Film Writings
Notes on FilmsThe Martian is a simple film. It's terrific as an entertainment, keeping to the one situation, getting the stranded astronaut home, and building from that, with a variety of characters. The best thing about it is that it has a sense of wonder about people's reaction, not the planets, and never tries to pretension itself out of its b-movie plot roots. Instead its humorous, humane, keeps to the point, and delivers characters that are naturalistic and who don't always stick to what should be their type in this kind of story. the stranded astronaut is curious, resourceful against the odds, but sometimes a dick. But you still like him, in fact it makes him more likable to see his crabby side. The people trying to rescue him are trying their best to help but deal with the real world and its compromises, so their eventual sacrifices and moments of heroism make the story more emotional. the direction and writing is subtle. It's just one of those this one works types of films. Everything came together.
Avengers 2 is a cluttered mess if you're gonna be objective about it but is just so damned entertaining despite its flaws. It has fun action, a good if underused villain, some terrific character moments and jokes, and some wonderful small character moments. It's just that it has enough plot for a 3 hour film so things get compressed and sometimes lose their intended impact. It's probably the most under-rated blockbuster of the year, and it finally gives us some good Hawkeye moments. One of the interesting things is that the key emotional relationship that comes through both films is Hawkeye-Black widow. The superheroes have their moments but this one seems to be the one that underpins a lot of the stories, even though a lot is done subtly. Murnau's Faust is a masterpiece AND very entertaining. Mephisto wagers with the heavens for the earth that he can corrupt the most kindest soul, Faust. He succeeds, leading to some astonishing moments of horror and fantasy, but cannot overcome a prime emotional connection that Faust makes, which is love. While this could sound tawdry, it's a beautiful, primal film, with astonishing images such as Mephisto and his dark wings spreading over the town. It works due to simplicity. Prehistoric Women is indefensible. It's terrible yet oddly compelling. Hammer made it, trying to switch from British horror to fantasy but they get everything wrong, cluttering the dumb story scene after dull scene. It's odd that it goes from the real world to an alternative world and even though this is a fantasy trope, I couldn't help but compare it in some way to The Matrix but racist and out of its mind awkward on the idea of alternative worlds. It's a film that you should see because of how weird it is. Superman 2 authorship
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2015 So farAs usual with films there's been good and there's been bad.
The strongest films of the year so far have been Mad Max Fury Road, John Wick and Inherent Vice. Fury Road and john Wick are action films so wonderfully done that it's a miracle they were released within a year of each other. That's unusual for two classics. Both have stripped down narratives, use clear action progression, are carefully paced and have terrific lead characters who say very little but give exactly what is needed. Mad Max probably edges ahead for its truly insane action and for having two great characters (Max and Furiosa) but both are movies that will be watched years from now with awe. Following The Raid 2 and Ninja 2, we seem to be beyond shaky-cam and into a era of great action movies. Now to the dreck for a moment. Worst film for me so far has been American Sniper. While there are many incompetent films this one had decent work done in it yet was dull, obvious, choppy in its story-telling and didn't do any justice to its potential, that of the effects on war on the psyche of a normal man who is a professional soldier. A film such as The Hurt Locker or the TV mini-series Generation Kill dealt with the situation with nuance. this was dial-a-cliche. Back to the great. Inherent Vice is a great character comedy, with a wonderful oddball story and unique characters. Explaining much about it does a disservice, as the film is an experience above all. It has great moments of melancholy beneath the humour, and might be Paul Thomas Anderson's greatest achievement so far, as a strain for significance that cancels what is apparent in character work that affected earlier films is nowhere to be seen. Let's go to the very flawed. Jurassic World and Terminator Genysis are deeply lazy films in their writing. Neither can be bothered truly re-inventing themselves. Terminator tries a little harder but its inability to do much with its base ideas in its second half squanders goodwill from first half changes to the series lore. It could have been an interesting sci-fi movie but ends up mediocre. But it's better than the last two films in the series and at least had some momentum and recognition of the underlying sadness of the original film. Jurassic World is a mechanical sequel that does nothing new and yet manages to be acceptable to the masses. Its fine if you turn your brain off but is deeply stupid if you dont. It's a depressing film as it suggests no-one cares what they are watching and how it's made, as the execution is barely competent yet the highest-grossing film of the year so far. Back to the good. Predestination and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation are films that won't be seen as classics but are very good at what they do. Predestination is a sci-fi time travel film that shows up how limited Terminator Genysis is by taking on the twisted logic of time travel to its logical conclusion, that it will drive you mad and then to spiritual exhaustion. Hopefully it's a major cult film in the making but I don't want to write too much about it as it potentially spoilery. Mission Impossible Rogue Nation is, like numbers one and four in the series, a text-book example of how to make an excellent entertainment. It's only real purpose is to go from one terrific suspense/action scene to the next, and they're all very entertaining and twisted, but has lots of humour, plot turns, and lots of details lesser films would ignore. It also has a great motorbike chase and opera scene, doing what it needs with a clear knowledge of what people want from it. There have been some other good entertainments that are worth a look. Ex Machina (good first two-thirds, duff ending), Avengers Age Of Ultron (messy plot but great character moments), Birdman (Not as deep as it thinks it is but entertaining), Fast & Furious 7 (Silly, too long but loads of fun, especially in the mountain heist) and Ant Man (Derivative, with no stand-out scene, but very enjoyable). These films all have very obvious flaws but work as good entertainments. To The Wonder & Cloud AtlasThe mainstream has been fairly weak and specifically wretched on a basic scripting level. To the side of this, the more ambitious, art-house side of medium has delivered real achievements.
To The Wonder is a major achievement. Like Robert Bresson’s later films such as Un Femme Douce and Lancelot De Lac, it has been criticised by many, even its director’s admirers, as a self-parody of an established auteur style. This is unfortunate. It is in fact a major advance for Terrence Malick, is pared and focused, is stronger than either The New World or Tree Of Life. It’s the story of a romance that floats in and out of commitment and emotional engagement by its lovers, who are a flighty, emotionally fragile French woman and a closed off American engineer. It takes in their initial romance, their early days of living together, their split and the man’s failed romance with another woman, the woman moving home and returning to the man, an affair by the woman, and finally confused commitment to one another by both parties. The film works on the logic of a silent film. Much of the dialogue is kept to a minimum, nothing important said outside voice-over. The characters are trapped by their inability to express themselves, are inside their limited understanding of the world, possess desires that causes them pain whether embraced or denied. The characters move through space, happy or sad, together or apart, the film felt using essential, pared movements, accumulating through a variety of emotional states. What is important to the approach is that the emotions are not written into glib dialogue, nor is the story progression shown in segments that suggest an growing artificial understanding of the other. Each of the lovers remains trapped by themselves, each story area informing the next yet they remain apart in soul, allowing the reactions and voice-overs to allow us to understand how the lovers misunderstand one another. The film is about being apart yet somehow in love, yet not understanding the realities and the subtler inflections of these emotions, nor what to do with them. The pace of the film is careful to be tied to the emotions, the pain of the situation, of what is desired but not very well understood. All that is left is confusion. Despite their marriage in the film, the lovers do not truly become a couple until the ending. Even then this is tenuous, has issues that affect a relationship. The film is about the inexpressible pressures on a soul yet is not expressionistic. It has a relaxed, naturalistic style, which informs the viewer through a scenes pacing, the framing of shots and people in expansive or domestic landscapes, and through the acting, which is superb and pared to the emotional essence of a character. This is a masterpiece, inspired by Murnau and Bresson, but has its own voice and sense of obsession. Cloud Atlas isn’t on the same scale on achievement. It is an anthology story that is inter-cut rather than played sequentially. Most of its flaws are results of keeping clarity within stories that are being inter-cut, so the film does not become obscure. Therefore its storytelling and themes hit slightly obvious areas at times, there are dialogue issues, and there are segments of the film that stretch beyond the interest point. Yet it’s still a worthy film. The film jumps between six stories, is focused upon the development of a variety of souls, played by the same actor in each segment, as humanity rises and falls. It is focused upon the personal and societal cul-de-sacs that individuals and a culture possess and are dominated by. They are based in the financial, reputation, scientific dominance, family, sexual and evolution. Most stories deal with one or more of these areas. The film’s joy is in how the stories inter-cut. These stories are intentionally short story slight in plot but use the other stories to suggest additional weight. They have the pleasures of short stories yet they keep find the layers of how disparate stories, of failed love or rebellion against slavery, have base elements which are integral to how people express themselves from age to age, questioning how much people evolve truly over time. In the film, like To The Wonder, characters are unable to see beyond their personal prisons. In Cloud Atlas, sometimes the characters survive, sometimes they don’t. Humanity moves on, learning or not from the past. The past is finally only stories. I’m unsure if that’s pessimistic or realistic. It is an interesting ambiguous element. Certain souls played by actors seem to develop in a positive fashion while others seem to not change or devolve. The film was written and directed by The Wachowski’s and Tom Twyker. It’s a terrific achievement by both. CobraA brief note on Cobra, as that's all it deserves. Anyone who has seen Cobra knows that its an utterly ridiculous film. Its a film that a movie star or big-league director makes at the top, when no-one says no, that's a bad idea. (sort of like The Hobbit, or Costner with The Postman).
