Nobody Knows Anything

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.

No cinema visits this week again, and I’ve been doing “other things”, so the post is a bit sparse this week.

King Kong (2005)

For the record, this was the extended version of a film that many thought was too long to begin with. Presumably, The Lovely Bones (2008) will be four hours long with an interval in the style of La Belle Noiseuse (1991). It’s taken some viewings for me to get to grips with this new version of Kong, but every time I watch it, I like it more than I did the previous time I watched it. The first time in the cinema I have to say it left me rather cold, but I’m warming to it. The extras on the extended DVD really serve to highlight the extent of the film as an achievement, since at any given time, about 90% of what’s on screen isn’t even real. There’s something mysterious and primal about the Kong story that’s entirely inexplicable.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Lots of people think that Barton Fink (1991) is the height of the Coen brothers’ work in cinema, but I’m inclined to go for this one, a film that has been perfectly realised on so many levels. It is impeccably cast, funny as hell (”based on The Odyssey by Homer” no less is just the first of the gags - it’s funny because it’s true), beautifully photographed by Roger Deakins and then regraded in its entirety in the telecine bay (the first film to do what has now become standard practice - even Clerks II (2006) had a digital intermediate), and has an outstanding score of traditional American folk music. It proved a tough act to follow.

DVD: My Life In Hell

Early on in the DVD purchasing game, I started to realise that the discs I was buying in Britain weren’t necessarily the best discs available. Reading reviews of Region 1 discs online started to alert me to the fact that large entertainment conglomerates were short changing us here in the UK to save a few bucks (as ever). Discs stacked to the gills with extras in America would be released in the UK as movie only discs with a trailer if you were lucky. This led me to my first region free player, successfully hacked with a specially purchased remote. This also led me to the realisation that, if I wanted to replace my VHS movie collection with shiny DVDs (and I did), I would have to consider each and every DVD purchase I made, and run something resembling the following criteria against all of them, one by one:

In what country has the film been released on DVD? Are all the extras from other Regions on the Region 2 disc? Has the DVD been enhanced for widescreen TVs? Does it contain the original audio? Has it been properly transferred? Does it have DTS? Has the film been cut by the BBFC? Have the extras been cut by the BBFC? If it has been cut, am I bothered by the cut or not? Has the film been cut by the MPAA? Has the film been cut in the country that’s releasing the best DVD? Is the film being presented in the original aspect ratio? Or is there an extremely good reason why it isn’t being presented in the original aspect ratio? If the film is being released at 1.33:1, is it a full frame transfer (which you can zoom into so that’s okay) or is it a pan and scan transfer (which is by comparison totally fucked)?

And that’s just the ones I can remember right now. I was concerned because this seemed like an unnecessary amount of time and effort to devote to such an apparently simple task as VHS replacement, but in the end I realised I had no choice. If you want to replace your old copy of Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) on VHS in the UK, you need to know that the original DVD release from Arrow was an atrocity to be avoided, and that the Universal option was the one to go for. And that the new Special Edition from Metrodome is the best way to replace the Universal one. And unless the Criterion Collection release Last Exit to Brooklyn any time soon, it will remain so.

And so on. For every title. My life in DVD Hell.

No cinema visits this week.

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

It’s Denzel. In a vest. In the 40s.

The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

So I finally did what I’ve been saying to myself for a few years I was going to do: I watched the extended versions of all three Rings films in one day. I almost made it too, I got to halfway through the 3rd film before I had to retire sleepy and watch the remainder the next day. Since the 21st Century began, I’ve only encountered three films that are unquestionable masterpieces that are going to be debated and discussed and watched for decades, and they are Mulholland Drive, Irreversible and The Lord of the Rings, which I most certainly count as one film. I didn’t see anything in my little marathon session to make me change my opinion. Hobbits aren’t for everyone, but those people who use them as an excuse not to imbibe really don’t know what they’re missing.

