Love Film: Saving space for the DVD Collector March 30, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Artfully Deranged, The Film Industry , 3 commentsRecently, my DVD collection passed 700 discs and I found what started out as a novelty - sharing a bed with the hundred or so overspill from my last Ikea do-it-yourself bookshelf - was becoming dangerously unsociable. Some might think I should have figured this out a lot sooner, but ever since I bumped my head as a five-year-old I’ve been rather slow.
Regrettably, I was forced to sell nearly 50 DVDs at a car boot sale. I started to believe there was nothing left to do. My collection was on the verge of dwindling. Those lovely DVDs that had brought such movie-joy into so many lives were about to be sold-off and probably, at least eventually, replaced by those awful, gloating, high-definition discs.
Then I found postal DVD rental and signed up immediately with LoveFilm.com. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t jumped on this ship sooner. LoveFilm.com provide you with two or three DVDs at a time. You can keep them as long as you like and you pay a monthly subscription. The great thing about such rental schemes is that you can see new releases and all those older films you have been trying to get around to, without the hassle of finding space for them. It also cuts out those problem ‘buys’ where on impulse you’ve purchased a film only to find out it’s total and utter rubbish (my recent example would be George Clooney’s insanely pretentious Confessions of a Dangerous Mind – suffice to say, that went in the car boot sale).
Another great thing is: if you rent a film and love it, there’s no reason why you can’t go out and buy it. There will be plenty of space left after you’ve cut out buying things directed by George Clooney.
I’d certainly recommend LoveFilm.com as a viable option for your DVD rental service. They are very prompt with sending discs out. Their first class return envelopes usually arrive within a day (as should be expected) and they almost always have your next discs out on the same day. Their recommendations list, new releases, and back-catalogue titles are all very well presented on an easy-to-use website. They also have a very extensive collection of DVDs available. They’ve had everything I’ve searched for and I’ve really put them to the test with some older, niche eighties films, television titles, and sports DVDs. They also have a good reviews service, so you can comment on films after you’ve viewed them. I haven’t had any problematic discs from them so far, but if you do receive a DVD that doesn’t work, they have a very simple ‘report problem’ function on the website for quick rectification.
It also works out much cheaper. I found that over the past year, I’d spend between £20 and £50 a month on DVDs. I’ve gone with LoveFilm’s £12.99 a month package which allows me to have 2 DVDs at home for any length of time, with an unlimited amount of rentals a month. After two months I’ve rented around 16 films. For £15.99 per month you can have 3 DVDs at home. As expected, I haven’t bought a DVD during that time, and I haven’t felt the need to.
STOP! Don’t jump into renting with Love Film until you’ve read my UPDATE
Related:
Mike Mither’s ‘DVD Rentals: Eating My Words‘
What’s the formula of the High-Concept movie? March 29, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Artfully Deranged, The Film Industry, Audience , 1 comment so farHave you ever had a Lloyd Grossman cooking sauce? The makers of said cooking sauce commissioned a survey that yielded the following information: Britons consume four staple meals and that’s about all we can be bothered to cook. According to the Guardian newspaper that would suggest that we eat one of our favourite meals – that being Spaghetti Bolognese – nearly three-thousand times in an average lifetime. Perhaps this says we just don’t like to cook, at least, extravagantly, or that our appetite is less adventurous than we might think. Or maybe we just like the same things. Maybe we want spaghetti Bolognese or Chicken curry or Sausage and Mash every week. We are used to it and the formula is tried, trusted and comforting.
After I finished my Friday night meal of spaghetti in a Lloyd Grossman Bolognese sauce, I placed Samuel L. Jackson’s new high-flying adventure Snakes On A Plane into my DVD player and hit play. After about the hour mark when Mr. Jackson is down in the belly of the plane trying to get the power back on, I had the distinct feeling I’d been here before. No, I hadn’t seen the film and just forgotten about it like some form of random-amnesia that forces the brain to forget average movies. It was the formula of it all that set the déjà vu into overdrive. Well, that and the fact Jackson did the exact same thing in Jurassic Park – they even had walkie-talkies but of course in Spielberg’s dinosaur adventure the aforementioned king-of-cool lost his arm, or was that his body, before he had a chance to radio for help.
