Appalling drivel. Perhaps it should be called 'The Near Death of Jamie Dornan' or 'The Attempted Suicide of Aaron Paul.' 'The Observer' described it as 'a mystery worth solving': the only mystery is how much money Mr Paul was paid for appearing as a cross between 'Swamp Thing' and 'The Elephant Man.' As for being a thriller, it was about as thrilling as three hours of the Welsh Assembly discussing Brexit. It starts like a comedy for not very intelligent 10-year-olds, and then settles in as Mills & Boon with sleepy background music.
Reviews
21 Reviews
The 9th Life of Louis Drax
(2016)
Simpering sick-making kid survives his suicide attempt
23 February 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Genghis Khan
(1965)
Genghis Khan massacres a dozen actors at one go
2 April 2015
You can't make another 'Spartacus' or 'Ben Hur' by simply hiring a baker's dozen of actors, giving them a dreadful script, and flying them off to Yugoslavia. The only actor who looks remotely like a Mongol is Omar Sharif. Michael Hordern, Robert Morley, and Kenneth Cope will forever be English. Funniest of all the Brits is James Mason who sounds exactly like Kenneth Williams as Chou En Ginsburg, MA (failed), in 'Round the Horne.' And at least KW never had to wear stage dentures in order to produce a silly Chinese accent or to get a laugh. Eli Wallach as the Shah of Samarkand looks like a bit-player in a Bronx production of 'Aladdin.' And the less said about Telly Savalas the better. 'Genghis Khan' is far worse than 'Taras Bulba' and funnier than most 'historical' Carry On films. In the first half, the film is shot with such a shortage of light that one is mercifully unable to see what is happening. The sound is bad, too, which is another plus.
Red State
(2011)
Clumsy and unfunny
27 June 2014
Nothing goes right with this. The feeble attempt to pretend that the 'homophobic fundamentalists' are not really a crude portrayal of Fred Phelps & Co. All the actors are not playing 'characters' at all, but the most moronic comic book figures imaginable. The 'victims' are the most foul-mouthed, drunken, and unpleasant teenagers ever portrayed on film. The secret homosexuality of the sheriff. Michael Parks is absurd as the 'I'm not really Fred Phelps' pastor. The crude attempts to draw parallels between the garbage of this film and the events of Waco & Ruby Ridge. No attempt to make any serious point. Anna Gunn & Kevin Pollak ought to be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps they thought they were taking part in a film attacking 'homophobia.' I'll be generous, and suggest that when they realised what they were actually involved in, they said their lines, took their pay cheques, and ran for the hills. The same goes for Matt Jones. It's not a horror film, it's not 'torture porn.' It's not 'satirical' - it's not remotely funny. I suggest you watch Louis Theroux's films with the Phelpses.
Topaz
(1969)
One of Hitchcock's worst turkeys
18 January 2014
I don't care who made it, TOPAZ is a dreadful film. The acting is terrible - John Forsythe and Frederick Stafford make Greg Morris and Peter Lupus in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE look like Olivier and Gielgud. John Vernon looks exactly like one of those stock Latin American revolutionaries that the IMF force overthrew every week. As a thriller, it simply does not thrill. The dialogue is execrable - the dubbing worse. The only interesting bits are when - mercifully - hardly anybody speaks. The blurb on the 2005 DVD describes TOPAZ as a 'riveting' and 'spellbinding espionage thriller.' By the end, 'the danger and the suspense builds to a heart-pounding conclusion in this lavish, globe-trotting thriller.' Ask for your money back - but you won't get it. I think Hitchcock is greatly over-rated: he made some great films, yes, but some terrible turkeys as well. If you want a great espionage film, try THE IPCRESS FILE, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, THE GOOD SHEPHERD, or the TV series of TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE...
Aliens
(1986)
Moronic sequel to ALIEN
1 January 2013
Warning: Spoilers
Ridley Scott once made a brilliant SF film called ALIEN - many years later he made an equally brilliant prequel called PROMETHEUS. In the years between, people tried to make their own sequels. One of these people was a man called James Cameron. First, he decided to make his version 'sentimental' by introducing an irritating child that kept screaming so Ripley could say dumb things to reassure it. (Fortunately, David Fincher had the brat killed off in time for HIS version.) Cameron also decided he would have the film dominated by a group of US Marines. These Marines were to have a combined IQ of about minus 5. All the Marines said things like 'Let's go!' and 'Oh my God, what is THAT?' Most irritating of all was Bill Paxton (shame on you!) - he ended every sentence with the word 'man.' Fortunately for the viewer, the aliens soon disembowelled him. The heroine of the film was to be given lines just as bad as the Marines'. The aliens were not scary, no matter how many there were. The spaceships looked second hand. After an hour of this farrago one's eyelids began to close. The Marines shot at the aliens with their huge weaponry. Lance Henriksen got his head blown off, but carried on talking. Happily, when the Marines were killed, death applied to their tonsils too. After this success, Mr. Cameron got to make a three-hour long film about a ship that was perfectly designed. It sank.
Catfish
(2010)
Dull pseudo-documentary about nothing much
30 September 2011
Two very irritating Jewish brothers make a film about the relationship between one of the brothers and a young girl who is supposed to be an artist. If you like to watch people playing about with all the boring paraphernalia of the Internet, and having arguments while crouching over laptops and Blackberries, this is for you. If you want to watch people discussing whether the picture of so-and-so on Facebook is really them or not... you'll be enthralled.
This is a 'celebration' of the makers' own solipsism and vanity, and it exposes the cultural banality of the 'new technology.' It's a film about making a film. It's about chasing phantoms on the Internet - made by people who like (and live through) that sort of thing.
Do you care whether this is a hoax documentary or not? Do you care whether Schulman gets to meet Megan? The 'authenticity' of the film is no more interesting than the film itself.
Visually, it is dull. Mostly, you see 1) Schulman's very hairy chest, 2) Schulman's teeth, and 3) various computer screens. The supposedly brilliant paintings (who cares who did them?) are competent - but dull.
As in the minds of people who perceive the Internet as a thing of interest IN ITSELF, dullness pervades.
This is a 'celebration' of the makers' own solipsism and vanity, and it exposes the cultural banality of the 'new technology.' It's a film about making a film. It's about chasing phantoms on the Internet - made by people who like (and live through) that sort of thing.
Do you care whether this is a hoax documentary or not? Do you care whether Schulman gets to meet Megan? The 'authenticity' of the film is no more interesting than the film itself.
Visually, it is dull. Mostly, you see 1) Schulman's very hairy chest, 2) Schulman's teeth, and 3) various computer screens. The supposedly brilliant paintings (who cares who did them?) are competent - but dull.
As in the minds of people who perceive the Internet as a thing of interest IN ITSELF, dullness pervades.
Waterland
(1992)
Gloomy and messy melodrama
6 September 2011
I have not read the novel, but a quick glance at a synopsis of the plot suggests what a mess they've made of it on film. The novel sounds like a serious, intellectual drama. The film is an attempt to simplify the concepts involved, and turn them into a rather straightforward drama. In itself, and no further, this might have succeeded. The failure is caused by other things.
The transferral of the Cricks from Greenwich to Pittsburgh is a disastrous mistake - the only reason for doing it was clearly the American box office. Again, the distributors tend to assume that Americans are too stupid to take in a drama set in England. They are wrong.
The conversations between Irons (Crick) and John Heard, as American school-teachers discussing education in 1974, are embarrassingly wrong somehow, and bang an entirely wrong beat. The time you first realise Irons is addressing his class of teenagers (Ethan Hawke is 22, actually) as 'children' is even more excruciating. The fact that he apologises for this expression in his farewell speech made me think that one of the script editors had only just noticed how dumb it sounded, and shoved it in as an 'apology' (to the film-goer rather than to the student) at the end.