It's Stallone's most bizarre film that I've seen (haven't yet viewed Over The Top, but don't worry, eventually I will.) The film makes no sense on all sort of levels but its at its most ridiculous when Stallone sets up his character. Its literally an insane number of bizarre tics that are unintentionally hilariously funny. He's a man with a tooth-pick always in his mouth, who drives a 1950's car with a passion that is deeply suspect, who responds to the most basic question about following the law with contempt. (The film is astonishingly right-wing). He has dialogue with his partner that is half-written and is literally gibberish. This kind of thing goes on for 45 minutes of utter insane behaviour, that feels like a parody of the cop cliches but is deadly serious. Then there's 45 minutes of dumb scenes of shooting people, which are crass, unexciting but strangely enjoyable in their demented fury. The most absurd element is Stallone's home. He has police files in his home, which can be broken into at any time. He has a newspaper, which he places in his barbacue for safe-keeping. He eats a small bit of pizza for breakfast (which he then cuts one part of to save the rest for later). Inside an egg box he has his gun cleaner. (He cleans his gun a lot he he he). This film is a wall to wall example of an actor being completely egotistical and not noticing his own blind spots. Luckily he had a few movie bombs and returned to playing the underdog, which is the position he works best in with movies. But Cobra is one to see for demented actors at work. The Lord Of The Rings finally has its own Phantom MenaceUntil now, The Lord Of The Rings was unique in a film series. It had no film that people tried to forget about. Star Wars had Phantom Menace (the other prequels people debate regarding quality), The Godfather had Part 3, Alien had part 3 until the others were released and now part 3 looks terrific (especially the workprint). Indiana Jones has The Crystal Skull (which I didnj't think was much worse than the over-rated Last Crusade). The Matrix had Revolutions. The Exorcist had all the sequels (all of which were odd and more interesting than the original). Spiderman has been on a downward trends since Spiderman 3. Superman has had difficulties since Superman 3 (although I rate Superman Returns). The Dark Knight Rises is debated (and they had the Schumacher films, they still count).
The Lord Of the Rings could be smug. Ten years of how great they did the job and never let the fans down. (Star Wars and The Godfather managed 15 years of that, if we want to be accurate). But all those weaker films or odder films, the many part 3's, can be amused. The Hobbit is a total catastrophe. Its what happens when you bring in a director who has lost all real interest in the series but needs a hit. Its what happens when no-one is looking at what is going on nor suggests editing things down. The plot is essentially The Dirty Dozen which takes nine hours. A group of flawed heroes go on a quest is the basic plot. We have an hour to introduce the characters and set-up. And you can't really follow all the characters, what they're about, clarifying the emotional and logical reason for the quest to the degree that would make the other eight hours compelling. (This is without a montage or full-length training sequence, so if you want to see Martin Freeman go Rocky with lots of running and dubious music, this film dissapoints on that score also. And even Rocky V is better than The Hobbit). So the first hour has some nice jokes and many bad ones, a huge action backstory set peice which looks nice but is boring, and a bit with Ian Holm as an older Martin Freeman, to link the film to Lord Of The Rings, which goes on forever but has no real narrative point. The strength of the first hour is Martin Freeman, who keeps the film going despite the director and the writing. He's terrific but deserves a better film. And then the journey begins, echoing the Fellowship Of The Ring. But having introduced everyone at once, instead of spreading the introductions throughout the first hour and a half, which would allow for each character to make an impact and have a sequence that would allow to get a handle on them, the film just has action. Lots of action. Yet none of it feels motivated. You have characters on a quest but it never is filtered into the action and their motivations enough for it to have any weight. They are meant to be reclaiming their homeland but that's an idea rather than something that is built into a powerful emotional thread. This is like The Phantom Menace trying to save a planet where you have no emotional connection to, thus leaving the action uninteresting. There are good ideas for the world, as the film does have imagination. But the sequences such as climbing the mountains that move or the fireside scene with ogres that turn to stone are either over too fast for real jeapordy to be felt or are played for laughs, rather than menace or atmosphere. So the film remains dull. There are two sections where the film feels a bit more like Lord Of the Rings. The first is the the Radgrast The Brown, played by Sylvester McCoy. The film actually finds its pacing here, has build, a mystery, menace of an old necromancer, leading to a meeting of the wizards and elves. For the first tiem the film has weight. And then the film moves on, to more action where people are tossed all over the place with no real effect. The second section is Bilbo meeting Gollum and finding the ring. Its very well played, and paced extremely well. Yet its intercut with the worst scene in the film, where Gandalf and 13 dwarfs fight and win against an army of orcs and ogres, which is likely the most stupid action scene you'll find in the next few years. There are funny gags but the insane lack of logic becomes annoying, especially as it takes you away from the best part of the film. Finally there's yet another dull action scene, against an orc hunting party that goes on and on, up and down trees, onto eagles, would have been fine if you cared by this point. But a confrontation between the protagonist and villain, the point of the scene, is left unresolved, as neither side win, to be continued. So the film can't even finish off its action thread, leaving the story formless. This should have been one film, as the story was basic, needed a hand that responded to and needed to find peotic elements in a simple child's story. It needed a director who could keep an eye on the main story points. Greedily spreading it over three films is a cynical decision that will bore the audiences and kill the reputation of the series. Peter Jackson used to make good films. Up to Lord Of The Rings they were enjoyable, sometimes very good. (The Frightners, which resembles The Hobbit most, was the weakest film). But King Kong, which spread its story far too long, robbing the film of its simple emotional beats, and the critically panned The Lovely Bones, lead to the self-indulgence of The Hobbit. Its a bad example to directors and leads to financiers not trusting directors with too much power, if they see the abuse on this scale. Yet these films are only made for the money now. They're hack-works. They feel tired, as scene to scene the film lacks attention. So the stories continue into senility. Blu-ray Transfers Of Older FilmsAs with any visual medium, there's good quality and bad. The area of blu-ray that interests me is transfers of films to blu-ray from the 1980's and beyond, back to the beginning of film-making.
