Does it come in black?
In a first for the blog, I had a very “busy” Sunday and didn’t post. Oh no, it’s all going horribly wrong. No cinema visits this week.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
One of the most frustrating things about growing up in the UK as a film buff in the last thirty years was the gradual discovery that I was unable to watch A Clockwork Orange because Stanley Kubrick didn’t want me to. I have to say that now something resembling the reasons for his withdrawal of the film have come to light (Kubrick feared for the safety of himself and his family), I still believe Kubrick let it go on too long. The perfect time to re-release Clockwork would have been around the time of the release of Full Metal Jacket in 1987, but this didn’t happen. The BBFC as represented by James Ferman made some noises along the lines of Clockwork would have to be cut before it could be reissued. So, thanks for that. I didn’t see Clockwork for the first time until the mid 1990s, when I saw the same bootleg of the Dutch release that everybody else in Britain had been passing around for some years. And then Kubrick died, Clockwork was re-released with a certain amount of haste, and I actually got to see it in a cinema before buying it on DVD twice. But Kubrick had to die first. Bum deal.
Firewall (2006)
Harrison Ford in another thriller for which the word “workmanlike” could have been coined. Unusually for me, I actually watched this movie on Sky and it reminded me why I have such a large DVD collection (see link at right). [In terms of size, my DVD collection is relatively modest, I’ve come across people who own 3,000 DVDs and up so I don’t feel so bad about my 1,375.] Sky apply so much compression to their picture that it feels like watching a movie on VHS, the action’s blurry and all the fine detail has gone. All very unsatisfactory.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
Irritatingly for filmmakers, releasing a film is all a matter of timing. When Mallrats (1995) came out in 1995, America wasn’t ready for a R-rated comedy, but that audience was there just a few years later for American Pie (1999) and There’s Something About Mary (1998). The film was released just a little early. Similarly, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came out and tanked in 2001, but if you re-released it now, it would be like Al Gore’s best friend. The zeitgeist is now ready for an all-CGI movie with an eco-friendly message and sensational eye candy, and instead we get Shrek the Third (2007). Go figure. If you haven’t seen this film, and you’re into computer animation and out there movies, check this one out. It’s like a hippy classic from the 70s made with a big chunk of change.
Batman Begins (2005)
All you have to do to make a successful comic book movie is to take the original subject matter seriously. This is why Tim Burton’s Batman movies are better than the two Joel Schumacher debacles. And why employing directors like Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan is going to pay off for you in the end. Even if Nolan was only directing this film to raise his profile in Hollywood to put him on the A-list and give him access to the big money, it still wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t turned out a decent product. And Batman Begins is a very decent product. If only all comic book movies could be as good as this. Alas.
Down with Love (2003)
Peyton Reed cut his filmmaking teeth as a behind the scenes video documentarian on the Back to the Future movies, and Bring It On (2000) is one of the great guilty pleasures of our time: a cheerleader movie starring Kirsten Dunst that manages to be not cheesy and really rather cool. Down with Love underperformed at the box office on its original release, which is odd because it’s one of the most fully achieved films of recent times. Stuffed to the gills with snappy dialogue, absurd situations and classy performances, it’s an ironic recreation of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day sex comedies of the 1960s, a recreation of a dozen of them, all in this one movie. The entire cast, as they say, explodes.
Clerks II (2006)
Kevin Smith fans in the UK have been ill-served by film and DVD companies over the years; most of his films that I own have come from Region 1 because the Region 2 offerings, if they even existed, tended to be bare bones releases, and Smith loves his DVD extras, oh yes. I really think Kevin Smith should stop with the self-deprecating bit, making excuses for his own failings as a director (lack of visual style, etc). It’s actually been a pleasure over the last dozen years to see him grow in stature. Kevin Smith is a good filmmaker, he might become a great filmmaker, and I think the best is yet to come from him. The bar has been raised again by this film, funny as hell and full of heart. And it has the donkey scene, which is going to be appalling people for decades. But in a good way.