Things get worse. When Irons shows his 'children' a print of the Guillotine and describes, very mildly, some of the mutilated corpses, they all exclaim 'Oh God, no...' and 'Aaargh, how sickening...' They sound more like children from 'Pollyanna', than actual teenagers from Pittsburgh, who'd have grown up under Vietnam, and were just about to see 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' Nearly every 'American' scene is mind-numbingly awful. Irons's farewell speech is hardly Michael Redgrave (or even Albert Finney) in 'The Browning Version.'
Someone had another pointless idea. "When Irons starts talking about his past life, let's have the American teenagers actually transported there on the screen." This makes no sense, and after a while the whole idea seems to have been mercifully abandoned. The scene of them trundling across Norfolk in a truck was risible, and I half-expected Captain Mainwaring and Jones's van to appear at any minute. The assumption behind this 'idea' seems that the film-goer is in reality just as thick as John Heard assumes students are - i.e. no one's interested in history and the past - so our best bet is to actually SHOW Ethan Hawke tramping about in the Fens of WW2.
John Heard and Peter Postlethwaite are completely wasted, and David Morrissey does the valiant best he can as Irons's mentally handicapped elder brother. I have always found Jeremy Irons greatly over-rated, and 'Waterland' shows just how insipid his acting can be at times. I was - even within the constrictions of the wreckage made of the Graham Swift novel by the scriptwriters - longing for a Dirk Bogarde or a Christopher Ecclestone. Irons simply doesn't carry it. In fact, the bar room scene with Irons and Ethan Hawke showed how much better Hawke is. I was reminded of Hawke with Robin Williams in 'Dead Poets Society' three years earlier. Even that has tinges of embarrassment (most filmmakers have no real idea what schools or universities are like - watch Lewis Gilbert's hysterical portrayal of a 1980's British university in 'Educating Rita') but 'Dead Poets Society' is great stuff compared to the wet mess of 'Waterland'. (Like most films of this sort, it has lashings of dull 'mood music' - always appearing at the completely wrong moment in the film.)
PS Ethan Hawke looks 'pretty.'
The transferral of the Cricks from Greenwich to Pittsburgh is a disastrous mistake - the only reason for doing it was clearly the American box office. Again, the distributors tend to assume that Americans are too stupid to take in a drama set in England. They are wrong.
The conversations between Irons (Crick) and John Heard, as American school-teachers discussing education in 1974, are embarrassingly wrong somehow, and bang an entirely wrong beat. The time you first realise Irons is addressing his class of teenagers (Ethan Hawke is 22, actually) as 'children' is even more excruciating. The fact that he apologises for this expression in his farewell speech made me think that one of the script editors had only just noticed how dumb it sounded, and shoved it in as an 'apology' (to the film-goer rather than to the student) at the end.
Things get worse. When Irons shows his 'children' a print of the Guillotine and describes, very mildly, some of the mutilated corpses, they all exclaim 'Oh God, no...' and 'Aaargh, how sickening...' They sound more like children from 'Pollyanna', than actual teenagers from Pittsburgh, who'd have grown up under Vietnam, and were just about to see 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' Nearly every 'American' scene is mind-numbingly awful. Irons's farewell speech is hardly Michael Redgrave (or even Albert Finney) in 'The Browning Version.'
Someone had another pointless idea. "When Irons starts talking about his past life, let's have the American teenagers actually transported there on the screen." This makes no sense, and after a while the whole idea seems to have been mercifully abandoned. The scene of them trundling across Norfolk in a truck was risible, and I half-expected Captain Mainwaring and Jones's van to appear at any minute. The assumption behind this 'idea' seems that the film-goer is in reality just as thick as John Heard assumes students are - i.e. no one's interested in history and the past - so our best bet is to actually SHOW Ethan Hawke tramping about in the Fens of WW2.
John Heard and Peter Postlethwaite are completely wasted, and David Morrissey does the valiant best he can as Irons's mentally handicapped elder brother. I have always found Jeremy Irons greatly over-rated, and 'Waterland' shows just how insipid his acting can be at times. I was - even within the constrictions of the wreckage made of the Graham Swift novel by the scriptwriters - longing for a Dirk Bogarde or a Christopher Ecclestone. Irons simply doesn't carry it. In fact, the bar room scene with Irons and Ethan Hawke showed how much better Hawke is. I was reminded of Hawke with Robin Williams in 'Dead Poets Society' three years earlier. Even that has tinges of embarrassment (most filmmakers have no real idea what schools or universities are like - watch Lewis Gilbert's hysterical portrayal of a 1980's British university in 'Educating Rita') but 'Dead Poets Society' is great stuff compared to the wet mess of 'Waterland'. (Like most films of this sort, it has lashings of dull 'mood music' - always appearing at the completely wrong moment in the film.)
PS Ethan Hawke looks 'pretty.'
Mesa of Lost Women
(1953)
forgotten 'mad scientist' masterpiece from Jackie Coogan
11 July 2011
A lot of people knock this film, but I think it has hidden depths.
The portrayal of mental health issues is very progressive for the early Fifties, and the romantic subplot between the pilot and the girl about to get married to a wealthy businessman is as good as 'Brief Encounter.' Jackie Coogan was clearly at an artistic fork in his career here, but he portrays a real empathy with his experiments. His scientific and all too plausible explanation of how he managed to turn spiders into busty Jane Russell-type beauties is all too real, and points the way forward to current work in cloning and so forth. The giant spiders themselves are finely nuanced special effects that had me hiding behind the sofa with sheer terror.
The portrayal of Mexican society may seem rather patronising by today's po-faced PC standards, but the film examines the essential happiness that the so-called 'poor' had in those days. Hence the superb music and the gay jollity that we see in the café scenes. Although the American blonde sniffs, 'What a dive!', even when shown to the very best table, her subtle portrayal of her role tells us that she is really crying out: 'I wish I was a waitress or a dancer in this Mexican cantina.' The insistent guitar music is a gem, and one wonders if it might be re-released on a CD. This chilling gem of Latin American horror is dying to be re-mastered for a special DVD. They certainly knew how to make them in those days.
P.S. Keep an eye open for the Chinese 'eminence grise' with his superb philosophic quips, such as, 'The man who climbs a mountain toward death is floating backwards with his feet up.' As for the narrator of this movie, some film historians have suggested that it was in fact none other than Orson Welles, secretly raising funds for yet another of his awful pseudo-Shakespearian pastiches.
The portrayal of mental health issues is very progressive for the early Fifties, and the romantic subplot between the pilot and the girl about to get married to a wealthy businessman is as good as 'Brief Encounter.' Jackie Coogan was clearly at an artistic fork in his career here, but he portrays a real empathy with his experiments. His scientific and all too plausible explanation of how he managed to turn spiders into busty Jane Russell-type beauties is all too real, and points the way forward to current work in cloning and so forth. The giant spiders themselves are finely nuanced special effects that had me hiding behind the sofa with sheer terror.
The portrayal of Mexican society may seem rather patronising by today's po-faced PC standards, but the film examines the essential happiness that the so-called 'poor' had in those days. Hence the superb music and the gay jollity that we see in the café scenes. Although the American blonde sniffs, 'What a dive!', even when shown to the very best table, her subtle portrayal of her role tells us that she is really crying out: 'I wish I was a waitress or a dancer in this Mexican cantina.' The insistent guitar music is a gem, and one wonders if it might be re-released on a CD. This chilling gem of Latin American horror is dying to be re-mastered for a special DVD. They certainly knew how to make them in those days.