Blu-ray and its disc memory has many advantages over DVD and video. Its clarity is potentially tremendous, which leads to greater depth in colours, shadows, contrast, creating levels in imagery that echoes cinema presentation. Video presentation managed lovel-level depth but was weak in sharpness and contrast. DVD offers terrific sharpness and decent contrast, but the conrast were extreme, leaving a flat, cold image. The images in DVD are compressed, meaning that static shots, moving shots along corridors, the inter-cutting of shots, and the efefcts of these cuts, lacked the visual punch and variation intended by a good film-maker. The focus of DVD was always clarity. Therefore blu-ray has a great advantage and potential in giving viewers a sense of the depth and uniqueness in older films, and how they were experienced in the cinema in years past, to show why certain films were so effective. Two recent viewing examples come to mind for me. One was James Whale's Frankenstein, a film made in the early 1930's. As a classic the film has restored many times over the years, therefore viewing a decent version of the film has never been a problem. On blu-ray however, use of lenses, camera movement, space and the timing of shots, framing choices, all become far more impactful, creatign a more moving film. Early scenes in the graveyards may highlight false background paintings and some skimping to work within a tight budget but the monsters make-up, Karloff's eye movements and still framing within blocks of light, Colin Clive's increasing madness, all come alive, allowing cuts between angles to have great emotional impact, making the film feel short and important in how to effectively convey story in a series of clear, simple images. The images of the monster moving through the countryside and the villages partying have interesting camera movement, effective cuts within action, pre-figuring 60's French cinema. It reveals how importnat a cinema vieiwng of Frankenstein is within cinema's development. A more modern film, The Terminator, has a terrific UK transfer. This transfer does not ignore the age of the film, or its low-budget origins. It gives clarity, depth to the backgrounds, allowing every action moment to be precise, without sharpening the image to make it seem false or over-worked. Therefore the film's raw power, which had great impact on release, can be felt throughout, soemthing which was lost on a flat, sharp, over-digitised DVD transfer. I would argue that this is the best way to present older films. Allow for their blemishes. Don't over-use digital advances, as the raw power and humanity that created these films are lost. There are bad examples of this type of work, usually carried out to make an older film seem more modern than the original print can support. Late 1980's action film Predator has a notorious over-digitised transfer which distances the viewer from what is a terrific raw pulp film. Robocop has a terrible grainy transfer that is taken from the director's cut, which jumps between decent but unremarkable to terrible quality. The work on these films is shoddy. When BFI can ressurect good transfers of Red Dessert (mid-1960's), or Comrades (late-1980's), both of which were difficult to come by for years, then this is a disgrace. In the larger budget field, Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind managed good transfers without looking cheap or over-produced (Let's ignore the Special Edition digital shows for now, I'm writing on the 95 percent of the film that is untouched by these effects.) The situation is basic. In high-definition, bad work shows up very easily. Therefore solid work done with taste has to be carried out. This means clarity on the physical state of the older films, the style in which they were made, the intentions over-all and within the cutting of sequences, and on the stated intentions of the film-makers involved. SUMMER FILM ROUND-UPAnother the stupid season of summer films year has gone by, and what has come about?
Mediocrity on the whole. Not the type of fun year full of great entertainments like T2, Drag Me To Hell, Robocop or, obviously, Raiders Of the Lost Ark. This was more like a slow descent into a shrug. Was that it? With The Bourne Legacy we had a dull-witted thriller which hung around tiredly like the dead, in The Campaign a comedy about politicians that forgot to make characters and develop funny situations beyond blabbering around and being obnoxious to women (like a David Cameron interview), in The Expendables 2 an over-the hill action ensemble that started decently and then devolved in a direct to DVD plot, wasting young current action men (Jason Statham and Scott Adkins) in favour of geriatrics in an airport, and of course, The Amazing Spiderman. Apparently there was a script for that. Of course there were decent moments. Prometheus had the visuals but a bad story. The Dictator, while being a bit simple in plot, was vicious and funny. The Dark Knight Rises was ponderous but had ambition and terrific moments, and was a disguised remake of Escape From New York. The Avengers was fun, the best of the bunch but had serious plot problems. It was kinda of a remake of Rio Bravo, which works for me. So to break down the good in more detail. And even bits of the weak. For Prometheus, what’s great about the film is that in the age of OTT stupid CGI idiocies like Transformers, this film made use of atmosphere, horror and was really pretentious. It may have been stunningly stupid for a few moments but that’s fine. If you’re “homaging” 2001 and Quatermass, I’ll allow a few slip ups. It was about the evolution of mankind, mysteries and scary monsters in a far off land, cut off from civilisation. It was genuinely attempting to evoke the wonder and fear of space-travel. It was terrific visual sci-fi and ok idea-wise. A few months later, I’d say it was a worthy effort. But the alien at the end was really stupid. The Dictator was my favourite type of comedy/satire, that of a monster who doesn’t really change, but can be used to parody every movie convention about becoming a better person. It had some very good jokes about dictators, PC left-wing loonies, stupid people who think they’re not stupid, and was generally under-rated when released. Worth seeing if only for the ironic speech about why American should be a dictatorship at the ending. The Dark Knight Rises was the most comic-book, and the least pretentious, of the Nolan Batman films. It even used the “some days you can’t get rid of a bomb” bit from Batman: The Movie, but left out the marching bands and ducks. It had the best action scene of the series where in a terrific sequence where Batman goes after bank robbers while being chased by the entire police force (not as funny or knowingly ridiculous as The Blues Brothers car chase of the same type). It had Tom Hardy’s Bane, full of muscles and talking like Vincent Price (that’s a compliment by the way). It had the great sequence where Batman had to climb out of a hellish prison. It was a self-serious but well-meant, overblown and a bit mad, and there’s not enough of those kind of films. The good news is this was the episode where Bale finally nailed the Batman character. So Batman 8 was a good one. (I’m counting Adam West) Finally The Avengers, the House of Superheroes for those of you who know your 1940’s Universal monster mash-ups. The good news is that The Hulk was back, redesigned not to be the woeful Norton version, a lot more like the Ang Lee version. The bad news was the terrible Captain America costume redesign. The great news was that the villain Loki was really bitchy and smug, so dialogue scenes were great fun. Unfortunately for him, talking that way to The Hulk, gonna get you the recipient of the best mainstream moment of the year. The film was pulp done right. It didn’t have the crazy ambition of The Dark Knight Rises, or other more interesting films in its genre like Hulk or Batman Returns, but it’s difficult to think of a way to do this kind of film better. For the weaker films, there were pleasures. Bourne had Jeremy Renner, who kept the film afloat with many good moments of subtle acting, as did Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spiderman, before the never-ending but samey fight with the lizard began at the half-way point. Will Ferrell managed nice moments of obliviousness in The Campaign (roll on Anchorman 2) and The Expendables 2 had Dolph Lunghren telling jokes and the “we’re AMERICANS, No I’m British, I’m from Sweden, I’m from China” gag. So while there were too many films needing script-work, none were Batman and Robin/Speed 2 –type atrocities. But some felt like they should have gone straight to DVD. Psycho Remake And What Happens To Directors As They Age Or DieThe Psycho remake by Gus Van Sant, one of the most original directors working today, from a distance seems like a very important film in his development (kind of like Dead Ringers with Cronenberg, who went towards quieter subject matter) Here is the film, that while flawed, moved away from the mainstream narrative and was interested in people that as unknowable. Before this Van Sant seemed prone to having people talk too much about theme. After it, save a minor film, he went to the amazing films like Gerry and Elephant. It's ironic that he made the move within a film that's script is the mother of over-explanation (joke is intentional, couldn't resist).
