Nobody Knows Anything

No cinema visits this week.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

It ain’t what it used to be, but it’ll do.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

In all of the fuss about Hong Kong action cinema in the 1990s with John Woo et al, and in the 2000s with Ang Lee et al, and how influential it’s been on modern cinema, and so on, and so forth, one film seems to have been unfairly forgotten. John Carpenter confirms on his great commentary track with Kurt Russell for this DVD that he was drawing direct from films like Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain (1983). And away from the chop sockiness of it all, the film’s other big plus is Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, 80s action cinema’s most useless action hero, more liable to shoot his gun over his head, dislodge plaster from the ceiling, and knock himself out, than to engage the enemy in combat a la Sylvester Stallone as Rambo. Both of these elements mean the film plays more strongly today than it did 20 years ago when it died an undeserved death at the box office because Fox were unwilling to spend enough money on promotion to tell people the movie was out there.

Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

Since Woody Allen had stopped making angsty, neurotic, romantic comedies about relationships in New York City by this time, two enterprising actresses keen to play in one decided to write their own, in which two angsty, neurotic women, sick to the back teeth with all of the useless men they’ve been dating/having meaningless sex with, decide they may as well check out what it’s like to play for the other team, if you know what I mean. Events follow a typically Allenesque path as the neuroses of one of the women comes to jeopardise the relationship just as surely as the neuroses of the characters in Allen’s films do. And being gay or just pretending to be gay or just trying it out(!) is no defence against it and may in fact be part of the problem. Somewhat inevitably, the question comes up: Are New Yorkers really so wrapped up in themselves, so self-conscious in their relationships, so obsessed with game playing and assuming roles, that they’re unable to relax into things and just go with it? Quite probably so.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

And of course, the only movie ingredient better than lesbians is lesbian vampires. I think the first lesbian vampire movie was Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers (1970), and I think this film must have been a big hit all across Europe, because for the next decade, vampire cinema was dominated by lesbian vampires speaking every language in every country under the sun. These films range from the unwatchable Vampiros lesbos (1971) (proof that even naked lesbian vampires can provide no relief from a dull script and glacial pacing) to the entire career of French madman Jean Rollin to the low budget UK production Vampyres (1974) (which is engagingly nasty) to this, an art movie from Belgium that except for the slightest of generic horror movie references, might not even be a lesbian vampire movie at all. The cinematography recalls The Conformist (1970), the bleak end of season feel of Ostend and its cavernous unoccupied hotel looks forward to The Shining (1980), and there is something marvellously strange and perverse lurking in the shadows of this film. Two newlyweds meet some kind of countess and her female chauffeur, and strange attractions set them intertwining with each other.

Bitter Moon (1992)

And here is Roman Polanski’s remake of Daughters of Darkness. Well, not actually, but it has pretty much the same plot, as two couples are thrown together on a sea voyage and the various combinations work themselves out. All to a great mostly unreleased score from Vangelis. Hugh Grant is at the start of his ultimate embarrassed Englishman period, and whereas this got old very quickly in the endless series of poor romantic comedies he found himself locked into, here it provides welcome relief from the decadence of Peter Coyote’s doomed relationship with Emmanuelle Seigner (who is of course Polanski’s wife; Grant reports that they brought their marriage to the set – she would pretend Grant had used his tongue in kissing scenes with her just to wind Polanski up).

No cinema visits this week.

Downfall (2004)

At the cinema, the film’s impact was considerably lessened as there seemed to be only one speaker working behind the screen, or maybe a couple for limited stereo. At home in 5.1 DTS, the oppressive nature of the film’s sound design becomes a substantial character in its own right, as the Russians inexorably close in on Berlin and Hitler’s bunker, pounding both the end of the Nazi regime and the viewer with artillery round after artillery round. In Britain, channel Five has become the Home of Hitler, packing the schedules with unending Führer documentaries, and the standard view of Hitler is that he was some kind of demon or monster. What Downfall does, I think, is very reasonably point out that Hitler was one of us, a human being with our own vanities and weaknesses. I think terms like evil, demon and monster when applied to very human criminals are deceptively unhelpful. They position the monstrosity of the acts of these people on an almost supernatural plane, and remove them from everyday reality. When what we know from what took place in the Balkans a mere 10 years ago is that the line between civilisation and barbarity is very thin indeed.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

William Goldman, originator of the title of this blog, is still rightfully pissed that the only country where this film failed at the box office is America, where no critic was prepared to believe the events of the narrative, despite every single one of them actually having occurred in Holland in 1944. One thing the DVD gets right where VHS failed is to illuminate the photography of Geoffrey Unsworth, one of the great British cinematographers, whose love for soft focus, filters and natural light only ever registered as grainy noise on videotape. The most disconcerting element of the film is its galaxy of big movie stars, at once the reason the film got made and perhaps another reason why it failed for American film critics. Films about failure are always more interesting than films about success.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

Having just read Chronicle Volume One, I wanted me some more Dylan, and this nattily assembled documentary from Bob’s childhood to the famed (not faked but most convenient) motorcycle crash in 1966 that took him away from the live stage for eight years and into infamy. Very clearly, there’s still something troubling about the transition from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan that gets the old boy’s goat even after all these years, and neither he nor anyone else is able to provide anything resembling any reason for it, apart from the obvious implication that Dylan wanted no part of his Jewish heritage, and it might have been stopping him and his local bands from getting gigs. This isn’t the only thing that gets glossed over. What is represented quite brilliantly is how vastly important Dylan was in the culture of the time, and how magnetic he was as a live performer. After the crash of ‘66, all of that went away and Dylan set off on the long slow journey into night that continues to this day, his talent diminished and his influence ebbing away with every cruddy concert appearance and mediocre record, all of this despite any brief flare of brilliance being acclaimed as a sign of messianic hope for the faithful, soon to be dashed by yet another officially endorsed Krusty the Clown style disaster – Dylan jukebox musical, anyone?