P.S. Keep an eye open for the Chinese 'eminence grise' with his superb philosophic quips, such as, 'The man who climbs a mountain toward death is floating backwards with his feet up.' As for the narrator of this movie, some film historians have suggested that it was in fact none other than Orson Welles, secretly raising funds for yet another of his awful pseudo-Shakespearian pastiches.
The Ape Man
(1943)
hysterically terrible Lugosi 'shocker'
11 July 2011
This is a 1 point or a 10 point movie. 1 if you want to be sensible, but 10 if you love the Ed Wood or pre-Poe Roger Corman school of film. Terrible script, dreadful acting, poor lighting, and worse sound than a Caruso or Nellie Melba recording 40 years earlier.
Bela Lugosi does a poor ape imitation, and wears a very rough prototype of the mask Roddy McDowall wore in 'Planet of the Apes.' He monkeys about (sorry!) with one Emil Van Horn wearing a full gorilla suit - he looks exactly like the one (called Ethel) that Oliver Hardy ended up with when the circus went broke. (Stanley got the flea circus.) Lugosi & another scientist have been fiddling about with 'glands,' so when Lugosi decides to test it on himself... The only way to keep himself away from the furry side of life is to keep filling himself with human 'glands' from the recently deceased. He steps out into the night and orders 'Ethel' to murder people - it's 'The Murders In The Rue Morgue' all over again.
Hard to tell whether this was supposed to be funny or not - wisecracking journalists who annoy the editor by calling him 'chiefy,' brain-dead Irish policemen, bubbling retorts in the cellars of an old dark house etc. Clearly this was made when Lugosi's life was turning into a tragic horror story all of his own, and accepted any old rubbish to pay for the drugs and the booze.
One kind of wishes for Abbott & Costello or The Three Stooges to turn up, but no such luck. The star turn is the wonderfully named Miranda Urecal (almost born to appear in cheap horror films) who plays Lugosi's sister, screaming energetically or fainting at the drop of a coffin lid.
This isn't quite as funny as Ed Wood's stuff, but better than nothing now the hockey season's finished. The ending's quite amusing, and make sure you spot Charlie Hall (like Ethel, a left-over from the glory days of Laurel & Hardy) at the very start.
Bela Lugosi does a poor ape imitation, and wears a very rough prototype of the mask Roddy McDowall wore in 'Planet of the Apes.' He monkeys about (sorry!) with one Emil Van Horn wearing a full gorilla suit - he looks exactly like the one (called Ethel) that Oliver Hardy ended up with when the circus went broke. (Stanley got the flea circus.) Lugosi & another scientist have been fiddling about with 'glands,' so when Lugosi decides to test it on himself... The only way to keep himself away from the furry side of life is to keep filling himself with human 'glands' from the recently deceased. He steps out into the night and orders 'Ethel' to murder people - it's 'The Murders In The Rue Morgue' all over again.
Hard to tell whether this was supposed to be funny or not - wisecracking journalists who annoy the editor by calling him 'chiefy,' brain-dead Irish policemen, bubbling retorts in the cellars of an old dark house etc. Clearly this was made when Lugosi's life was turning into a tragic horror story all of his own, and accepted any old rubbish to pay for the drugs and the booze.
One kind of wishes for Abbott & Costello or The Three Stooges to turn up, but no such luck. The star turn is the wonderfully named Miranda Urecal (almost born to appear in cheap horror films) who plays Lugosi's sister, screaming energetically or fainting at the drop of a coffin lid.
This isn't quite as funny as Ed Wood's stuff, but better than nothing now the hockey season's finished. The ending's quite amusing, and make sure you spot Charlie Hall (like Ethel, a left-over from the glory days of Laurel & Hardy) at the very start.
The Great Sioux Massacre
(1965)
Chronic attempt to retell Custer's Last Stand
13 June 2011
A massacre indeed. A lot of it seems to have been cannibalised from much better (and certainly bigger budget) efforts; an expert on Westerns could soon tell you exactly which ones. Joseph Cotten is supposed to be playing a drunk, but one begins to wonder where acting ended and reality started. Darren McGavin and Philip Carey (as Custer) are just awful. The Indians are strictly of the 'Carry On Cowboy' variety, and one almost wished Sid James & Charles Hawtrey to appear in order to relieve the tedium of the proceedings. Any intention of presenting the Sixties 'Red Indians' as 21st Century 'Native Americans,' and any attempt to portray Custer's complicated character, are defeated by the awful script and poor technical standards. This is not Custer's Last Stand at all, but a very lumpy custard that is impossible to swallow.
grim Depression drama that says a lot about our view of 'entertainment'
21 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
1932 - hard-up couples in Hoover's America enter a dance 'marathon' - if they are the last couple still on their feet, they will win $1500. Original and rarely seen on TV. Rather like NETWORK or THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, it interrogates 'we the audience' in our ceaseless search for 'entertainment.' As the film rolled on, I was continually drawing comparisons with the sickening drivel of BIG BROTHER and all its tatty copies, with every tawdry 'talent show,' and with the excruciatingly embarrassing annual pantomime of 'Red Nose Day.' The very fact that it's done for good causes doesn't excuse it - it makes it all the worse.
When Gig Young (the sleazy compère of the show, looking like a ghastly mixture of Hughie Green, Bob Monkhouse, and Garner Ted Armstrong) helps to pull together one of the over-wrought contestants who is having hallucinations, Jane Fonda remarks caustically, 'I thought you'd have done that in the show - increase the admittance charge.' But Young replies, 'No, it's too real for them.' (Like the difference between EASTENDERS and NIL BY MOUTH, between EMMERDALE and THE WAR ZONE.) And when one of the contestants loses her dress and make-up, Young admits that he did it himself in order to improve the show. Michael Sarrazin naively retorts, 'But this is supposed to be a contest, not a show.' Young corrects him: 'They come to see this in their own misery. Seeing YOUR misery makes them feel happier...' One of the contestants collapses and has to be evicted from the dance floor. Young's announcement could be Davina McCall outside the Big Brother house: 'After we've been together all these hours and days, it's sorry to have to say goodbye to Shirley...'
Gig Young is just superb - he's not simply a corrupt, insincere fairground huckster, but a fully formed character. Young uses his ageing face to portray a man who's seen it all... and yet found nothing to believe in. He mentions that his father was a phony 'faith healer'; when Young was a boy he had to pretend to be miraculously healed when the 'show' was flagging. To prove that nothing has changed, watch Rory & Alec's so-called GOD TV when they have one of those 3- or 4-hour long 'conferences' of boring 'Christian' music, healing, and 'anointing in the Spirit.'
Al Lewis (yes, Grandpa from THE MUNSTERS) is Young's right hand man. He only says a few words, but his looks and mannerisms add to the hard-wired atmosphere of cheapness and dishonesty. Michael Sarrazin (recently deceased), Susannah York (ditto), Jane Fonda (a great actress in her youth - shame about the identikit 'liberal' politics), Bruce Dern, Red Buttons - you couldn't ask for a better cast, but I still think it's Gig Young who steals the show (literally, as it turns out).
Sydney Pollack uses great looming close-ups and strange camera angles; even the colour of it all looks rather weird and somehow tacky. Slow-motion sections often irritate me (think of the terrible 'run toward the funeral' at the end of CAPRICORN ONE - so embarrassing that it almost completely ruins the whole picture) - but the use of it in the second 'Dance Derby' to which the contestants are subjected works very well.