The film is made from a real division. The Hitchcock original is visually brilliant (though very contained, only working within nightmare logic.) Norman Bates is a great, original character is a hodge-podge of every over-wrought theory on sex and violence (from mother-love to skinning to voyeurism to jealousy). They don't miss one and it doesn't make sense as a character when you think about it. But the dream logic on Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, trapped in their own polite private hells, more genuine and oddly British than any Merchant Ivory film has ever managed, has real resonance and manages to focus the stupid aspects of the story. Many of the talk scenes work beautifully even if they are only directed to surface readings, the cast doing deeper work than Hitchcock likely cared about. The end reveal is great as visual nightmare imagery, gives a lot of the undercurrent of fear that runs from the beginning but doesn't make a lick of sense as character. The last five minutes of the original is really bad. So I'm saying essentially that as visual entertainment its a stunner but as a script its got some woeful qualities. The remake is interesting in that it insists on being shot by shot, is fascinating in many ways yet is hamstrung by the script flaws Hitchcock created. The remake doesn't go in for literal dream logic. Its a film about emotional distance. The people in it are confused, fidgety. The visual style is of rooms with far too much information, from the offices, to Norman's front office, to the stores. The film is very European in that it expresses this through colours that explode through clothes, lighting that is perfect and rich, full of life. Yet the framing, while studying Hitchcock, is not focusing on what Hitchcock loved, which was showing information, then more information, showing the logic of suspense and then making it loopy and neurotic, so the plot becomes nightmarish. This film obscures plot points through diluting focus by so much colour, so you follow but from more objective quality. And you see the people not sure how to interact with one another except through cliches, suspicion or over-expressed emotion that pops through and causes awkwardness. Eyes are always watching others. The Marion Crane voice-overs, while in the original showed plot information and signs of nervousness, now dominate with nervous energy and lack of focus from the main character. Norman Bates is seen in the remake as not a likable fresh-faced young man but instead is a lonely neurotic who isn't quite right. For me, all of this is fascinating. All of the polite notes of the original are betrayed in subtle ways, showing a different world. The talk in the back room in the original was terrific but here is very desperate, as Vince Vaughn, in one of his best performances, is a fidgeting, hollowed out scared freak. When Marion Crane is killed, Norman is not a character you care about following here, is distanced. As a character work its far more intriguing on some level than in the original, as it places the tortured killer in his proper place, is not damning, is viewing him as one of many confused souls. Unlike Hitchcock, Van Sant isn't abusing your natural sympathies by making you identify with a killer for what are actually weak reasons on a rational level (he seems so sweet and victimised) even though they have interesting aspects. This levelling out on the characters, as well as distance, means that the second half loses a little in momentum (But the Macy- Vaughn verbal duel is great). The killings also lose immediacy as you are both disturbed by and aliented from the characters more, and by the killings themselves not being Van Sant's strength. The nightmare logic of the final ten minutes, when Norman's demons are revealed don't have any punch. They do look weak and grabby towards psycho-analysis. It's a shame in that while Van Sant's visualising does a lot of great stuff on character and mood, the plot does hobble him. What's good about Vaughn's performance, that he is hollowed out, nervous tics that cover vacant, nervous emotions, also suggest darkness, that hints at what's coming. But they also suggest something more mysterious and open to interpretation that was written in the original script. Some of the plot suspense that Hitchcock liked, that in his closed-off world added threat when Norman bates seems nice, seems to waste time when you feel there's something wrong, due to performance. So it's an unique film, far more fascinating than has been suggested on the remake's initial release. Hopefully people will begin to look at it more objectively. It may have a chance now as I don't think Hitchcock has the same cultural currency that he had when it was made. Hitchcock, it seems to me, is sort of like John Ford. He was of an era, was an entertainer who had great craft, who made a few great films that went beyond the limits of entertainments, had lots of interesting instincts. But to be a real lasting artist never really made enough great films, was not focused enough on what his work was about. I think in the last ten years Hitchcock has fallen away a little. Everything you can write about him, from Catholicism, Freud, use of suspense, misogyny, has been written. There's nothing really left. He's not as interesting as a person or as a director as Welles, Murnau or Kubrick, not to mention European masters like Bression, Antonioni, Bergman or Bunuel (if you want pervert as artist, he's the real deal), nor the Japanese genius of Ozu. He's not even as interesting as a British director as Powell-Pressenger, who made more great films, were consistent, hugely under-explored. All of these difficult directors have had far less writing done on them, probably because they are more difficult as subject matters. Hitchcock at the moment is in a slump. It'll be interesting to see what his real legacy is, as it is forming. Directors are odd as they age. After death they become geniuses for five years then a lapse. When they come back into interest, they always seem different, as if now complete and following a period of what could have been. Someone like Hitchcock is defined already, wouldn't have gotten better as there was little curiosity. Someone like Wells you can't help but wonder. As the movie brats approach the age when some will soon likely start dying, it'll be interesting to see what occurs. Will Speilberg and Scorsese last much beyond their deaths? My bet is Coppola will get the long-term praise, as his seventies work still towers above all else. His failings will mean he's less praised than people such as Bresson but he seems the most interesting still. Of the younger generation, still in the potential, its a little bleak. Cronenberg, Malick and Van Sant seem to have gotten a second wind, Schrader remain interesting but of the younger generation from them there's a slight dullness and collapse that seems reminiscent of the movie brats in the early eighties. Fincher made Zodiac, a toweringly dull film with no character or point, following Panic Room, an over-produced tech exercise with no ambition. He seems so focused on technical aspects that he ignores content now. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing good work now but not great. He always seems poised but seems better at craft than having an over-view of what he wants to do with his film. The Coens seem to be faltering uninterestingly between too broad comedies and humourless dramas but seem to have lost a spark, especially with dialogue, their great strength. Wes Anderson is faltering badly. His first two films were wonderful, the next two good but a tad ill-defined but still great mood. Now The Darjeeling Limited is such a bad film, so under-written and terminably stupid that it's hard to work out what the hell is happening with him. Essentially, is he aiming to be like Preston Sturges, once great, now a has-been after a brief flush. Alexander Payne seems focused on being horrendously smug and pretentious, Tarantino gone la-la on his movie geek fixation (but he doesn't, to me, seem terminal as of yet), Sofia Coppola interesting but too vague as of yet. You wait for some passion from her. Other people of interest are the Wachowski brothers, who like Fincher seem to be a bit too technophile but have more ambition (when they go wrong at least its wrong in ways that you think, that's interesting) So they seem to have promise, although they could avoid stating the subtext so much. As could Christopher Nolan, another director interested in visualising ideas, even though he can be a bit tin-eared. But his fascination with self-destructive duality obsessed loners is pleasing. Let's hope he starts watching Melville movies. Aaronofsky I never really liked and The Fountain makes me not want to bother any more. One of the more interesting directors came a few years ago, is from this generation. Adam McKay does Will Ferrell comedies but is such an inventive entertainer with Anchorman and such-like, that he's just as original as the others mentioned. And more consistent. Of course the king of inconsistency is Steven Soderberg, who is all over the place, but does make interesting films generally (save a few Ocean's films) and recent films like Solaris and Bubble and the promise of the forthcoming Che make you wish more directors were as nuts as he obviously is. He still seems the brightest hope of this bunch. Hopefully the above is just a sign of looking at a weak moment of this generation and not the sign of something going horrendously wrong. Anyway, over-long rant over, go see Psycho remake. It's really interesting. Speed RacerSpeed Racer is an odd one this year. Its a film that simply put people off in advertising. To be honest, is it wasn't for the Wachowski's directing and writing it, I wouldn't have bothered either. But its such a unique film, like Ang Lee's Hulk, Robert Altman's Popeye or Walter Hill's Streets Of Fire.