That got me thinking – every film we see has a formula. It’s the same with literature, there are basically around eight stories that have been told in thousands of different ways with only character names, locations, and small details being changed (in fact, some theorists believe there are only two main story structures, and others believe there is only one). In cinema the easiest and most identifiable formulas are seen in romance films for example (the boy meets girl, there’s a conflict but they get together in the end) and slasher films (beautifully parodied in Wes Craven’s Scream - teenagers get killed in horrific ways by a seemingly unstoppable killer who likes sharp, metallic murder weapons but final girl defeats the evil in the end). However, the simplest formula comes from those movies that first ‘busted blocks’ in 1975. With their one-line pitch, instant iconography, easy marketability and consumer appeal, and star-name, they introduced cinemagoers to bite-size (quite literally in many cases) movies. It was a gift from the television generation (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Joe Dante, Robert Zemeckis) to American audiences. Welcome to the high-concept movie. They are easily recognisable and much like our formula-diets, easily digested.
So what is a high-concept movie?
Good question because the whole idea of a ‘high-concept’ genre of films is as much debated as whether or not Margot Kidder slept with every major film director of the 1970s. Many believe the fire starters were Spielberg and Lucas with Jaws and Star Wars, but the term may well have been developed from the work by Barry Diller and Michael Eisner at the ABC Network during the 1960s. It has also been argued that the high-concept movie dates further back to the likes of Casablanca and even Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane but this only applies to the idea of identifiable similarities within the films and not the commercial activities that only really became prominent in the late seventies and eighties. Essentially, the high-concept movie is one where the plot can be summed up in a sentence or two, one that has a simple title that tells you most or everything you need to know about the film, and an idea that breeds easy-to-sell marketability. This includes everything from soundtracks and tie-in pop music (think P Diddy’s hit Come With Me for Godzilla), star vehicles and franchises, consumer goods, and dominant, impact-inspired themes (examples would be dinosaurs let loose on the public – Jurassic Park, meteor heading to earth that will destroy everything – Armageddon, Deep Impact).
It could be argued that the high-concept movie has lost its distinction simply because American cinema is now almost totally overrun by films that are made primarily on the basis of profitability. Indeed, has 21st century Hollywood become high-concept and then everything else? The most dominant Hollywood directors of the past twenty years would suggest this – Spielberg, Tony Scott, David Fincher, James Cameron, Stephen Sommers, Simon West, Michael Bay.
In pandering to the needs of the average cinemagoer you get more people into theatres, more people talking about your movie, and therefore more sales. But maybe they are just pandering to that staple diet I was talking about earlier. Every high-concept movie includes very similar things in its formula. There’s a predominant theme of good versus evil which always sells, with the main character having to face a major problem that will always be as big as Armageddon, or a giant sea lizard type-thing attacking New York city, or dinosaurs running riot downtown, or a bus that will explode if it goes under fifty miles per hour. And they also feature the extraordinary – either the character or the situation, but one is so dominant it fights against the other to create obvious and seemingly unstoppable conflict.
It’s quite obvious why high-concept movies are so well liked because they deal with broad themes that are recognisable to any type of filmgoer, who can, whether they are male or female, black or white, English-speaking or not, identify with such themes. Lost love, war, fear, life and death, family, and honour, are all dominant within the films themselves. Examples would include Jaws (fear, death), Top Gun (honour), Pearl Harbour and Saving Private Ryan (war, honour). And in many cases a star-name is used to draw more popularity to the film – Tom Cruise (Top Gun), Bruce Willis (Die Hard franchise), Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan).
Another reason high-concept films are easily digested is because they rely on plot over character. For example, Snakes On A Plane describes the plot, the conflict and pretty much everything you need to know about the film. Essentially, that is what the film is about – snakes are let loose on a plane and the characters, including the hero, who in this case is an ordinary man faced with extraordinary circumstances, must survive. Saying ‘bomb on bus’, ‘child alone at Christmas’, ‘lawyer who cannot lie for a day’ or ‘man is forced to live same day over and over again’ would instantly evoke the memory of Speed, Home Alone, Liar, Liar, and Groundhog Day. Yet, if I were to say ‘struggling writer finds inspiration in his wayward but eccentric student’, you might think of Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys, but I could have been referring to Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From The Train. The reason for the ambiguity is because these films are character-based rather than plot-based and the significance is less obvious. The high-concept movie has to have an immediate significance to an audience so Snakes On A Plane works in the same way Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Armageddon, Eight Legged Freaks, Speed, and Twister do. There is an immediate idea of plot, theme, and conflict.