When Gig Young (the sleazy compère of the show, looking like a ghastly mixture of Hughie Green, Bob Monkhouse, and Garner Ted Armstrong) helps to pull together one of the over-wrought contestants who is having hallucinations, Jane Fonda remarks caustically, 'I thought you'd have done that in the show - increase the admittance charge.' But Young replies, 'No, it's too real for them.' (Like the difference between EASTENDERS and NIL BY MOUTH, between EMMERDALE and THE WAR ZONE.) And when one of the contestants loses her dress and make-up, Young admits that he did it himself in order to improve the show. Michael Sarrazin naively retorts, 'But this is supposed to be a contest, not a show.' Young corrects him: 'They come to see this in their own misery. Seeing YOUR misery makes them feel happier...' One of the contestants collapses and has to be evicted from the dance floor. Young's announcement could be Davina McCall outside the Big Brother house: 'After we've been together all these hours and days, it's sorry to have to say goodbye to Shirley...'
Gig Young is just superb - he's not simply a corrupt, insincere fairground huckster, but a fully formed character. Young uses his ageing face to portray a man who's seen it all... and yet found nothing to believe in. He mentions that his father was a phony 'faith healer'; when Young was a boy he had to pretend to be miraculously healed when the 'show' was flagging. To prove that nothing has changed, watch Rory & Alec's so-called GOD TV when they have one of those 3- or 4-hour long 'conferences' of boring 'Christian' music, healing, and 'anointing in the Spirit.'
Al Lewis (yes, Grandpa from THE MUNSTERS) is Young's right hand man. He only says a few words, but his looks and mannerisms add to the hard-wired atmosphere of cheapness and dishonesty. Michael Sarrazin (recently deceased), Susannah York (ditto), Jane Fonda (a great actress in her youth - shame about the identikit 'liberal' politics), Bruce Dern, Red Buttons - you couldn't ask for a better cast, but I still think it's Gig Young who steals the show (literally, as it turns out).
Sydney Pollack uses great looming close-ups and strange camera angles; even the colour of it all looks rather weird and somehow tacky. Slow-motion sections often irritate me (think of the terrible 'run toward the funeral' at the end of CAPRICORN ONE - so embarrassing that it almost completely ruins the whole picture) - but the use of it in the second 'Dance Derby' to which the contestants are subjected works very well.
Attack
(1956)
fine but rather melodramatic war movie
16 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
It's 1944 in France, and a cowardly American captain (Eddie Albert) causes the needless deaths of his men, led by Lt. Jack Palance. Palance promises to kill Albert if it happens again. And it does.
Jack Palance is an acquired taste, but there's always something gripping and unique about his panting and breathlessness and gnashing of teeth. He's usually a decent or damaged man caught in an uncaring society - whether it's the American army or (as in THE BIG KNIFE) a film studio. With his voice, he does things to lines that no one else can. His bravery and heroism lead him only to death in ATTACK, but Albert ends up no better.
The performances seem rather melodramatic by today's standards (or are modern 'standards' nothing more than a fashion?), especially Albert's complete breakdown toward the end. Lee Marvin appears to be the great survivor here, providing military leadership without losing his eye for the political fast lane back home. But it's a toss-up what will happen to him once William Smithers has finished his phone call. But the film ends there, and we'll never know. Buddy Ebsen is good here, his acting rather measured and careful, steadying the noisy pyrotechnics of Palance and Albert.
Looks good in black & white - the war scenes are quite realistic for the Fifties, and the more talkative scenes are in suitably claustrophobic settings. I spotted a brief bit of wartime documentary stock about half way through, but the rest of it is Aldrich through and through. (Its treatment of the philosophy of war bears some similarity to Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY.)
Jack Palance is an acquired taste, but there's always something gripping and unique about his panting and breathlessness and gnashing of teeth. He's usually a decent or damaged man caught in an uncaring society - whether it's the American army or (as in THE BIG KNIFE) a film studio. With his voice, he does things to lines that no one else can. His bravery and heroism lead him only to death in ATTACK, but Albert ends up no better.
The performances seem rather melodramatic by today's standards (or are modern 'standards' nothing more than a fashion?), especially Albert's complete breakdown toward the end. Lee Marvin appears to be the great survivor here, providing military leadership without losing his eye for the political fast lane back home. But it's a toss-up what will happen to him once William Smithers has finished his phone call. But the film ends there, and we'll never know. Buddy Ebsen is good here, his acting rather measured and careful, steadying the noisy pyrotechnics of Palance and Albert.
Looks good in black & white - the war scenes are quite realistic for the Fifties, and the more talkative scenes are in suitably claustrophobic settings. I spotted a brief bit of wartime documentary stock about half way through, but the rest of it is Aldrich through and through. (Its treatment of the philosophy of war bears some similarity to Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY.)
State of Play
(2009)
entertaining but derivative political thriller
14 April 2011
An entertaining enough way of spending a couple of hours, but hardly very original. Some of the characters and plot lines are pretty dreadful, and nothing is said here that wasn't said (and said much better) in the great political thrillers of the Seventies: 'All The President's Men,' 'Three Days Of The Condor,' 'The Parallax View'... There are some interesting twists at the end, but most of the film is predictable enough.
The usual boxes of liberal paranoia-cum-urban myth are dutifully ticked: the hypocritical 'Christian' congressman, the conspiratorial private security firms that aim to take over the USA, and (mentioned quickly without anyone daring doubt it) the black helicopters that hovered over New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, taking potshots at 'African-Americans.' Things were never so clear-cut in 'Condor' or 'Parallax' - nor in real life outside 'liberal' Hollywood. The power of the press (and it really IS the press rather than Wikileaks here) is reassuringly the victor over those Republican sons of bitches on Capitol Hill. They ARE Republicans, of course, in 'State Of Play,' even though they're politely not named as such. At the end of 'Condor' Robert Redford is all ready to take 'the truth' to the 'New York Times,' but Cliff Robertson pointedly asks him,'Will anyone read it?' The bad things are Russell Crowe - he fails to convince as a 21st century hybrid of Carl Bernstein and Cal McCrystal. He mumbles and mutters like he usually does, and his long hippy-style hair is irritating. The 'Bob Woodward' bit is replaced by a young female journalist whose job is to run the blogs of the 'Washington Globe.' Helen Mirren spouts clichés as British editor of the 'Globe' - she's getting it in the neck from the paper's new 'corporate owners.' Ben Affleck is a bit better (but not much) as the heroic (or is it anti-heroic?) Congressman determined to expose the activities of 'Pointcorp.' His relationships with his wife and his researcher both fail to convince. Jeff Daniels is good as Affleck's fellow Congressman, but is wasted on just a few lines. His confrontation with Crowe towards the end of the film is well done.
For me, the best thing in the film was Jason Bateman (yep, Jason Bateman!) as a sleazy PR agent who has been drawn into the conspiracy through pure greed. When taken to a motel by Crowe to spill the beans, he pops pills, demands beer, and sneers at the cheap decor in the room. He stretches out on the bed, jumps up, and declares, 'That bed is a disgrace' - almost like Larry Grayson running his fingertip over the top of Dennis Plowright's piano and announcing, 'Look at the muck on here.' 'State Of Play' takes itself far too seriously, and I've heard all of it (or most of it) before. The evil-doers are dutifully exposed in the 'Washington Globe,' and the man most directly responsible shot dead by the police. In 'real life,' this 'end' would simply lead to another flurry of conspiracy theories - in the Globe's blogs if not on its front page. I think Paul Schrader's sadly neglected 'The Walker' gives a much more realistic portrayal of how things are covered up in Washington. Watch 'State Of Play' - and then try 'The Walker.'