The latter, like Speed Racer, was produced by Joel Silver, who also produced Hudson Hawk and The Hudsucker Proxy, other very odd films hated by many and loved by a select minority. Silver usually makes blockbusters like 48 Hours, Predator, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. And then he goes a bit mad for some tastes. And in odd times, his mad turns helps create the Matrix trilogy and V For Vendetta, odd popular films for the masses. But that is a divergence. Speed Racer is such a fun film for those who get on its wavelength, and such a disaster for those who don't. It does have video game look at times but that's CGI. It's really a live action movie that sticks to the car-crazy focus of a child who loves toy cars, silly ninja's, monkey's. It's a film for your inner eight-year old visually. The cars do things you wanted to see at that age, made by proper directors who remember such things, who can think of what a child would think a future-world should be like, what it would be like to play with those things on a sugar-bender. (the film shows this literally also) The film is terrific at knowing those small bits of fantasy that's plying inside the heads of certain characters (Speed, as a child, imagines driving in a race, done in the style a child would draw, which is a visual stunner, his little brother always imagining himself an his pet monkey in epic crude anime fights, which we see). If you don't get the joy of that type of fantasy, the film is not for you. The film has cars spinning, flipping over other cars, making insane skids, blowing up, making long jumps, cars going on gravity-defying loops, climbs and descents. Its not flawless. There are some moments where the film gets a little too literal in dialogue and voice-over (its meant for kids so sometimes things are spelled out a little too much at times). Half an hour in, while setting up the villain, the film does sag a little. Its only for a few minutes, things that could have been pruned but you do feel it. But some of the editing is tremendous. The brilliant first twenty minutes jumps back and forth through two races, between Speed racing and his brother Rex racing, gives small flashbacks within these races that gives all the backstory needed, with clear emotion, framing, pacing while still having a tremendous dramatic punch that is unique to proper cinema craftsmen. All the races work beautifully, especially the brilliant Road Warrior-influenced middle race, which is all about going fast against people who are brutally vicious thugs, which includes flipping a car and punching the driver of the other car as you flip over him. The final race does have a little bit too much exposition but manages truly insane shots, such as a long 90 degree dip of road, with a crashing car falling towards Speed as he navigates it, and adrenaline rushing moments as cars skidding on the edges over many long drops. The best visual element DVD is that the colours are brighter and clearer in the chases (film goes so fast you have to be paying attention to what's going on but is more focused with brighter colours) and all the shots of images flowing in and out of one another make definite visual sense. It is a film that was best seen for certain moments on the big screen but it does translate better to television than films such as The Incredible Hulk, which looks cheap and unforced in comparison. (This comparison also rang true in the cinema). To end, this one still is my favourite by far or the summer movies, followed by the eccentric Hellboy 2. Others, such as Iron Man and The Dark Knight (which I'm warming to, despite its flaws) work well but don't go to that extra bit of madness that for me great cinema thrives upon. District 9 and Inglorious BasterdsFor District 9 I have to say I wasn't too keen on this one. I've just seen it and found it to be disappointing due to the hype and basic script and film-making flaws. While its one of the better films I've seen released the past few months, that's not really saying much. The characters were base at all times without really being elevated by detail or world ideas that weren't just ripped off better movies. The lead character was essentially a remake of the typical plucky, a bit eccentric and conservative trying to make good under horrible circumstances Peter Jackson character (Brain Dead and Bad Taste to Lord Of The Rings all have that at the centre) but kinda watered down without the horrible details Jackson does. The alien monsters are essentially Dr Who rejects who start off scary but turn out good. (how many ET 80's clones did that in a dull fashion) And then they had all these dull action scenes with cliche-ridden moments or capture and sacrifice that are horribly corny and Black Hawk Down music in the last half-hour to suggest soul. All you get really is racism is bad and corporations are scum. Big deal. This one really needed more work in the planning stages.
Inglorious Basterds meanwhile, is a riot. Its a movie-mad orgy of odd scenes and characters, grand gestures and twisted logic, where Nazi's can be scalped by vengeful Jews, where hunted women can calmly burn down a cinema with Hitler inside while dying from gunshot wounds and where there can be a healthy obsession with German movie propaganda. There are a few off moments (the opening is too on the nose for the first minute in its spaghetti western influences while a Cat People song insert is just a mess). Some of the best moments came when people were at tables. Firstly we had the German "Jew Hunter" interrogating a farmer hiding Jews, which lasted about twenty minutes and was very tense, while another had some of the Basterds hiding as Germans in a bar surrounded by real Nazis and trying to fit in to avoid being killed. Finally we had a terrific scene where the Jew Hunter tries to sell out Hitler to the Basterds to ensure his own survival. There are other wonderful moments throughout but the table moments stick out. I read the script in a moment of weakness when it leaked on the internet but it didn’t ruin anything as I had forgotten many details. That script didn’t suggest the mood or tone of the film at all, feeling brutal, without the details of the close-ups and pauses. I don’t know if bits were cut but in the script the first Jew-Hunter scene seemed over-written but was prefect on screen. (It’s that Hawks comment, if it reads well it won’t play well). The script was solid and interesting but the execution raised it. Of huge importance is the DePalma influence. I was emailing this to a friend how the final section felt completely under DePalma’s influence, from the strangling (which also feels a little Fritz Lang in execution, and that’s a big compliment), the vaguely 60’s paranoia of cynical deals being made by unseen voices (Harvey Keitel if I’m not mistaken) and the sacrifices of many major, sympathetic characters, the Carrie burning section (with a very Hi Mom style of arts being dangerous) and the Scarface like massacre at the ending. I don’t think this was in any way a rip-off, just conscious/ unconscious influence within his own ideas (and I’m probably reading too much into them but I’m a massive DePalma fan and I enjoyed spotting the influences) The other two influences I think were Sam Fuller and his fifties movies (also check out Pitt’s big red one on his uniform (although that was a 1980 film)) and Jean-Pierre Melville films, which were either Resistance or gangster films, the subtle paranoia and pacing of both types were felt throughout Inglorious Basterds. So Inglorious Basterds is terrific and District 9 is only slightly better than Terminator Salvation, which is no sort of state for the hip sleeper summer hit to be in, is it. Public EnemiesPublic Enemies is the new Michael Mann film and it is beautiful. Its about death really, about people hanging onto something, adrenaline, a person, a job, to try and find a heartbeat, as life slowly draws to a close. The film is also about the rise of the FBI, from a series of state-controlled cop shops to one that is organised under J Edgar Hoover, with an eye to stamping down on organised crime.
