Cream Film
Adimar Poynter
Breathe is the vanilla ice-cream tale of a handsome, charming, adventurous, good-humoured white man in late 50s Britain who, despite also being burdened with good friends, Claire Foy as his wife, considerable wealth, and fucking polio on top of all this, decides he's going to live instead of just lying there on the hospital bed and giving up. When he makes this decision, the movie's arc is essentially over, yet the film continues to cheerfully move upward and onward without interruption for the next 90 minutes. It's all so pleasant and affirming and, well, plain.
This British biopic is based off the real-life advocate for the disabled, Robin Cavendish. The man lived a long and productive life considering he was told he had only three months to live after being diagnosed with polio.
This film is produced by his son Jonathan Cavendish. In all seriousness, it is touching that he has endeavoured to craft a buttery, well-acted, sumptuously photographed cinematic love letter to his father, who I have no doubt was a remarkable man who contributed real good to the world. It really is nice. And why not, if he has the money and the connections and the talent, why not do just that? However, for anyone who is not Jonathan Cavendish and his family and friends, this is bloody tough to sit through. It's maddeningly averse to momentum, forget drama. And when there's the tantalising possibility of, like, basic conflict, it is easily nipped in the bud after a bit of British-y speech-making, just in case we might feel like something could matter and carry on over to the next few scenes. Bleugh, alright then.
Andrew Garfield is Robin Cavendish. As usual, Garfield is plucky and sensitive and holds the scene together when the script does him no favours. You get the sense that he took on this role just to see how expressive he could go with some pretty imposing limitations, how expertly he could flex those thespian muscles. An enjoyable bit of sport for him, I'm sure, but not enough to power a feature film on. Claire Foy has a thankless role as his doting and supporting wife, Diana. Foy relishes the chance to seize those dramatic moments, which are few and far between. Everybody else is a haze of very British window-dressing and they play their parts without fuss or sentimentality. Lest you construe that as a compliment, I'll make it clear that it's a shame, because a little bit of syrup might've spiced things up.
Ice Cream Man is a 1995 American direct-to-video black comedy slasher film produced and directed by Norman Apstein and written by Sven Davison and David Dobkin. The film stars Clint Howard as the title character, Olivia Hussey, Jan-Michael Vincent, David Warner and David Naughton. The film's plot follows a deranged man (named "Gregory Tudor") who was recently released from a psychiatric institution and opens up an ice cream factory where he begins using human flesh in his recipes. The film has developed a cult following among viewers. Joe Bob Briggs hosted the film on TNT when it was shown on MonsterVision. Howard himself made an appearance, discussing the film with Briggs. The film had an estimated $2 million budget and was released on DVD in 2004.
One night, Gregory kills a dog belonging to Nurse Wharton, his landlord and an orderly who treated him for his childhood trauma. The same night, Roger, a neighborhood boy, goes missing. Having witnessed Gregory's creepy personality, the other children suspect him of kidnapping Roger, but the police and Wharton do not. Three kids, Johnny, Heather, and Tuna, agree to search for Roger. Soon after, another boy known as Small Paul disappears.
Initially unable to prove that Gregory is dangerous, the kids have a difficult time getting the police to pursue their claims. Meanwhile, Gregory has recurring flashbacks to his abusive treatment at the Wishing Well Sanatorium. As the kids dig deeper, they discover that Gregory kidnapped Roger and Small Paul, and imprisons them in a cage at the parlor. However, Small Paul shows a macabre interest in the experiments, so Gregory takes him under his wing.
Two detectives investigate the Wishing Well, which is unregulated and free-for-all; the unstable patients roam freely and cause chaos, while the doctors and administrators are insane. Escaping, the police now believe the children, and prepare to search for Roger and Small Paul. Gregory kidnaps Tuna, and Heather enlists the help of Johnny's older brother Jacob to investigate, but Gregory kills Jacob and his girlfriend. Small Paul baits Gregory by holding a photo of the Ice Cream King over his face, and leads him into the main mixer, where Gregory is dismembered.
Roger and Tuna are reunited with their friends, who reveal that Small Paul has been sent to therapy. The final scene shows Small Paul alone in a darkened room, silently churning an ice cream bucket, his face twisted into an evil leer, just like Gregory's.