The usual boxes of liberal paranoia-cum-urban myth are dutifully ticked: the hypocritical 'Christian' congressman, the conspiratorial private security firms that aim to take over the USA, and (mentioned quickly without anyone daring doubt it) the black helicopters that hovered over New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, taking potshots at 'African-Americans.' Things were never so clear-cut in 'Condor' or 'Parallax' - nor in real life outside 'liberal' Hollywood. The power of the press (and it really IS the press rather than Wikileaks here) is reassuringly the victor over those Republican sons of bitches on Capitol Hill. They ARE Republicans, of course, in 'State Of Play,' even though they're politely not named as such. At the end of 'Condor' Robert Redford is all ready to take 'the truth' to the 'New York Times,' but Cliff Robertson pointedly asks him,'Will anyone read it?' The bad things are Russell Crowe - he fails to convince as a 21st century hybrid of Carl Bernstein and Cal McCrystal. He mumbles and mutters like he usually does, and his long hippy-style hair is irritating. The 'Bob Woodward' bit is replaced by a young female journalist whose job is to run the blogs of the 'Washington Globe.' Helen Mirren spouts clichés as British editor of the 'Globe' - she's getting it in the neck from the paper's new 'corporate owners.' Ben Affleck is a bit better (but not much) as the heroic (or is it anti-heroic?) Congressman determined to expose the activities of 'Pointcorp.' His relationships with his wife and his researcher both fail to convince. Jeff Daniels is good as Affleck's fellow Congressman, but is wasted on just a few lines. His confrontation with Crowe towards the end of the film is well done.
For me, the best thing in the film was Jason Bateman (yep, Jason Bateman!) as a sleazy PR agent who has been drawn into the conspiracy through pure greed. When taken to a motel by Crowe to spill the beans, he pops pills, demands beer, and sneers at the cheap decor in the room. He stretches out on the bed, jumps up, and declares, 'That bed is a disgrace' - almost like Larry Grayson running his fingertip over the top of Dennis Plowright's piano and announcing, 'Look at the muck on here.' 'State Of Play' takes itself far too seriously, and I've heard all of it (or most of it) before. The evil-doers are dutifully exposed in the 'Washington Globe,' and the man most directly responsible shot dead by the police. In 'real life,' this 'end' would simply lead to another flurry of conspiracy theories - in the Globe's blogs if not on its front page. I think Paul Schrader's sadly neglected 'The Walker' gives a much more realistic portrayal of how things are covered up in Washington. Watch 'State Of Play' - and then try 'The Walker.'
The Happening
(2008)
suicidal failure for shyamalan
19 March 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Disaster movie (in more ways than one).
People start committing suicide in New York, as if it were a plague. The authorities decide to evacuate the city... You only have to read those first two sentences to realise that you're heading into Turkey Land, into big-time garbage, into 'Is it the director and the writers and the producer and the actors who decided to blow their brains out, not the characters?' Wouldn't there be real chaos in your city or town if people suddenly decided to commit suicide for no reason whatsoever? I mean REAL CHAOS -crowds of people running for it, people getting drunk, people heading for church, looting, murders, blood, body parts... All you see in the mistitled HAPPENING is some people getting calmly into a train (there were even a few empty seats!) and - wait for it - heading off for Pittsburgh.
Mark 'I, like the director, have lost my mind' Dahlberg is a science teacher. Well, OK, it's not exactly typecasting, but he COULD be a teacher, with those irritating frown marks of his. Could it be that people are committing suicide because of 'a terrorist attack'? A TERRORIST ATTACK!? That's right, the (fill in your least favourite terrorist group) have concocted some 'toxin' that drives people crazy. The first 'attack' is in New York, so people head west. Dahlberg suggests it might not be a terrorist attack at all, but the side effects of something in the air. A bio-weapon that's gone astray? ('The Andromeda Strain') Something in the water? ('The Crazies') A mad scientist who's stolen a bio-weapon? ('The Satan Bug') No, it could be just something that's borne in the air. Turns out it's in the wind. So whenever the wind gets up again, they all scarper. 'They' are the group with Dahlberg.
Dahlberg is pretty dim, even for a science teacher. His wife, though, is dimmer still and makes him look like Einstein. Even when he IS having a conversation with a plastic plant. This priceless scene isn't amusing, just embarrassing.
Shyamalan is a director who is prone to sickly sentimentalism - and there are great lumps of it here. The last third or so of the film looks like bits left over from another script altogether - the kindly old lady who turns out to be like Kathy Bates in 'Misery.' It doesn't make much sense when slotted (very uncomfortably) together with the rest of the film. But since the film itself makes no sense anyway, what difference does it make? The deadly spores or whatever they are disperse. The shots of a scientist being interviewed on TV are sheer comedy. They're looking at a graph of the spread of the spores - no flashy graphics or anything, just a crude chart that belongs to Seventies TV. For not the first time, I seriously wondered whether THE HAPPENING was supposed to be a spoof - or even an elaborate conspiracy by everyone else in the country to drive Mark Wahlberg crazy. The ending is dreadful, along with the rest of it. Oh dear.
People start committing suicide in New York, as if it were a plague. The authorities decide to evacuate the city... You only have to read those first two sentences to realise that you're heading into Turkey Land, into big-time garbage, into 'Is it the director and the writers and the producer and the actors who decided to blow their brains out, not the characters?' Wouldn't there be real chaos in your city or town if people suddenly decided to commit suicide for no reason whatsoever? I mean REAL CHAOS -crowds of people running for it, people getting drunk, people heading for church, looting, murders, blood, body parts... All you see in the mistitled HAPPENING is some people getting calmly into a train (there were even a few empty seats!) and - wait for it - heading off for Pittsburgh.
Mark 'I, like the director, have lost my mind' Dahlberg is a science teacher. Well, OK, it's not exactly typecasting, but he COULD be a teacher, with those irritating frown marks of his. Could it be that people are committing suicide because of 'a terrorist attack'? A TERRORIST ATTACK!? That's right, the (fill in your least favourite terrorist group) have concocted some 'toxin' that drives people crazy. The first 'attack' is in New York, so people head west. Dahlberg suggests it might not be a terrorist attack at all, but the side effects of something in the air. A bio-weapon that's gone astray? ('The Andromeda Strain') Something in the water? ('The Crazies') A mad scientist who's stolen a bio-weapon? ('The Satan Bug') No, it could be just something that's borne in the air. Turns out it's in the wind. So whenever the wind gets up again, they all scarper. 'They' are the group with Dahlberg.
Dahlberg is pretty dim, even for a science teacher. His wife, though, is dimmer still and makes him look like Einstein. Even when he IS having a conversation with a plastic plant. This priceless scene isn't amusing, just embarrassing.
Shyamalan is a director who is prone to sickly sentimentalism - and there are great lumps of it here. The last third or so of the film looks like bits left over from another script altogether - the kindly old lady who turns out to be like Kathy Bates in 'Misery.' It doesn't make much sense when slotted (very uncomfortably) together with the rest of the film. But since the film itself makes no sense anyway, what difference does it make? The deadly spores or whatever they are disperse. The shots of a scientist being interviewed on TV are sheer comedy. They're looking at a graph of the spread of the spores - no flashy graphics or anything, just a crude chart that belongs to Seventies TV. For not the first time, I seriously wondered whether THE HAPPENING was supposed to be a spoof - or even an elaborate conspiracy by everyone else in the country to drive Mark Wahlberg crazy. The ending is dreadful, along with the rest of it. Oh dear.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
(1988)
Repulsive but part-brilliant Eighties horror
19 March 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Yes, it still seems repulsive and disgusting and 'not nice', but full of great flashes of style. The acting is pretty awful (with the exception of Kenneth Cranham - see below) and the scenes of girls running along dank grey corridors look rather like out-takes from 'The Crystal Maze.' The effects (especially those back shots of the psychiatric clinic) look rather cheap by today's standards, but this only adds to the attraction and style of the whole extraordinary ensemble, rather like those obviously fake Walt Disney castles and fields in Laurence Olivier's 'Henry the Fifth.' Shocking images flicker by at an exponential rate, and I felt rather like someone at a tawdry Soho peepshow - disgusted and shamed and appalled, but unable to stop looking.