The film is tied to the general facts, that Dillinger was released from jail, went on a crime spree, was caught, escaped again, things slowly going wrong for him as his people are slowly hunted down one by one by the feds while organised crime turns its back on him, leaving Dillinger with no way out. But its the details that really pump life into it. We start, as with many Michael Mann films do, is by following the central character, seeing his world. Its is a world of detail, the setting up of the crime, the spread of people, Dillinger working out exactly what he needs to do to be successful while being very careful about the dangerous world he is in. We see the world quickly through details within action but Dillinger is always still, always focused. Dillinger's problem is that he is defined by his society. He truly doesn't have much to him beyonds his smarts and what he thinks he is fighting for, which is money and to escape a lack of direction through direct action. Society and its appalling sins throughout the 1930's provides an enemy to him, something to define him. So when this society changes and gets wise to him, he has nowhere to go, has to wait slowly for death while those who he has genuine bonds with die one by one, usually in front of him, leaving him haunted, adrift and in hiding. The editing of the film is interesting in that the longer you spend with Dillinger without cutting away to others, this aspect comes through. This is a man in his own tomb, society around him focusing him in a way that leaves him few choices. Depp is great at suggesting a man adrift. I think this might be one of his very best performances, no longer fidgety, bored or distracted, which are some of his weaknesses at times as an actor. Here he always seems to be in the moment, seems challenged. Its pretty awful when you realise how little he is usually challenged by parts, always being too defined as quirky. This and his great turn in Sweeney Todd hopefully will lead to better work. Bale is great also, is the film's secret weapon in that he's stunningly precise, being given little in elaboration but works on the details to suggest life behind a very careful exterior. Melvin Purvis is a civilised man who has to hunt psychopaths, has to be brutal for the public to survive such types. Bale gives wonderful reactions throughout to suggest both the civilised man and animal hunter existing side by side, always both, always a painful thing he has to deal with. Like Depp he is a good actor who gets half-written parts to elaborate upon. When working with a director such as Michael Mann, the details become the character without speeches so Bale can really do what he does best, which is instinctive, without giving speeches that elaborate and dull what he does best without words. In some ways this is what I wanted to see Bale do with Batman. In this he seems so much sharper and alive than we've seen since The Prestige or Rescue Dawn, two other recent Bale highlights. I really hope he continues to work with Mann as I think there could be some amazing work if Bale moves centre stage in the next Mann film. Marion Coitallard is also terrific as Dillinger's girlfriend, playing what could be a dull part with a sense of the society that defines her. She doesn't have much screentime but really makes it a presence. Mann also gets back together with Stephen Lang, who plays Bale's lead hunter. Lang was in the masterpiece Manhunter, but more importantly, was the moral focus in Mann's other great work, Crime Story. Here he plays what should be a cold hunter and gives it stunning complexity. The film is great on the hunters of Dillinger, even though nothing much is said as its what's going on with looks and little shrugs, how someone studies a paper. Stephan Graham as the loony Baby Face Nelson is another indelible performance in a short time, as the guy is a nut but is cunning and animal like. The film is full of moments of grace, from Bale hunting Pretty Boy Floyd, to the bank robberies, which start off as a rush and keep that pace, even as they start to suggest doom and no way out, toe Dillinger's end, one of the great death sequences in cinema. The film is shot on video and looks terrific. Mann truly has worked the technology to be what he needs it to be. This film again shows that Mann is one of the few serious directors, along with Cronenberg, working today. Its an amazing experience, and like Miami Vice, sure to be underrated in favour of a more flashier type of film-making. Poor little Batman, always stating the subtext in self-hatredI was very impressed by The Prestige, with its terrific, carefully built atmosphere, odd characters who made selfish but intriguing decisions, a winding story that had interesting undertones throughout, that went beyond plot mechanics, it's a film I would consider one of the best mainstream films in the last few years, especially on rewatching.
The Dark Knight is a disappointing film in comparison. In an undemanding level it works as entertainment. As a Batman fan from childhood onwards, there were many pleasures, from seeing Batman at work, some of the Joker's schemes with their sick humour, Gary Oldman underplaying as the one sane man, especially seeing two-face done sort of right. These are basically moments of pulp influence, that you can watch in the film, that kicks into another level at a few moments. Problem is that the film takes itself very seriously in a way that drains, both in continued sense of entertainment, and in working of the director's ideas, that a serious film-maker should avoid. Every good moment usually returns to an uninteresting talky base, a large proportion of the film made up of scenes shot in flat distance, always with the city in background, getting old because the city was never staged dramatically. Distance is used, then dull back and forth coverage, rarely engaged visually by its own dramatic space, to let actors wander around the set and actually suggest character. They mostly stand still, locked by stiff staging. The direction felt uncomfortable in using dramatic visuals to tell the story. I noticed this film was talky because the talk was extremely bad generally. It was unfortunate as The Prestige, while not having great dialogue, did have a sense of pace, kept the pretentious musings to a minimum, had fun with them. Good dialogue usually tells the story. But this film's dialogue tells you exactly what the characters want, without elaboration. Everything is subtext explained so that characters cannot dodge what they mean, show what they are through action, indirect communication, even in silent close-up. Never happens as there is more subtext to explain away. Talk is weak especially with Batman. He's a dull, paternalistic psychopath who won't shut up, give sense of character nor say anything a learning-disabled adolescent wouldn't think. Essentially if your lead character is a bit thick, it really ruins a lot of the pleasure, especially if the film-maker doesn't notice it, or finds it profound in some way. What's worse is that he is defined through the dialogue, very rarely in interaction, that you never get a sense of darkness, or craziness, interior monologue or even a man thinking, so the sense of him being dramatically real in this world is lost, not to mention the reason why he does any of his actions. There's never a sense of a guy crazy enough to dress up as Batman. There are dramatic moments, where he has to decide whether to give himself up as being Batman, or he has to deal with the death of his love, that he does nothing, in action nor reaction within a series of scenes that defines the character as a person. It was a one-scene cliche, talk subtext of his pain then move on. Such a horrific treatment for the lead character, who has a tendency to be sketchy anyway, that leaves the film with a gap in connecting with the centre of the film and to lay groundwork to actual themes. This film manges to make Christian Bale, a very good actor who can do crazy, seem like he's channeling Adam West, but without the intentional humour. But he does seem to be unconsciously in love with Harvey Dent, so there is gay subtext, which helps and is always nice to see in a Batman film. At the end, the interaction feels like moronic, repressed ex-lovers bitching to one another and not a serious study of morality, which I think is what the film-maker's intended. Most of the other actors come out a little better but no-one is defined as they lack purpose in drama, are moving plot point to plot point. Everyone talks like children. There's a marriage proposal that's painful, is so basic, so soapy, that I was disgusted. Even the Joker has dull dialogue, is more idiotic the more he talks. The first time he's threatening but the more he speaks the more everything sounds repetitive. They are using The Killing Joke as a source, which has terrific Joker speeches, not in a terrific for a comic book but just terrific bits of madness, yet are not using the scenes in the film, which is a waste. Ledger does best in the film, does get the character, is a genuine threat always, is one of the few actors who use physicality to define character, in the way he holds himself, but is over-used as he really has nothing to say that isn't post-adolescent. I had enough of him halfway through the film, even though he's another villain I genuinely like. Things picked up towards the end, with his schemes to escape prison and to mess with the swat teams but what he had to say remained dull. Jack Nicholson was actually a more interesting version, had character oddities in dialogue. With such an extensive running time it manages to miss major dramatic opportunities, from the psychological creation of two-face, which is a little sketchy, to the way Wayne interacts with the world, to the human reaction to the joker's schemes, extends the film for the sake of action, leads to sequences that bloat the film, which is about half an hour too long. There's a lot of sequences designed to showing Batman toys that simply don't give story. Some of the casting of supporting actors is bad, a finale section on boats ruined by both casting of actors who are bland and indistinct, having modes of dull scared or dull noble, to an outcome which is sentimental and lacking in real-world character defining actions. Despite so much time wasted on action it tries so hard to be serious, define itself as being in the real world, to lay those genre influences and stretch them, redefine the comic book genre in a serious context. But the characters are written as defined in broad strokes, cannot connect to their visual world. As a crime story, unlike great modern crime, like Heat or TV's The Wire, there are no actual characters to propel the story, just mood. So the charge of watching an interesting character in the underworld (metaphorical but also subtly physical in urban landscape in the crime genre), making difficult choices, showing intent, going with or against intent, is missing. There is no charge as the scenes are either fun action that lack story or are unintenionally funny scenes that are entertaining for all the wrong reasons. The film ignores the wonderfully absurd aspect to the characters as tries to treat it seriously. It but comes across as a film ashamed to be what it is, to define itself seriously to what it is, which is a comic book movie. It's kinda like the Road To Perdition, another film with nice visuals that was kinda moronic for a lot of the time, because a lot of comics are moronic. But as with any story, done with the proper respect for the imaginative qualities, of playing visuals to action, you can get something great from it. But this film lacks that imagination, in tone and detail. This sounds a little more rough than I feel. I did think it was fun but it was just stupid, not the great film made out in many reviews. It was a quality drop from Nolan's previous film, which made me think of him as someone with potential. I hope he stops with this one as to me he's wasting his time on something that he's always pulling away from. Despite his narrative flaws, Tim Burton did a lot more with these characters, psychologies, their situation, with the visuals, small details.. I think the 60's Adam West series was more true to its own ideas. Heresy maybe but I simply dislike films that aren't true to themselves, are ambitious, are "literary" yet simple-minded to the point of being ignorant of human nature, not engaged by the potential of material. Til next time, same bat-time, same bat-channel Brosnan Bond MoviesBasically, why in the hell were the Brosnan movies so bad.
