Lynch) for a flighty, younger model called Nina (Lara Belmont), but soon finds cause to regret it when Nina reveals she wants nothing to do with him because she's now seeing someone else - a married man. The film then concerns itself with David attempting to get back into the dating scene, but realising his mistake with Lisa far too late. 

The dating scene sequences are quite wryly amusing actually as we see just how inept and out of his depth David now is. Plus, there's room to see his best mate Matt (Chris Coghill, who also starred in Honeymooner) try his luck with the ladies too. Matt, a seemingly eternal singleton who is socially awkward with girls, is a much more sympathetic character and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in seeing more of his story as opposed to David's. But then, I've always rather liked Coghill. 

Speaking of favourite actors, John Henshaw pops up in a small role here as a colleague of photographer David. Henshaw is the kind of old style Northern comic character actor who always raises a smile whenever he appears to the extent that I personally believe that any movie is instantly improved when there's a role for him. He needs to be in more movies.

Out On Blue Six : Cilla Black

This one has been going round my head for some time now on account of the tantalising trailer (shown below) for ITV's upcoming biopic Cilla, written by Jeff Pope starring Sheridan Smith as Cilla Black herself and Aneurin Barnard (who had previously played David Bailey in BBC4's We'll Take Manhattan opposite Karen Gillan as Jean Shrimpton as her husband Bobby. Also in the cast are John Henshaw and Melanie Hill as Cilla's parents and Ed Stoppard as Brian Epstein. I can't wait!

End Transmission

The Rochdale Pioneers (2012)

This is my second watch of The Rochdale Pioneers, a beautifully shot little fifty minute feature film, specially commissioned as a tribute to the founders of The Co-operative Movement here in the heart of the north in the 1840s.

The conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought with it widespread famine, chronic unemployment and drastic wage cuts in the working classes of the UK.  Four years later, in Manchester, a peaceful call for reform to improve conditions and gain suffrage  ended in tragedy; the demonstration being cut down by cavalry in what became known as the Peterloo Massacre. From there, many co-operative ventures commenced taking tentative steps  to improve conditions, but they had all faltered and failed.

This is where we join the action of the film; in 1844 Rochdale, the pioneers of the movement  are determined to succeed and  to provide affordable alternatives to tarnished poor-quality food and provisions, using 'honest weights and measures', with the surplus benefitting the community. It was the vision and efforts of this small number of working class men that became the true birth of the co-operative movement, with the principles still in use by the modern co-operative today (despite the scandal and misfortune to strike the Manchester based co-op of late); a movement which now numbers around 1.4 million independent enterprises with nearly 1 billion members worldwide.

It's a loving and fitting though admittedly earnest tribute, nicely presented and portrayed with Mancunian favourite John Henshaw standing out in particular in the cast. It may be somewhat reminiscent of the old educational TV series How We Used To Live, but I reckon that's in its favour rather than a criticism. I still maintain, as I said in my original review, that this would be a useful tool to play in classrooms up and down the country.

Theme Time : Roddy Frame - Early Doors

Craig Cash is one half of a writing partnership, with Caroline Aherne, responsible for the sitcom The Royle Family. It's a programme whose popularity continues to be inexplicable for me, I cannot understand how a handful of jokes have managed to keep the show going for its initial two series run between 1998-2000, let alone the revival from 2006 to present day thanks to a string of Christmas specials.

However, following a fall out with Aherne in the early 00s, Cash got together with his long time friend and newcomer to TV, Phil Mealey and created what I believe to be a genuinely great sitcom - Early Doors, which ran for two series on BBC2 between 2003-2004.

Like The Royle Family, this sitcom was also set in Manchester and concentrated on one setting; The Grapes pub, which is run by Ken (the brilliant John Henshaw) Each episode focuses on the everyday, nothing in particular activities of the various locals who walk through the door for a pint and a catch up. An impressive cast including Cash and Mealey themselves, Christine Bottomley, a pre Hollywood James McAvoy, Maxine Peake, Mark Benton, Lee Ingleby and Mike Leigh regular Peter Wight to name but a few bring these characters to life voicing the dry northern wit that colours each script.

The theme tune was by former Aztec Camera frontman Roddy Frame. Both Cash and Mealey were fans of Frame and were listening to his 2002 album Surf when they heard the track Small World and requested it for the show, Frame happily agreed and the rest is sitcom history

For me it's a shame that The Royle Family gets all the plaudits when Early Doors was consistently funnier. It's tenure alone means it is somewhat overlooked compared to its older longer running sibling. But Early Doors remained small and perfectly formed.