But not recommended... 1) for a cosy Saturday night watch with Grandma and the kids. 2) for psychiatric in-patients. 3) for easily offended Christians (this applies even more to the first film in the series). 4) those who've just eaten a big dinner.
More seriously, is this kind of fare proof of the death-wish of Western culture? I'm not saying that merely watching it can turn perfectly sane people into sadomasochistic murderers, but doesn't its popularity go to prove (as if we really needed it) that we're all rather 'sick'? My cable provider is running the whole series of 'Hell', and announces them as 'The films that defined a generation.' Isn't that 'definition' rather worrying? Both for the generation concerned, and the ones to follow? I know many 21st century teenagers will just laugh their heads off at this film - which rather proves my point.
P.S. Kenneth Cranham acts with incredible conviction (always rare to attain in horror films since the passing of the great Lugosi-Karloff and Cushing-Lee-Price days). Cranham looks the part of a slightly crazed doctor, and looks in genuine pain when he's floating in mid-air, like Kenneth Macmillan in David Lynch's 'Dune', with what looks like a giant condom growing from the top of his head.
But not recommended... 1) for a cosy Saturday night watch with Grandma and the kids. 2) for psychiatric in-patients. 3) for easily offended Christians (this applies even more to the first film in the series). 4) those who've just eaten a big dinner.
More seriously, is this kind of fare proof of the death-wish of Western culture? I'm not saying that merely watching it can turn perfectly sane people into sadomasochistic murderers, but doesn't its popularity go to prove (as if we really needed it) that we're all rather 'sick'? My cable provider is running the whole series of 'Hell', and announces them as 'The films that defined a generation.' Isn't that 'definition' rather worrying? Both for the generation concerned, and the ones to follow? I know many 21st century teenagers will just laugh their heads off at this film - which rather proves my point.
P.S. Kenneth Cranham acts with incredible conviction (always rare to attain in horror films since the passing of the great Lugosi-Karloff and Cushing-Lee-Price days). Cranham looks the part of a slightly crazed doctor, and looks in genuine pain when he's floating in mid-air, like Kenneth Macmillan in David Lynch's 'Dune', with what looks like a giant condom growing from the top of his head.
Catacombs
(2007)
feeble horror film for undemanding teenage boys
14 March 2011
A vacuous American teenager popping anti-depressants goes to Paris to stay with her sister. This sister (claimed to be a student at the Sorbonne) turns out to be equally vacuous, with added unpleasantness and stupidity. The thought that either girl would gain anything by staying in Paris is absurd. They spend their time shopping and talking like the 'guests' from Big Brother. They'd have done the same in Newark or Bolton.
The blonde sister (the one from the Sorbonne) takes her dark sister (the depressing one) to a really groovy club called CATACOMBS - believe it or not, it's an illegal club set up by a young 'philosopher' who says fatuous things like 'Death is spectacle.' (He's no Sartre.) The club is situated in... wait for it... the actual catacombs under the Paris streets. Is that creepy and weird or not? Not.
Anyway, the two girls meet some French boys and drink absinthe. They dance around with a crowd of other people. Before we know it, the dark, depressing girl is lost in the catacombs and is being chased by a mad axeman wearing a goat mask... She runs around in the catacombs for the rest of the film. We're supposed to be getting REALLY SCARED. I was looking forward to being terrified or at least mildly frightened - but nothing much happened except an increasing feeling of ennui.
The dark girl's lines are of the 'f**k! s**t! help! oh God is anyone there?' variety. Eventually she meets a French man called Henri (like many American tourists she is unable to pronounce this and insists on calling him 'Henry' - as if he were Ray Liotta in 'Goodfellas'). 'Henry' helps her, but she simply ignores the fact that he can only speak French and she only English. She keeps asking him dumb questions in English and shows her gratitude to her rescuer by calling him 'asshole' and 'jerk' when things go wrong. Her intelligence really shows through when 'Henry' produces what a 5-year old can see is a street map of Paris. Our 'heroine' asks, 'What's that? Is it a map? IT'S A STREET MAP!' When 'Henry' suggests a way of walking through the catacombs to escape from the man with the goat mask, all the heroine can do is to complain,'Oh my God, it's so FAR!' Perhaps she thought she could phone for a cab instead - or get the subway.
Hardly surprisingly, there are no 'stars' in this grand entertainment. It isn't horrific in the least. The ending is quite clever, but to sit through the preceding hour and half to get there is asking too much of anyone. If you want a stylish, witty, and genuinely disturbing film set in the sewers and underground railways of London, watch Gary Sherman's DEATHLINE from the early Seventies.
This film was dead before anyone stepped foot in the catacombs. Less frightening than an international webcast by Lyndon Larouche - and nowhere nearly so funny...
The blonde sister (the one from the Sorbonne) takes her dark sister (the depressing one) to a really groovy club called CATACOMBS - believe it or not, it's an illegal club set up by a young 'philosopher' who says fatuous things like 'Death is spectacle.' (He's no Sartre.) The club is situated in... wait for it... the actual catacombs under the Paris streets. Is that creepy and weird or not? Not.
Anyway, the two girls meet some French boys and drink absinthe. They dance around with a crowd of other people. Before we know it, the dark, depressing girl is lost in the catacombs and is being chased by a mad axeman wearing a goat mask... She runs around in the catacombs for the rest of the film. We're supposed to be getting REALLY SCARED. I was looking forward to being terrified or at least mildly frightened - but nothing much happened except an increasing feeling of ennui.
The dark girl's lines are of the 'f**k! s**t! help! oh God is anyone there?' variety. Eventually she meets a French man called Henri (like many American tourists she is unable to pronounce this and insists on calling him 'Henry' - as if he were Ray Liotta in 'Goodfellas'). 'Henry' helps her, but she simply ignores the fact that he can only speak French and she only English. She keeps asking him dumb questions in English and shows her gratitude to her rescuer by calling him 'asshole' and 'jerk' when things go wrong. Her intelligence really shows through when 'Henry' produces what a 5-year old can see is a street map of Paris. Our 'heroine' asks, 'What's that? Is it a map? IT'S A STREET MAP!' When 'Henry' suggests a way of walking through the catacombs to escape from the man with the goat mask, all the heroine can do is to complain,'Oh my God, it's so FAR!' Perhaps she thought she could phone for a cab instead - or get the subway.
Hardly surprisingly, there are no 'stars' in this grand entertainment. It isn't horrific in the least. The ending is quite clever, but to sit through the preceding hour and half to get there is asking too much of anyone. If you want a stylish, witty, and genuinely disturbing film set in the sewers and underground railways of London, watch Gary Sherman's DEATHLINE from the early Seventies.
This film was dead before anyone stepped foot in the catacombs. Less frightening than an international webcast by Lyndon Larouche - and nowhere nearly so funny...
A Summer in Genoa
(2008)
slight but effective drama starring Colin Firth
4 February 2011
Colin Firth plays an English lecturer working in the United States. His wife dies in a car crash, and Firth has to look after his two daughters - one a typically sulky and vacuous teenager, the other a girl of 11 or 12 who blames herself for the car accident, and begins to imagine her mother is appearing in her bedroom and talking to her. Firth decides to teach in Genova for a year, and takes the girls with him. The teenager smokes dope (she was doing the same at her mother's funeral reception) and the younger girl continues seeing her dead mother.
