Nobody Knows Anything

No cinema visits this week. And only one film. I guess I’m just not trying anymore. Actually, I’ve been watching quite a few DVD extras this week, and they’ve proven rather more illuminating than the films themselves. Last year, I complained rather vociferously about Sky’s dreadful presentation of the Oscars ceremony, but this year I managed to evade whatever atrocity was served up by the good burghers of Sky Premiere by turning to the internet and watching the whole thing as a no doubt illegal stream courtesy of the great nerds of America who want to watch the Oscars on their computers and will sacrifice anything to make it so. And with only one slight dropout during the nominations for Best Actress, it was highly successful. And I got to see, or rather hear, lots of crappy American ads, so that was nice.

The ceremony itself was pretty good, long but the Oscars should always be long, and lots of the right people won, especially the Coen brothers and Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová and Diablo Cody. I think those ceremonies that share the wealth between several films are often better than those where one film sweeps the lot, although The Return of the King (2003) deserved everything it won. It was also nice to see that Transformers (2007) won nothing, and that Brad Bird thanked Jan Pinkava, the original sole director of Ratatouille (2007).

Blood for Dracula (1974)

Stefania Casini has a relatively small role in this film as one of Udo Kier’s intended “wirgins”, one of the four Italian daughters Dracula is attempting to marry in a “wirginal” state before handyman Joe Dallesandro can deflower them. It’s all to do with the blood, you see. As well as having her neck bitten (it may be a Paul Morrissey directed Dracula movie but it is still a Dracula movie), she also spends most of her time onscreen naked, but this was the 1970s remember and screen nudity had not yet been curtailed by the arrival of the internet. And she was slim, young and Italian. Casini also turned up two years later in 1900 (1976) as the epileptic who has a close encounter with the penises of both Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu at the same time. She appears in a brief bitchy role in Suspiria (1977) and meets a memorably bloody end in a room at the dance school which has been thoughtfully filled with a truckload of bailing wire. The Suspiria DVD has a 25th anniversary making of documentary in which Casini appears, and she is utterly captivating in this. She’s lively, sparky, full of fun, and comes across as a real character. It is no surprise that her later film career in Italy developed into both writing and directing for television and the cinema. A pleasing development for a woman who started her career on the cover of Playmen magazine in April 1973.

Two cinema visits this week, marked with a *, and both of them were doozies. There may be some swearing at the expense of the noble film bookers of the cinema chains of the British Isles, who receive a firm telling-off for some There Will Be Blood related ineptitude.

Beowulf (2007) *

For the record, this was a screening of the film in 3D at the Imax in Birmingham. The majority of people reading this will never have read anything in Old English, never mind Beowulf, perhaps the most famous of ancient OE texts. Well, I have wrestled with Old English, but found the barrier of the language was getting in the way of any literary appreciation of the story, so I never took it any further than the first year of my three year English degree course. So that’s where Beowulf comes from, as filtered through the imaginations of writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, both perfect choices for the job as far as I’m concerned – I started reading The Sandman in single issues around the time of #15 and I have a lot of time for Avary, especially after The Rules of Attraction (2002). Made using the same elaborate motion capture process as The Polar Express (2004) and Monster House (2006), but now both more refined and more complicated (there are more dots on the actors in their blue suits, there are more mocap cameras, the space in which they can act is larger), the film looks incredible, more real than real, yet at the same time more fake than fake. The rationale for doing it this way is really quite simple: the story requires the characters to do things that real actors could not do, and to even attempt to get real actors close to what would be required in those scenes would be so expensive as to make the film unfilmable. Much better to fake it and know that you’re going to be not just fixing it but making the film in post production. There are also a ton of amusing 3D effects, more than a few of which are designed to dump a load of blood in your face, so thanks for that. And it has the best yet CGI dragon, better than the dragons in Reign of Fire (2002) – and they were pretty damn good dragons.

There Will Be Blood (2007) *

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2nd and 3rd films announced themselves with such authority after the low key start of his 1st that great things came to be expected of him, a situation he dealt with amusingly by engaging Adam Sandler to be in his 4th film, just to piss off film critics I expect. However, PTA’s problem was this: though lauded by critics, his films (with the possible exception of Boogie Nights (1997)) have not set the box office alight, and this, the 5th film, was as difficult to finance as all of the others have been. Thankfully, it was more than worth the effort. It more than reconfirms that Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors on the planet and that his Robert De Niro in the 1970s attitude of taking gaps in between parts and waiting for the juicy stuff is absolutely the right one. I don’t have the words to describe how extraordinary his performance is, but I’m convinced there are a lot of actors out there who’ve watched this film who are a) realising that someone has raised the game for everybody else and b) filling in his name on their Oscar ballots. These days, the quality of film reviewing has declined so far that the word masterpiece is strewn about like so much confetti and attached to movies written by people who couldn’t even spell masterpiece without a spell checker. But that’s what this film is. A masterpiece. Go see it.