Whether or not critics like high-concept movies, they are here to stay, and they will continue to dominate the box office.
Heat (Michael Mann, 1995, USA)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 1990s, Drama, Film reviews, Action/Adventure, Thriller/Suspense, Crime , add a commentThere’s a sense while watching Michael Mann’s Heat that you’re watching two movies at the same time. The length – at nearly three hours – suggests just as much, but as the story unfolds we are thrust into the lives of two not-too dissimilar men. One, Al Pacino, is a cop driven by his job to stop criminals beating the system while his home life is left in near-tatters. The other, Robert De Niro, is a master criminal who cannot afford the constraints of a wife and child but who, as he nears his ‘retirement’, begins to think about a future that does not involve him being alone. It’s uniquely crafted by Michael Mann near the top of his game, who masterfully weaves a tale that is as much a character study as an action film.
It’s easy to dismiss Heat as an overlong crime thriller that doesn’t have enough action, but you’ve got to give Mann credit for focusing on the characters and not the easy-marketability of car chases and shootouts. The film’s pivotal bank robbery has so much more power because it is the only moment the director ‘lets loose’ as Pacino tracks De Niro and his gang through the city streets with guns blazing. What the film lacks in grandiose thrills it makes up for with near-perfect pacing and that is the main reason why the long running time doesn’t detract.
Reliably, Pacino and De Niro produce powerhouse performances and they are ably supported by the other standouts Val Kilmer and Jon Voight.
City Of God (Fernando Meirelles/Katia Lund, 2002, Brazil) March 25, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 2000s, Drama, Film reviews, Crime, Foreign Language , 1 comment so far
I’ve heard Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s 2002 Oscar-nominated film to be likened to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Much like Antonia Bird’s drama Priest (2004) been likened to The Exorcist because they both feature members of the church questioning their own faith, the two films couldn’t be more dissimilar. Take away the theme of crime and the time-switching narrative and you’ve got two films as far apart as the geographical regions where they were filmed. City Of God isn’t interested in over-stylised characters that overplay the merits of the metric system or theatrical violence and pop-culture references, it cuts far closer to the bone than that. And perhaps most importantly, unlike Pulp Fiction, City Of God seeks to tell us something we didn’t already know – and I’m not talking about the French new wave.
The most telling sequence of Cicade De Deus (its Portuguese title) arrives somewhere near the middle when Handsome Ned, a law-abiding but unfortunate citizen of the slum, is beaten and forced to watch the rape of his girlfriend. When he returns home his family try to calm him down – he’s understandably angry and wants to make those responsible pay for their actions. Meanwhile, the gang who raped his girlfriend decide they should have killed him so head to his house. In the ensuing gun battle, two of Ned’s family are fatally shot, while he is left with a much greater punishment – he is alive, left to dwell on the last few hours for the rest of his life. His need for revenge takes him to the local drug lord and a late introduction to a life of guns, cocaine, and crime.
However, Handsome Ned is, at first, only interested in revenge. He hates the drugs and doesn’t want his new found gang to commit murder, but he soon becomes embroiled in the day to day business of unlawful profiteering, and it isn’t long before he is the one with the gun in his hand standing over a dead body. It isn’t a profound resonance within the story that stands out, it’s rather simple – the good man is brutally wronged and turns to revenge. Yet it is a distinct resonance, one which beats terrifically hard at the bloody heart of the movie. Growing up in this slum does not mean you are thrown unwillingly into a gun-toting generation who can’t read or write, where drugs become a staple part of your diet, and the police are as much a threat as your best friends, it’s simply part of everyday life. Being unwilling is hardly questioned by anyone in the movie – you are simply part of that lifestyle whether you like it or not. The degree to which you exploit it defines the people of the city of God (crime lord Li’l Ze kills his rivals to control the drugs and gun business; Handsome Ned joins forces with a rival gang to wage a revenge war against Li’l Ze who was responsible for the rape of his girlfriend; and narrator Rocket becomes the newspaper’s inside man, photographing the violence for the rest of the world to see).