Everything in this film is very low key and measured, and there's nothing in it that rebels against common sense, nothing that seems beyond the realms of ordinary human life. The description given by my cable provider called it a 'supernatural drama,' but that it isn't. When the characters begin to wander around the maze of Genoan alleys, getting lost, I feared that the film might turn into a dreadful rehash of 'Don't Look Now,' but luckily no. The teenage girl resents her father's attempt to know where she goes (and who with) every hour of the day. The younger girl is more interesting as a character, and her portrayal of grief is quite moving.
Firth is excellent here, and he acts his part by apparently doing very little. This is exactly the right way of approaching one's part in rather slight 'slice of real life' material like this. If you're expecting 'supernatural' garbage like 'In Dreams' or 'Half Light,' you'll be sadly disappointed. But if you want thoughtful and humane drama, this is for you.
Everything in this film is very low key and measured, and there's nothing in it that rebels against common sense, nothing that seems beyond the realms of ordinary human life. The description given by my cable provider called it a 'supernatural drama,' but that it isn't. When the characters begin to wander around the maze of Genoan alleys, getting lost, I feared that the film might turn into a dreadful rehash of 'Don't Look Now,' but luckily no. The teenage girl resents her father's attempt to know where she goes (and who with) every hour of the day. The younger girl is more interesting as a character, and her portrayal of grief is quite moving.
Firth is excellent here, and he acts his part by apparently doing very little. This is exactly the right way of approaching one's part in rather slight 'slice of real life' material like this. If you're expecting 'supernatural' garbage like 'In Dreams' or 'Half Light,' you'll be sadly disappointed. But if you want thoughtful and humane drama, this is for you.
Half Light
(2006)
hysterically funny supernatural thriller
1 February 2011
The minute it starts you know it's going to be terrible. The sonorous background music rises and falls. We see Little Venice - the sun is shining. And, guess what, Demi Moore is a novelist! Well, not exactly a novelist, but a writer of what look like cheap, hackneyed supernatural mysteries. This alerts us that the film itself is a supernatural mystery that is cheap and hackneyed. And we're not going to be disappointed, certainly not as far as its cheapness and derivative character go. We like good supernatural mysteries such as 'The Village' or 'Don't Look Now', but this is something altogether different.
Ms. Moore sits in her Sunday Supplement house at a glass table, writing on an old manual typewriter. This reminds us that she fancies herself as a serious writer - not a hack (although in fact she obviously is exactly that). There are pristine copies of her own books on her shelves. You can tell, by one look at her house and her tastefully arranged art books and her cute blonde kid, that this woman has never written a word in her life - and likely as not never read one either. No, 'Rachel Carlson' spends her life with her 'shrink' and her agent. She does NOT, as suggested later in the film, dip into 'The Goncourt Journals' when she has a spare moment.
Anyway, the cute blonde kid dutifully drowns in the Grand Union Canal, and Rachel berates herself for not having locked the gate that was supposed to separate him from the turbulent waters. I must say that I can't imagine anyone drowning in the Grand Union Canal - maybe a drunk or an aged pensioner, but not the cute kid. He drowns without making a sound. Neither does the water.
Then Rachel falls out with her husband (a bitter book editor who harbours - wait for it - a certain resentment of his wife's achievements as a sort of fourth rate Ruth Rendell) - and drives off to the Scottish Highlands to sort herself out. Rather unwisely, she decides to try a spell without her medication. Not good, Rachel. Soon she's seeing her son's ghost and goodness knows what else.
The shots of her driving up to the Highlands look like one of those car adverts on TV - designed to make people think that 'driving' involves speeding along a country lane with the sun shining, and not another car in sight.
The first half of the film is simply terrible, and the second half not much better. It's just not quite as mind-numbingly moronic, and marginally less comic.
The first half has it all: scenes that look like they belong in 'The People's Friend' or a Mills & Boon. The waves roll, horses prance, the friendly Scottish inhabitants welcome their new neighbour, and Rachel meets the local 'hunky' lighthouse keeper.
At the halfway point one of the characters announces, 'Things are going to get worse...' I thought it beyond the realm of possibility that they could get worse. In fact, things perk up a bit as revelations come thick and fast and some people die.
In this film, no predictable 'shock' is omitted, no unsurprising twist unused, and no hilariously inappropriate line of dialogue unspoken. 'Half Light' makes Neil La Bute's remake of 'The Wicker Man' look like the work of a Lean or a Scorsese.
Favourite things I admire about this film:
1) The way the weather is either 'car advert' sunny OR 'horror movie' thunderous. There are no compromises.
2) The 'hard-bitten' tabloid journalist. She says things such as, 'I know what I write is crap, but it pays the bills.' She walks through Leadenhall Market - which is about the best bit of the whole thing. You can get somewhere by simply sticking a camera into Leadenhall Market and switching it on.
3) Rachel's 'shrink,' who blithely discusses his client's most intimate affairs with her (by then estranged) husband - while standing by the lifts in a corridor where people walk past every two seconds. So much for client confidentiality. This 'shrink' has also unwisely given Rachel his private mobile number - so she can phone him up (from the spooky ghostly supernatural Scottish lighthouse) while he's out to dinner. You can see that this man is no more a psychiatrist (and certainly not an NHS one) than Rachel is a 'writer.'
4) Rachel has her 'novel' all sketched out on little index cards which remind her things such as 'Character', 'Structure', and 'Tie up story ending.' Perhaps some people do write like this (Jeffrey Archer), but when we actually hear a few lines of one of her books it sounds like excerpts from Count Arthur Strong's pastiche of Raymond Chandler.
'Half Light' is half dead (and that's a compliment), but it isn't half funny.
Ms. Moore sits in her Sunday Supplement house at a glass table, writing on an old manual typewriter. This reminds us that she fancies herself as a serious writer - not a hack (although in fact she obviously is exactly that). There are pristine copies of her own books on her shelves. You can tell, by one look at her house and her tastefully arranged art books and her cute blonde kid, that this woman has never written a word in her life - and likely as not never read one either. No, 'Rachel Carlson' spends her life with her 'shrink' and her agent. She does NOT, as suggested later in the film, dip into 'The Goncourt Journals' when she has a spare moment.
Anyway, the cute blonde kid dutifully drowns in the Grand Union Canal, and Rachel berates herself for not having locked the gate that was supposed to separate him from the turbulent waters. I must say that I can't imagine anyone drowning in the Grand Union Canal - maybe a drunk or an aged pensioner, but not the cute kid. He drowns without making a sound. Neither does the water.
Then Rachel falls out with her husband (a bitter book editor who harbours - wait for it - a certain resentment of his wife's achievements as a sort of fourth rate Ruth Rendell) - and drives off to the Scottish Highlands to sort herself out. Rather unwisely, she decides to try a spell without her medication. Not good, Rachel. Soon she's seeing her son's ghost and goodness knows what else.
The shots of her driving up to the Highlands look like one of those car adverts on TV - designed to make people think that 'driving' involves speeding along a country lane with the sun shining, and not another car in sight.
The first half of the film is simply terrible, and the second half not much better. It's just not quite as mind-numbingly moronic, and marginally less comic.
The first half has it all: scenes that look like they belong in 'The People's Friend' or a Mills & Boon. The waves roll, horses prance, the friendly Scottish inhabitants welcome their new neighbour, and Rachel meets the local 'hunky' lighthouse keeper.
At the halfway point one of the characters announces, 'Things are going to get worse...' I thought it beyond the realm of possibility that they could get worse. In fact, things perk up a bit as revelations come thick and fast and some people die.