On October 9, 2014, a Kickstarter campaign, backed by star Clint Howard, was started to fund a sequel (titled Ice Cream Man 2: Sundae Bloody Sundae) to coincide with the film's 20th anniversary.[1] The campaign was closed on 30 October 2014 after only 70 backers, and just over $4,000 was made. However, it is stated that the project has not been abandoned and that they are looking for a new crowdfunding structure and alternative financing for the film. There is no current news on the filming of the film.[2][3]
The film pops up occasionally, and is shown at film clubs and 16mm film festivals. For instance, an internet search reveals that it was shown at a 16mm film festival in San Francisco in November, 2010. Some film libraries still have the title. As it is with these old 16mm films, age takes its toll on them, and the colours often get a red hue which gets worse and worse over the years. You can see this on the stills from the film in this very article.
It seems to me that Geraldo Rivera commissioned this film from Braverman. To this end, he got in touch with Dave Morrell, who recently (1972) had been in the New York media as a Beatles collector, something unheard of in those days, so soon after the group had broken up.
Rivera wanted Morrell to supply records and memorabilia from their collection to be used in the film. Morrell enlisted help from his young fellow Beatles collector friend, Ron Furmanek. Furmanek proceeded to make an inventory list of what they had, and supplied this to the filmmakers.
In the mid 70's when I was about 12 I discovered the local library loaned out 16mm movies (along with projectors). They had the Braverman film and I remember checking it out several times, watching it over and over in my bedroom. This was well before the advent of home video, so it was a rather thrilling experience.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are, in my opinion, the best modern-day comedy duo that we have. They have worked on a total of 8 movies together and the incredible chemistry they share with each other probably stems from the fact that they are long time best friends in real life. Add Edgar Wright to the duo and you get comedy gold like the Cornetto trilogy. The movies were co-written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, directed by Wright and co-stared by Pegg and Frost.
While none of the films are about ice cream, the frozen treat is a running gag in all 3 movies, hence the Cornetto trilogy. It's also, according to Edgar Wright, the best hang over remedy there is. Three movies, three flavors: strawberry for Shaun of the dead (red for zombies), the original blue wrapper Cornetto for Hot fuzz (blue for the police reference) and mint for The World's end (green for aliens). The Cornetto is also among the few elements binding the three movies together because there are no recurring characters despite the fact that Pegg and Frost star in all three films. In each feature they play different characters, with different names and different personalities, living different lives. And yet, you could watch them all in one sitting and find nothing wrong with it. Why? Because the movies are hilarious, extremely well-written and produced, and the strong bond between Frost and Pegg make their characters exceptionally endearing.
Shaun of the dead is a romantic zombie comedy about Shaun, an unfocused salesman who is trying to win his girlfriend's love back in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Along the way, he also has to drag around his deadbeat friend, his girlfriend's annoying roommates and save his mother from zombie attacks.
The idea for the film originated during the production of episode of Spaced, a British TV show Wright, Pegg and Frost worked on. During that particular episode, Pegg's character spent the whole night playing video games and started hallucinating that he was fighting zombies for real. It was at that moment that Wright thought of doing a whole feature about zombies. It was a brilliant idea because the film became an instant hit and cult-favorite. Though a comedy, Shaun of the dead is one of the best homages to the classic post-apocalyptic zombie movies like Night of the living dead. The film itself became, in my opinion, a classic.
Hot fuzz is a buddy cop comedy about Nicholas Angel, a Metropolitan police officer who is so good at everything that he makes his colleagues look bad. To remedy the situation, his superiors decided to "promote" him to the position of sergeant and transfer him to a small village, Sandford, in Gloucester. Sandford is statistically known as the safest village in the country. They hadn't had a murder in over 20 years and their biggest problems seem to revolve around a swan that's escaped. Angel had trouble adapting to his new slow-paced environment when he noticed something extremely odd about his new home: while the murder rate is very low, the accidents, on the other hand, are suspiciously frequent. No one wants to believe his conspiracy theories, except for his action-movie-obsessed partner. Together, they investigate the recent strings of fatal "accidents" that seem to befall on some residents.
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