If you can find it that is, since the cunts who run cinema bookings in this country appear not to have booked enough prints of it to go around, when they’re perfectly content to book multiple copies of fucking shit like Rambo (2008) because it’s got that punch drunk old has been attached to it. Fuck you, cinema bookers, and the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. Ahem.

The Black Dahlia (2006)

Second viewings of films are funny things. It took me at least three screenings of The Matrix Reloaded (2003) before I realised that it was a good film after all, when I was able to have absorbed the plot and enough of the Architect’s dialogue to work out just what the film’s intentions were, or at least the intentions as they appeared to me. And once you know a film is good, you tend not to revise that opinion unless you see the film 20 years later and realise you were mistaken. That may happen with the two Matrix sequels, but at the moment I’m confident enough in their brilliance to assert that they can’t be released on Blu-Ray soon enough.

Now the first cinema screening of The Black Dahlia was unsatisfactory, and not because I was sat next to someone crunching popcorn or slurping a giant Coke or using their mobile. I’m a big James Ellroy fan, and have even briefly met the man twice. But there was an awful lot of plot in James Ellroy’s original and brilliant novel, and although screenwriter Josh Friedman did a man’s job of reducing the amount of plot for the film, there was still an awful lot of plot in Brian De Palma’s finished film to get past before you can start seeing whether or not the film works as a whole. Things that pop out, like Hilary Swank’s curious English accent, or the ages of the protagonists (some people thought Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson too young for their parts) tend to magnify in that situation.

So it is with some relief that I can report that these first screening impressions were mistaken. Once the plot complications have been sorted out in your head, the strengths of the performances and the camerawork and the production design and the costumes and the music and the direction start to come to the fore. Brian De Palma has made a decidedly old school film with a lot of longish takes and sweeping camerawork and not that much editing, as well as a couple of Untouchables (1987) style set pieces and some disconcerting switches in tone. The second screening of The Black Dahlia reveals that the film hangs together a lot better than it did first time around.

And that’s not always the case. The second screening can end with you asking yourself: so why did I buy this on DVD? It doesn’t work. Oh dear.

One cinema visit this week, marked with a *.

Juno (2007) *

One of the criticisms of this film I’ve come across is that all of the characters seem to speak their dialogue with the same voice, as if all of them have been written by the same person, which is in fact the case. What I find interesting is that I don’t recall this criticism  being directed at, say, Woody Allen, Kevin Smith or James Cameron, all of whom have a distinct authorial voice that comes across in their dialogue. Of course, they’re all men, and the screenwriter of Juno is Diablo Cody, who happens to be a woman. Interesting, eh? What’s most admirable about the film is that it takes its TV Movie of the Week subject matter (downscale underage pregnant teen acts as surrogate for upscale yuppies) and plays absolutely nothing for mawkish sentimentality and concentrates instead on utter realism and big laughs. What’s probably responsible for the film’s success is its positive attitude and unpatronising approach to and contempt for serious issues. In the same way that Richard Linklater was the perfect man to direct The School of Rock (2003) because he had no interest in making a kids movie, so Juno the film has no interest in melodrama and just wants to get on with life.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)

There is a disconnect between the relative plot coherence of the movie and its chaotic production schedule as detailed in an excellent hour long documentary on Disc 2 that is as good as the similar piece on The Phantom Menace (1999) DVD. They started the film without a finished script and could have ended up with a disaster like Alien 3 (1992). And somehow they didn’t.

The Fly (1986)

Dead Man’s Chest is awfully long and probably could have done with at least half an hour of running time trimming from it. In direct contrast, The Fly runs a very lean 96 minutes (or 92 on DVD here in PAL land) with every ounce of excessive fat having been carefully pruned away from it. Throughout the two and three quarter hour documentary on Disc 2, none of the extra footage and unused shots and deleted scenes and strange concepts look like they belong in the movie. The Fly is about as perfect as filmmaking gets, a film where no scene goes to waste, no line of dialogue is without its place or point, and where its haunting emotional wallop will stay with you forever. I’ve probably written this before, but Martin Scorsese, widely reckoned to be the greatest living North American film director, thinks David Cronenberg is a better director than he, Scorsese, will ever be. And The Fly may not even be Cronenberg’s best film, though it is the one time in his career when he had an unashamed popular success and a real opportunity to smuggle a lot of tough ideas into the mainstream.