Was just wondering about this. Roger Moore gets a kicking, a lot. but really, save his last one, View To A Kill, the rest were fun and did what you'd expect from Roger Moore. A lot of droll, campy fun, with Moore delivering in a very deft way that looks effortless. Its kind of like Adam West in Batman or Shatner in Star Trek. It's not classical acting, is over the top, but you have to acknowledge a certain skill. And its loads of fun. What more do you want? The Moore films, despite being of their time, hold up very well as entertainment. Connery- Great, nasty, even in the weaker ones. Shame about the rest of his career where he became one of the worst actors ever to assault the screen, save a few odd moments. Lazenby- Not a great Bond, a bit thick, but brutal, with one terrific, dark film. He puts Brosnan to shame and was a model to boot. Dalton- Very under-rated and spare, with a warm sense of humour and sparks of humanity below the darkness. Both Bond films were terrific spy movies. He more or less lead the way to the Craig films of now and is definitely worthy of study. Craig- Casino Royale was terrific, made with real bite and nastiness but Quantum Of Solace wasn't. It was okay but he really needs a good third film and some expansion in the role before he becomes two one-note. And on a personal note, he still isn't forgiven for The Invasion. Now Brosnan. Terrible jokes, a bit smarmy. He made the two worst Bond movies ever (yes, worse than the sixties Casino Royale) with Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day. These are unwatchable. His two better ones still had very long minutes of dullness, were very long (could have lost a good twenty minutes each), and had a leading man who wasn't well, very good. Basically both could have starred any other Bond and been drastically improved. Brosnan is a weak actor without much inner drive, which leads to a constant blandness, inertia and vague nervousness that dulls any interest in what he's doing. So why is his stint tolerated, or viewed as good? Lowering standards? Enough explosions? A desire to see a bond movie? Who knows but try watching any of his bond films now. So that's the rant. If you like Brosnan as Bond I pity you. The WolfmanI saw The Wolfman. Its nothing like those terrible trailers that have been on tv. The studio look ashamed of the film they made in those trailers.
Its loads of fun. really, made for people who watch hammer and old universal movies. Anyone who doesn't like these will not like this. The film is moody and odd like those films, loves its eccentric accents, stupid villagers and people not saying anything while walking through villages/forests/old houses. Basically its shot like a black and white movie with a few colours shown (red blood and yellow lights. The rest are shadows). Its also a werewolf movie and only that. It doesn't try and be post-modern, witty in a smug way. We're in the old world and they stick to old rules, which may annoy some but is great if you're a little sick of those "clever" modern films. Its guy gets bitten by wolf, guy turns into wolf, wolf kills lots of people, manwolf is killed by his love. That basic romantic gothic story is all it is. a terrific peice of horror hokum. That's not an insult. Its great for that reason. All the cast are in on the fun. They know what movie they're in. Anthony Hopkins is a riot. Its the most fun he's been in years, being basically an awful man the entire film, who kills his wife, sends a young Del Toro into the looney bin, lusts after the fiancee of, then kills his other son brutally, then he turns into a wolf. (The entire film is all his fault basically. He even looks wolf-like and quotes hamlet in an astonishly OTT bit, Hamlet in a werewolf film. and it works in that b-movie cheeky way). You're kind of amazed he was never in a late era Hammer film. Emily Blunt is basically a lust object whose men keep getting killed, so she looks haunted a lot, which she does well. Its one of those tricky have to be interesting without the back-up of much writing and dialogue. But she does it very well, gets into the older style of acting. For their wolfman, they know that casting Benecio Del Toro is enough (not since Oliver Reed in Curse Of The Werewolf has a man been so aptly found to be a man who should turn into a wolf). You don't need much dialogue. Give him a candle, let him be tortured, let the cameraman go wild for ten minutes at a time, let him sniff Emily Blunt once in a while. That's enough. Then he turns into a wolf and kills everyone. Basically what I'm saying is roll on Frankenstein Versus The Wolfman remake, which won't happen. This film will not make enough money. Its too old fashioned. Del Toro should be doing these movies mixed with films like Che. The wolf attacks are great. A wolf attack is very fast and kills most people before they know they are being attacked. Its very brutal. People are slshed, burned, slashed again. Policemen are decapitated, killed and further mocked for being useless. The wolfman attacks a london tram and no-one gets out alive. Everything you could want from a wolfman attack. The CGI is not too obtrustive, has some great sound effects. The film came out astonishingly well, which is surprising as it lost its director not long before it began shooting. Joe Johnstone (who directed two early gems Honey I Shrunk The Kids and The Rocketeer before falling away) took over and did a great job of it. The film is very confident and focused, knows what its about. Its paced a little too fast in early stages but these are minor defects. It still very much works. Changing Your Opinion On A FilmIts a funny thing with the Coen brothers. A year or so ago a friend of mine rewatched Intolerable Cruelty, having hated it before. On rewatch he found it to be a lot better, funnier, not the disaster he initally felt in first viewing. Yesterday I rewatched Burn After Reading. I remember seeing it with friends and being in a rage for some reason about it. Don't know why. I found the story dull, the dialogue pedestrian, the acting obvious and one-note. Basically not in the same league as Old Country For Old Men, one of the Coen's best films. Not even at the same level of Intolerable Cruelty or The Ladykillers, two of the least-loved Coen films (which I have a soft spot for). On the rewatch it improved quite a bit. It is still not among the Coen's best (its dialogue still lacks the weirdness and precision of their best), and slight compared to No Country For Old Men, but a lot better than I thought it would be. The aimlessness I hated in the first viewing seemed more interesting, as these idiots squabble and fight, ego run amuck as everyone is terrified of being found to be old and useless, now seemed interesting and true to life. Funny that.
Also watched that great old Chris Walken b-movie The Prophecy, about an attempt to stop a second war in heaven, placed against the backdrop of the American west. Watching Walken as the angel Gabriel rant about killing thousands and turning towns into salt does wonders for your mood. Eric Stoltz, always an under-rated actor (see him recently keep the annoyingly bitty but fascinating Caprica moving forward) is terrific as a lone angel trying to stop armaggeddon, getting killed half-way through. (the film is vicious in this way) Best of all was Viggo Mortenston as Satan. He out-evil's Walken, which is an achievement in itself, and is one of the better devils in recent years, just subtle and malicious, only needing words and gestures to get his point across. (But is also very good at eating angel's hearts, eating petals and placing his hands on people's shoulders in very creepy ways) Recent Remakes WatchedThis is me trying to get back into the discipline of blogging so this will be a slightly useless one to get started with.