The film’s narrator Rocket produces the slight glimmer of hope from the city no one wants anything to do with. His dream isn’t governed by money or power (indeed, the fact he wants a camera champions the power of art as an escape form, and with respect to the film itself, the opportunity to shed light on a subject that would otherwise be left closed off from the outside world). Rocket’s dalliance with crime is beautifully portrayed by Meirelles and Lund – the will-he-won’t-he commit robbery is nicely underplayed. But in all this the directors remain very truthful to both the humanity and brutal nature of this life in the slum. The violence is never over-stylised but they don’t hold back any punches, while even the most hardened and psychotic are given their moment of salvation. In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Li’l Ze is left to ponder his best friend falling in love with a girl and leaving the slum. For what could be a matter of seconds he appears to wonder what could have been – could he find love, could he find happiness – before the moment passes and his need for power and control leads the film to another of its shocking and brutal moments.
Mierelles and Lund hold back, however, the film’s most devastating and ugly aspect until the end. Like an after-thought (very much a metaphor for the way the children of the slum are left to grow up and supplement this cycle of violence and crime) Rocket describes his first introduction to what he calls ‘the runts’. This group of children begin life with nothing but crime to look forward to. In the film’s defining moment, Li’L Ze’s gang corner two of the children. He blames them for breaking his own rules for the slum. The kids, who couldn’t be more than ten or eleven years old, cower in a corner, crying and obviously very frightened. Li’l Ze taunts them before asking them what they would prefer – a bullet in the hand or the foot. They gingerly hold out their hands after much persuasion but he shoots them in the foot anyway. He then orders one of his own gang – who couldn’t be much older than the children – to choose one child and shoot them dead. Meirelles and Lund film the whole sequence with jumpy cuts and handheld camerawork. Simply put, the whole scene couldn’t be any more realistic.
A minute passes while the gang member chooses his victim. You can see he doesn’t want to do it but he knows he’ll be killed too if he fails the task. He aims at one of the boys and shoots. The whole sequence is an ugly but superbly-crafted precursor to the film’s finale when the other members of the ‘runts’ take revenge by killing Li’l Ze and thus propagating the cycle of murder, violence and crime in the slum. The lasting image Meirelles and Lund leave us with is the ‘runts’ creating a black list of everyone they don’t like. Their plan: to shoot them all dead. Welcome to the next generation.
City Of God is a brilliant, perfectly-crafted film that is quite probably the best film to be released in 2003. It was nominated for four Academy Awards in 2004 (the year the third Lord of the Rings movie won best film seemingly be default), and won a Bafta for best editing. 
Rating: 5 out of 5
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1979) March 22, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 1970s, Film reviews, War , add a commentIt’s rather inspiring, certainly for a fan of cinema, to see a movie where all the component parts come together so perfectly. By the time Marlon Brando appears from the shadows at the end of the film - the lighting casting deep shadows across his face, the orange glow telling us we’re either in hell or very close - you begin to wonder if indeed you’d actually been to Vietnam during the conflict. The film so perfectly places its audience in the nightmare that was the Vietnam war, we’re searching for our next breath, desperately trying to escape, twitching our necks to the left or the right - was that a bullet, another explosion?
Apocalypse Now lays out the futility of war before our eyes and it lets us experience it, to feel it, to touch it, to smell it. It does this by brilliantly bringing together every ounce of the cinematic spectrum. From the editing to the production design, from the sound and music to the lighting and cinematography. For example, the final twenty minutes have several of the best lit and photographed shots ever put to film. Brando appearing from the darkness and Sheen coming up from beneath the water are hauntingly iconic images that stay with you for a very long time. The film is the best war movie ever made, and probably the most important movie about conflict, Vietnam, and war.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, USA, 1975)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 1970s, Drama, Film reviews , add a commentI think anyone would be hard-pressed to find fault with this fantastic movie. Jack Nicholson delivers one of his finest performances as R.P McMurphy. This film is all about the vitality of life and Nicholson embodies that beautifully but it’s Milos Forman’s perfect direction that makes this film so endearing. He lets the camera frantically move from character to character, peeking into their crazy little worlds, offering us a glimpse of their closed insecurities, whilst underpinning it all with McMurphy, the ‘full of life’ con, out for the easy road. The script is one of the best I’ve ever witnessed - you couldn’t have asked for a better adaptation of the book. Yet, it’s supported by an ensemble cast of characters who all deliver - their individualities laid bare for all to see. Brad Dourif as the stuttering wannabe Cassonova, Danny DeVito as the thirty year old trapped in a 12 year old’s body (You can’t split the cigarette up Danny and have two quarters!!) and Christopher Lloyd in his first ever role. But it’s the devastating finale that really hits home. McMurphy does more for the patients than the doctors ever could, and the film plays on this idea. It’s one of the greatest movies ever made - of that there is no question.