In this film, no predictable 'shock' is omitted, no unsurprising twist unused, and no hilariously inappropriate line of dialogue unspoken. 'Half Light' makes Neil La Bute's remake of 'The Wicker Man' look like the work of a Lean or a Scorsese.
Favourite things I admire about this film:
1) The way the weather is either 'car advert' sunny OR 'horror movie' thunderous. There are no compromises.
2) The 'hard-bitten' tabloid journalist. She says things such as, 'I know what I write is crap, but it pays the bills.' She walks through Leadenhall Market - which is about the best bit of the whole thing. You can get somewhere by simply sticking a camera into Leadenhall Market and switching it on.
3) Rachel's 'shrink,' who blithely discusses his client's most intimate affairs with her (by then estranged) husband - while standing by the lifts in a corridor where people walk past every two seconds. So much for client confidentiality. This 'shrink' has also unwisely given Rachel his private mobile number - so she can phone him up (from the spooky ghostly supernatural Scottish lighthouse) while he's out to dinner. You can see that this man is no more a psychiatrist (and certainly not an NHS one) than Rachel is a 'writer.'
4) Rachel has her 'novel' all sketched out on little index cards which remind her things such as 'Character', 'Structure', and 'Tie up story ending.' Perhaps some people do write like this (Jeffrey Archer), but when we actually hear a few lines of one of her books it sounds like excerpts from Count Arthur Strong's pastiche of Raymond Chandler.
'Half Light' is half dead (and that's a compliment), but it isn't half funny.
Deceiver
(1997)
badly flawed high baroque murder thriller
29 January 2011
This has hints of Abel Ferrara about it (esp. the welcome appearance of the late and lamented Chris Penn from Ferrara's 'The Funeral.') I've seen this twice now, and am still not quite sure who really murdered Elizabeth. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, but there's a sense here in which style predominates a bit too strongly over substance. Michael Rooker & Tim Roth overact a bit - so the steadying presence of Chris Penn is helpful here. I'd liked to have known more about Roth's upbringing and so forth than we're granted. The scenes of him with his parents & friends are some of the best - all that baloney with lie detectors in dimly lit rooms becomes a bit dreary after a while.
Nice to see 1) Michael Parks (one of the nastiest villains in Twin Peaks) - here confirming one's idea that psychiatrists and psychologists are easily more strange and conflicted than their patients, and 2) Mark Damon - most famous in American cinema from Roger Corman's Fall of the House of Usher way back in 1960! Worth an outing if you should ever get bored with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but hardly worth all the effort you need to expend in an attempt to 'work out the story.' (By the way, are all American police really like this?)
Nice to see 1) Michael Parks (one of the nastiest villains in Twin Peaks) - here confirming one's idea that psychiatrists and psychologists are easily more strange and conflicted than their patients, and 2) Mark Damon - most famous in American cinema from Roger Corman's Fall of the House of Usher way back in 1960! Worth an outing if you should ever get bored with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but hardly worth all the effort you need to expend in an attempt to 'work out the story.' (By the way, are all American police really like this?)
Sleuth
(2007)
a fine film based more on Pinter than Shaffer
29 January 2011
If you've seen Sleuth on the stage, or know the twists and tricks from the Olivier-Caine film of Shaffer's original story, you'll be pleasantly surprised by this. This is Harold Pinter rather than Anthony Shaffer, especially in the second half. Without giving too much away, at this point Pinter departs completely from Shaffer's original conception. Jude Law really comes alive here (he's rather wooden and too 'actorish' in the first half or so.) Caine is superb throughout - and I was reminded of a workshop he did on TV some years ago. The actors he was teaching didn't realise that on the big screen (watched on TV and even more so at the cinema) every twitch and grimace and facial expression is important. One's face is blown up to huge proportions, and one can say, or hint at, a thousand feelings - without having to say a word. (James Stewart was a master at this - think of 'Rope,' for instance).
There are some changes, of course. Caine is much less of a snobbish faux aristocrat than Olivier's Andrew Wyke - no mention of Wyke's equally 'aristocratic' detective (a poor man's Lord Peter Wimsey)- and it's rather hard to imagine this Wyke as a writer at all. Jude Law pulls off the central part of the plot (always easier to achieve in the theatre than on film) very well - better I think than Caine did back in the Seventies.
The original play ends with everything tied up neatly, but this is Pinter -so ambiguity is everywhere. I was rather reminded of Joseph Losey's 'The Servant' in the second half. Things do eventually come to an end - kind of - even though one is still left thinking, 'What next?' (Pinter was a great writer - shame about his politics.) In twenty or thirty years, will Law play Wyke?
There are some changes, of course. Caine is much less of a snobbish faux aristocrat than Olivier's Andrew Wyke - no mention of Wyke's equally 'aristocratic' detective (a poor man's Lord Peter Wimsey)- and it's rather hard to imagine this Wyke as a writer at all. Jude Law pulls off the central part of the plot (always easier to achieve in the theatre than on film) very well - better I think than Caine did back in the Seventies.
The original play ends with everything tied up neatly, but this is Pinter -so ambiguity is everywhere. I was rather reminded of Joseph Losey's 'The Servant' in the second half. Things do eventually come to an end - kind of - even though one is still left thinking, 'What next?' (Pinter was a great writer - shame about his politics.) In twenty or thirty years, will Law play Wyke?
The Wicker Man
(2006)
a dreadful attempt to remake Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man
28 January 2011
Giving this farrago 1 point is being generous. Even if you're not familiar with the original Wicker Man, this is poor stuff.
I don't think Nicholas Cage is much of an actor at the best of times, but here he is really plumbing the depths. (I don't want to be rude to the man - but isn't he beginning to look like Frankie Howerd just before he started wearing a hairpiece?) Kate Beahan is even worse than him, and Ellen Burstyn can't save anything from the carnage. La Bute's buddy Aaron Eckhart does the best thing he can in the circumstances - he says his one line... and then vanishes, never to reappear.
The film has no real mystery or tension about it; the opening scene (Nicholas Cage on a wretched motorbike yet again!) involving the car crash is never properly explained. The 'community' is unconvincing in the extreme, much less so than in, for instance, 'The Village.' Cage blundering through a field full of beehives batting off a bunch of angry bees is truly risible; by the time he's donning a bear costume, you'll be laughing your head off.
One question: does Neil La Bute have a thing against men? He shows 1) how crass and sexist they are (In The Company of Men) 2) how easily they can be tricked and made fools of by women (The Shape Of Things) and 3) come to their just rewards in a world where women call all the shots.
Conclusion: a bore, and a misconceived project in the first place. Watch the original first.
I don't think Nicholas Cage is much of an actor at the best of times, but here he is really plumbing the depths. (I don't want to be rude to the man - but isn't he beginning to look like Frankie Howerd just before he started wearing a hairpiece?) Kate Beahan is even worse than him, and Ellen Burstyn can't save anything from the carnage. La Bute's buddy Aaron Eckhart does the best thing he can in the circumstances - he says his one line... and then vanishes, never to reappear.
The film has no real mystery or tension about it; the opening scene (Nicholas Cage on a wretched motorbike yet again!) involving the car crash is never properly explained. The 'community' is unconvincing in the extreme, much less so than in, for instance, 'The Village.' Cage blundering through a field full of beehives batting off a bunch of angry bees is truly risible; by the time he's donning a bear costume, you'll be laughing your head off.
One question: does Neil La Bute have a thing against men? He shows 1) how crass and sexist they are (In The Company of Men) 2) how easily they can be tricked and made fools of by women (The Shape Of Things) and 3) come to their just rewards in a world where women call all the shots.
Conclusion: a bore, and a misconceived project in the first place. Watch the original first.
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