A Mighty Wind (2003)

The folk scene in the New York of the early 1960s chronicled so earnestly in No Direction Home is here gently satirised by the combined forces of the Christopher Guest improv troop. The primary idea, which is a doozy, is that the three groups presented in the film were all middle class folk singers who “Never Did No Wanderin” and were merely pretending to be hobos and drifters and authentic. (Rather like Bob Dylan, in fact!) Greeted on its release as the slightest of the Guest films (a position since reoccupied by For Your Consideration (2006)), A Mighty Wind has become reassuringly funnier on each viewing. Few scenes in cinema have as much hilarious impact as the precise nature of the religion the leaders of The New Main Street Singers are currently following.

War of the Worlds (2005)

In which special effects reached such a level of verisimiltude that it was as if there has been a real alien invasion, and Spielberg’s cameras just happened to be around to capture it. This film does nothing to counter my opinion that Spielberg is currently on the hottest streak of his filmmaking career, which has run since Jurassic Park (1993), the only minor blip being the last third of Amistad (1997). Every film is more surprising, more varied, more interesting, more adult, more engaging than the one that preceded it. This may all come to an end with Indiana Jones 4 (2008) of course, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I wouldn’t bet on it at all.

No cinema visits this week.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

One of the secrets of modern fiction is the 20 novel series about HMS Surprise written by Patrick O’Brian. This film encouraged me to pick up the first in the series, and it was, rather unfortunately, so good that I’ve resigned myself to reading the other 19. They’re on the list. This is the kind of movie that digital effects were intended for, a highly detailed recreation of a bygone era that, had it been made 30 years ago (and it could have been), would have had highly unsatisfactory models bouncing around in the tank at Pinewood. If you don’t believe me, check out the supertanker in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); not for a moment is that believeable as a real ship, despite the best efforts of the Thunderbirds-trained effects technicians. There is something highly attractive about this kind of seafaring yarn, and, even better, due to the complex nature of the financing that required Universal, Miramax and 20th Century Fox to come together, there’s unlikely to be a sequel, even though the film’s ending begs for one.

Foxy Brown (1974)

To finally do away with the bad guys at the end of this film, Foxy Brown persuades the local gang of urban terrorists in a seedy basement filled with automatic weapons to help her out. It did strike me that, apart from all of the other stuff you couldn’t get away with nowadays, this is something you really couldn’t get away with nowadays. This is less fun than Coffy (1973), but still has Pam Grier with a shotgun blowing people away, and Antonio Fargas as 1974’s most badly dressed, most sleazy drug dealing relative (he’s Foxy’s brother).

Sin City (2005)

Still looks highly impressive. Although the movie is all on one note, it’s a helluva note, and if you get that note and enjoy listening to it, the movie does not stop delivering for you. This definitely seems to be one of those divisionary movies, so if there’s anything the slightest bit PC about you, the film’s guaranteed to offend. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We need more offensive art in our culture, not less.

Alien (1979)

Probably in preparation for The Week of Blade Runner (1982) (coming soon), I found myself drawn first to Charles De Lauzirika’s three hour making of documentary, then the film, and then the commentary track. The first time I saw Alien was the first time it was shown on ITV, in full screen, in mono, with adverts, back in the 1980s. My memory is that it was shown on a bank holiday and we had to rush back from a beach in Wales at my insistence to catch it. The first time I saw Alien in the cinema was I think at an all night screening in Brixton in the late 1980s. Since the film isn’t terribly great as a screen original (it’s a film as derivative of other media as The Matrix (1999)), most of the pleasure of watching Alien these days comes from admiring the sets and not necessarily the actors or the script. It’s a b-movie elevated through production design, and that’s not all that bad.

Seabiscuit (2003)

As befits a former scriptwriter for Bill Clinton, the films of Gary Ross, as both screenwriter and director, are straight down the middle Democrat fantasias of America, and Seabiscuit is utterly irresistible. Most of the unlikely plot twists of the film are true, and Jeff Bridges is handed the thankless task of providing a whole bunch of gooey exposition about Seabiscuit being the little man given a second chance in the wake of the Great Depression, and a whole bunch of dewey-eyed reporters are assembled around him eating this stuff up. The patriotic hokum at the press conference in The Right Stuff (1983) is subtly flagged by the sotto voce comments of the astronauts and the irony of Philip Kaufman’s script. There’s no irony in Seabiscuit, Gary Ross really believes this stuff, and I think as long as you don’t buy into it too wholeheartedly, so can you. Maybe. The liberal utopia of America will probably always remain a dream, mostly as long as the Democrats seem unable to come up with as convincing a Presidential candidate as Bill Clinton, and we all know what went wrong with that.