Diamonds Are Forever (Guy Hamilton, UK, 1971)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 1970s, Film reviews, Action/Adventure, Thriller/Suspense , add a commentFantastic Bond and one of Sean Connery’s best. Diamonds Are Forever is off the wall, almost as if the writers supplemented their acid with a few Valium and wrote the whole damn thing while chasing imaginary chickens around their fortified living rooms. Several invincible Blofeld’s, voice-changing devices (that defy any logic), a fabulous leading lady who never wears any clothes, a pair of fruity bad guys who happen to be gay, and a car cassette player and tape that can hold the world to ransom - this is Bond at its finest. Connery is on top form and the film moves along at breakneck speed. Great stuff.
Children Of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, UK, 2006)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : 2000s, Drama, Film reviews, Sci-fi/Fantasy , add a commentAlfonso Cuaron directs this bleak but brilliant adaptation of a P.D. James novel that looks at the U.K in 2027 when infertility has caused no babies to be born for nearly twenty years and sectarian violence is rife.
The film is hard-hitting, not just in its graphic depiction of violence and a society overrun by narcissism and government indignation, but in its believable view of a future not too distant from our own.
Clive Owen delivers a powerful performance as an ex-rebel forced into protecting the life of a woman who may be carrying the first child to be born for years. He’s ably assisted by the fantastic Michael Caine.
Cuaron’s photography is as bleak as the film’s outlook, painting London in dirty grays, it’s distinct red buses now blackened by years of wear and tear.
The film is thought-provoking, superbly-scripted, and almost perfectly executed. Cuaron is a director to look out for in the future as he already has the best Harry Potter film under his belt.
Click (Frank Coraci, USA, 2006)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Comedy, 2000s, Film reviews, Romance , add a commentAdam Sandler’s come a long way from his back-to-school antics in Billy Madison, his golfing heroics in Happy Gilmore, and his coming-of-age in The Waterboy. Indeed, we find him at the beginning of Click with a wife, a good job, two children, and a fairly secure middle-class lifestyle. Yep, he’s all grown-up now.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from Click. I liked the premise but I found his recent films (50 First Dates - his worst movie to date, and The Longest Yard) to be lacklustre. Yet, my pessimism was quickly turned upside down by an actor back to form - his bumbling antics tempered by a moralistic story and some great supporting actors.
The idea of a remote control that can manipulate life is used brilliantly - in a superbly constructed story arc, and for comedic exploitation.
Sandler is also excellent - he’s likeable, funny, and clearly suited to the role. He’s also the reason the film never gets over-sentimental.
My only problem with the movie is Kate Beckinsale - she’s not a great actress and again she borders on awful in this movie. The only thing she does well is a convincing American accent.
However, despite Beckinsale being simply nice wallpaper, the film is an enjoyable fantasy-comedy that never preaches its morals. It’s also very, very funny - Sandler’s funniest film since Anger Management.
Lady In The Water (M. Night Shyamalan, USA, 2006)
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, 2000s, Film reviews, Sci-fi/Fantasy , add a commentSomewhat of a return to form for M. Night Shyamalan, but Lady In The Water doesn’t reach the glorious heights of his best work Unbreakable.
There’s an innocence to the story that shines through, and Lady In The Water savours good storytelling. Perhaps ironically, it’s the film’s fundamental storytelling that lets it down - for example, there’s far too much exposition delivered in a haphazard way. However, Shyamalan’s love of a good bedtime story that is steeped in mysticism, magic, and folklore, jumps out of the movie with every transition, with every scene change, with every character.
Shyamalan also has time to have a dig at movie critics with the brilliantly realised Bob Balaban character. Balaban’s demise is one of the film’s best moments.
Overall, it’s a good film. I felt the photography could have been more inspired, but Lady In The Water is much better than The Village. Paul Giamatti holds it all together with an excellent performance and Shyamalan himself crops up in his biggest role to date.