Three cinema visits this week, marked with a *.

World Trade Center (2006)

There’s a certain amount of reverence and respect accorded this film by American reviewers, whereas British reviewers have been keener to point out the film’s apparent shortcomings. There’s also a certain amount of surprise expressed by reviewers that this isn’t some crazy wacked-out conspiracy flick along the lines of the notoriously poor and ill-considered online documentary Loose Change. For someone like myself, who’s been following Stone’s films since the brilliant Salvador (1985), Stone overcomes the principal problem of inertia at the drama’s heart (two men pinned down under the rubble of the South Tower) through sheer filmmaking technique; 20 years ago, Stone used a similar methodology to bring Eric Bogosian’s one man show Talk Radio (1988) to the screen. And yes, Craig Armstrong’s music may be a touch too melancholy, the character of Dave Karnes seems a little too convenient, but, and it’s a big but, as the excellent documentaries on Disc 2 make all too clear, these events really happened, the reality was much worse than anything that could be depicted on film, and was it worth making this film just to give a taste of what it was like to be in the worst place in the world on September 11th 2001? Yes, it was. The highest compliment I can pay this film is that it is exactly as good as the Naudet Brothers’ 9/11 (2002).

No Country for Old Men (2007) *

I don’t personally think the Coen brothers have suffered a loss of form since O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). I even liked The Ladykillers (2004) because I thought it was about time we had a comedy with some proper swearing in it. There is no denying though that this entirely unironic return to the dark Western noir world of Blood Simple (1983) is on an entirely different level of filmmaking. There are immaculately constructed suspense sequences that rank with the best of Hitchcock. There is a thoroughly unnerving turn from Javier Bardem as a black-clad psychopath and a neat appearance as a working class Texan housewife by the Scottish Kelly Macdonald. There are probably going to be awards as well.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) *

This film combines three of my favourite cinemagoing tropes in one: the dark vision of Tim Burton, musicals, and excessive gore. There are any number of over the top throat slashings in this film, all perfectly executed, and all different from one another. The posters for Planet of the Apes (2001) promised that Tim Burton dark vision thing, and instead, in what must have been Conceptual Mistake #1 on that project, Burton elected to shoot the entire movie in bright sunlight with no darkness. Big mistake. No such chances have been taken here: Fleet Street looks like a suburb of hell, grime, filth and smoke are everywhere and the phrase sepulchral gloom comes irresistibly to mind. Add in a pitch perfect Londoner’s accent from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter as the Goth Queen of the pie shops (a close relative of Fight Club’s (1999) Marla Singer) and some tremendous music and lyrics from Stephen Sondheim and you have an entire package of bloody excess well worth surrendering to.

Cloverfield (2007) *

I must clearly not be as tuned in as I thought I was, because all of the alleged internet buzz around this film passed me completely by. Existing really as a sharp reprimand to the dreadful American remake of Godzilla (1998), the creators of this film are quite clearly saying, no, you fools, THIS is how you make a monster movie. Although the conceit of continuous filming in the face of any number of imminent and certain deaths does stretch credulity a little, for the most part this is an unnerving success that very satisfactorily leaves an awful lot unexplained. And it’s about damn time there was a mainstream popcorn movie that let the audience have a chance to fill in some of the gaps for themselves.

Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)

Oh if only Tartan had released it in 3-D so Udo Kier could be dangling chunks of liver in your living room. Filmed in Italy at Cinecittà just before Blood for Dracula (1973), this is a film both inspired and uninspired, both grotesque and irritating. Udo Kier’s endless barking gets on your nerves early, and he’s got a lot of exclaiming still to do as Baron Frankenstein, obsessed as he is with creating a new master race, obsessed as he is with noses, obsessed as he is with molesting the internal organs of a female zombie (Dalila Di Lazzaro) while impotently humping her, having already had sex with his sexually voracious sister (Monique Van Vooren), which has produced two young children who will carry on his work after his death, his liver impaled on a ten foot pole and dangling in your living room, in 3-D, if Tartan had released it that way. And so on. And so on. The BBFC’s continued attempts to cut this film over the decades look particularly childish now the film’s available uncut. There was a continuing lack of appreciation of the film’s absurdist tone over a period of thirty years; the film’s gore isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t realistic either, and it’s successfully drowned out by all of the amateurish performances and intentionally bad dialogue.