Remakes. I've seen three remakes recently, one from 2003, one from a few years ago, one from this year. I'm not actually too bothered about remakes. You used to fads, such as TV show adapations, (which have fallen away recently), Die Hard rip-offs, rogue cop movies, comic book movies (still being popular for now). There's always a fad. So there was The Italian Job, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and The Clash Of the Titans. The more recent the film, more more obvious a decline in quality. The Italian Job was the most fun. The original is a bit better but its a fun heist movie, has the edge on the Oceon's 11 remake of a few years before by having surprises and events going wrong, as well as better jokes. Its a film that there's nothing much to write about as its depth is in presentation, in the fun of the play. Buts its a good example of a remake in that they took a few solid ideas from the first and made a film that's like the first but is not dependent on the first. The other two remakes fail on that. The Day The Earth Stood Still remake is by far the better, even though its first ten minutes are genuinely awful. Its not until Keanu Reeves shows up as the alien that it gets watchable. It pretty much works as an alien among us film, the alien being a bit of a dick at times, which keeps it interesting. Reeves is by far the most interesting thing about it. But it truly needed a lot of script work, and a better director to succeed. (Shots seem to be very samey, which kills tension or interest.) But its simply a slightly failed remake of an over-rated original. Clash Of The Titans, on the other hand, is a pretty incompetant remake of a very flawed original. Its one of those films where everything is effects so nothing is surprising. The film has no real characters, just cliches that wander in for a few minutes, in a series of vaguely motivated actions scenes, that are then killed. Sam Worthington makes a dull hero. Liam Neeson's Zeus makes no sense, and the film just sits there, with great mythic potential being squandered, most of the monsters being bland representations of myth. Only the River Styx and Hades has any real interest and Ralph Fiennes isn't given much to do as the latter. A truly bad example of a remake, and a pretty weak film from a director who was once promising in the action sphere, but who gets worse the more money he gets (Frenchman Louis Letterier). Influences. I've been watching Mad Men (terrific, much better than expected) and there's a real Patricia Highsmith influence. Not just in the idea of a central character who is fake in a sixties backdrop but in the various types of unease, pretense, and developing but stunted emotion. As a Highsmith fan its good to see worked on in a TV show. I've only seen season one so far of course. Direct to DVD. I've recently seen Universal Soldier: Regeneration. Its a fun movie. The downside is in the writing, which is clunky at times, which plot movement that's not always interesting. On the plus side, Van Damme is trying hard and is effective as a damaged soldier (I generally dislike Van Damme), and Dolph Lungren is back from the dead, and steals the movie in a glorified cameo. He also has a funny ending (Admission, I've always kinda liked Dolph, although he's better and has more to do in The Expandables). There's not much dialogue, which means its more of a stripped down b-movie, which is always fun. The best thing in it is actually its direction, from John Hyams. Despite budget limitations, the film is always on point to story, has some very good and clear action that always has punch, has good use of atmosphere. The best bits are an opening kidnapping and a section where Van Damme takes out a group of mercenaries, which is just brutal. Its got a good early Walter Hill vibe, despite the fact that its a Universal Soldier sequel (its far supierior to the original). So this is a director to watch, who should be getting a bigger budget. Its also much better directed than the above remakes. (another good Direct to DVD title is Undisputed 2) G I JoeG I Joe is exactly the film you'd expect. Its utterly terrible yet fun because its so bad, so utterly without merit, like a fat seagal film with a mega-budget. From the director of Van Helsing.
What's interesting is the slumming actors. There's the usual awful leads, this time unknown but are still terrible. But this was the film that many a decent or known actor figured, it'll be woeful but the part's small (or minor so you're in the shadows for months) so will pay well, as its a megabudget film and Michael Bay isn't directing. So you have Adebesi from Oz slinking in the background, a guy from loads of indies like Three Kings doing the same. Seinna Miller is in it and is one of the best "performances" in the film, as she knows she in a really, really stupid film and plays along, camping it up. Best of all are the villains. We have Joseph Gordon Levitt (from Myserious Skin) as a freaky scientist up to no good and Christopher Eccleston as an arms dealing scumbag who figures it'll be fun to kill everyone for no real good reason. Now these two obviously read the script and are going all Olivier-ham excessive in their total lack of commitment (or even basic professional courtesy) and should have gotten centre stage because the movie they're in is a lot better than the one we're watching for 90 percent of the time. Levitt wanders around like a man who has escaped from a Marlon Brando acting class and is trying to out-do the master, with a penchant for kidnapping his sister and turning her into a sociopathic whore who wants to destroy paris. He has a gas mask the entire film, that's all I'm saying. Eccleston has the most excessive Scottish accent in history (He did a good one in Shallow Grave so we know he can do it properly) that's a total parody in itself, the accent so insane you know that it's intentional, seeing what he can get away with and get paid, who's leeching on Sienna Miller like a serial rapist, having a thug kill any man that even touches her. (The only bit of sicko acting in the film is Eccleston interacting with Miller. He's obviously thinking things you can't do in a film called GI Joe while slumming in a untoward manner.) Its a shame late-era Brando or Orson Welles are dead because with them and with these two crazy bits of acting in the film, and a script as nuts and as bad as gi joe would make cinematic bad movie nirvana. I think most of the goodwill this film gets from viewers is because its villains are so obviously dismissive of the film that its wonderful. I just hope Werner Herzog sees this one and puts Eccleston and Levitt two together in a film set in a strange country. I think this has to happen. So while being a truly awful film it has its moments. So its a must see in a strange sort of way. Step BrothersI'm actually writing this brief posting due to a pretty dumb article that House Next Door posted (as they are normally a very good site this one was a bit of a shocker) but it was about Judd Apatow (Guy who made Knocked up and 40 year old Virgin, and producer of many other films) and Adam McKay, who made three brilliant film with Will Ferrell, which were Anchorman, Tallageda Nights and Step Brothers.
Now I know when writing about film, sometimes the urge to be pretentious can get the better of you (or to out-pretentious the film) but this article http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008/12/step-brothers.html is self-serious to an absurd degree. Its very old-fashioned as writing, seems to be suggesting (boringly) that the films by Apatow are better as they are more realistic, try to bring in realistic emotions and follow-ups to situations. Which I don't think they do. Now I like the films well enough but they are rude sitcoms, with more swearing and a few more pot-holes in plot but always end up back at a conclusion that feels obvious in the set-up. Which is fine. As entertainments they work well, are better crafted than most. But Apatow has only directed two films, so he is probably still developing but he hasn't really shown uniqueness as a director as of yet. His stand-up film looks promising though, a bit odd in idea. As a producer he has been much more interesting, working on The Garry Shandling Show and producing the Adam McKay films. These are broad, absurdist films. No-one is quite human but there are stunning little details and bits of dialogue throughout that throw the films off into their own universe. The films are always taking on the vibe of their protagonists so these obsessions seem to dominate the look and mood of the films, characters always structured broadly around the main part, to up the absurdity, whether it be a fantasy news room in Anchorman or the broad white-trash family. Structurally they don't correspond the the typical three-act structures the way Apatow's do, while broad have people saying and believing things that are as odd as anything in life. (We live in a world where George Bush was elected twice, where religious maniacs of all faiths kill for obscure reason, where people hurt others for the most stupid reasons. A sitcom-type fairy-tale of happy endings and understanding is bogus). Any time McKay's films get near a typical narrative structure its to do an insane parody that will go on and on, with odd dialogue (my favourite "I'm going to pleasure myself tonight to the thought of you punching him in the face"), pushing the limits of convention. Which makes the strange motivations feel real and funny, if you keep your eyes open for how insane the world is. Its very much constructing what's going on, making it feel broad but still threatening, be as far as you can get away with and still be funded. Its very much in keeping with what 1940 and 50's directors were doing with noir, romances, westerns, taking a conventional genre and making it personal with odd character streaks, motivations, don't try and be perfect, see what happens. Step Brothers is a far more naked parody and twisted working on delayed maturity than the realistic take of other films of its type, of growing up, even though that's not what these types ever want, then playing on that instinct. Step Brothers lets all the strangeness creep to the surface, actually builds from honesty about oddity. Its the healthy side of culture. (and you know, seeing two grown men kicking the hell out of a group of annoying kids is the perfect way to end a film) So this is my very base contrast and reaction to what I thought of as a very stiff, unimaginative and regressive article. |