State and Main (2000)

It seems odd that Rebecca Pidgeon should have married David Mamet. She was in a group called Ruby Blue in the 1980s; I have one 12 inch single of theirs. It seems odder still that not only does Mamet cast his wife in his films, but that she should be so damned good. This is one of those Hollywood goes to town and makes a movie movies, so it’s full of jokes that are a little inside. And since it’s Mamet, it’s full of people being beastly to one another.

Heist (2001)

Rebecca Pidgeon turns up again here naturally enough, her hair cut short, her character a whole lot more mercenary. One of the pleasures of this film is seeing it as a kind of harder edged remix of Get Shorty, since it stars Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito and Delroy Lindo, and has a key early role for Sam Rockwell. There are few things better than watching great actors tearing strips off each other at a furious pace. And there are few writers better at delivering this than David Mamet.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

I’ve never liked Withnail and I. Never having been a great imbiber myself, nor having lived like a student in some horrendous bedsit slum, I’ve never seen the appeal of a celebration of losers who spend all their time drinking. Which perhaps makes me closer to the other Lebowski. I’ve never really liked The Big Lebowski though I’m starting to warm to it since I’m starting to appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it’s not. Sometimes films don’t reveal themselves to you properly first time around because you’re concentrating on the plot so hard, you don’t leave yourself open to whatever else the film may be offering you. It’s only on a 2nd or 3rd viewing when you know the plot that the incidentals of character or humour or insight start to break through.

Spartan (2003)

I appear to have had a mini David Mamet season this week. This film marks a major break in his filmography as it takes in bits and bobs from the action movie genre. It’s still full of guys saying things like, “The way it’s gonna be is the way it’s gonna be,” and breaking people’s arms. But it’s in widescreen, it’s unrelenting and it’s not polite. Although no one actually comes out and says it, this seems to be a film about the kidnapping of the daughter of the President of the United States. She might be a senator’s daughter, or even a congressman’s, but if I was paying enough attention, I don’t think anyone outright comes out and says it. The other thing is that Val Kilmer is back from the wilderness.

After this lengthy update of the films I saw in the first 14 days of February, I’ll switch to a weekly posting procedure. I thought it would be nice to post daily immediately after I see every film, but then I thought, do I want a life, or do I want a blog? Anyway, none of these films were seen in the cinema, all were watched on DVD.

House of Flying Daggers (2004)
Zhang Yimou may have made these films (see Hero below) as a lark between more serious fare, but quite honestly, we could do with more directors taking time outs like this.

Leon (1994)
For the record, this is the longer version of the film from America with the disc of extras. Being French is what allows Luc Besson to get away with what he does in this movie. And isn’t it interesting that no one films America better than directors from Europe?

Bull Durham (1988)
In 1990, I wrote my MA dissertation on Hollywood films of the 1980s, and divided them into a number of categories: politics, women, business and foreign policy. The section I didn’t include at the time (because I only came up with it years later) was a section called people, and this is where a film like Bull Durham fits perfectly. There’s a tendency in nostalgia to oversimplify the past. If you have everyone dressed like Don Johnson in Miami Vice, you can point to it and say 80s, but the truth is, I don’t remember anyone dressing like Don Johnson in the 1980s. Tim Robbins comes pretty close though in an early scene in the bar. I was inspired to watch this again after reading Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King’s book, Faithful, about the 2004 baseball season during which the Boston Red Sox won the World Series (which naturally only involves American teams). This is something of a big deal for Red Sox fans, and the book is absolutely soaked in esoteric baseball arcana and lingo which makes it read more like science fiction than anything else. The simplest way to parallel it in the UK would be to imagine a world in which Birmingham City win The Champions League. And anyway, this isn’t really a film about baseball, it’s a film about people, about starting out, and finishing up, and what you do in the middle.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)
My sister doesn’t like zombie movies. She says, “This isn’t one of those movies where they go uurrgghh uurrgghh, is it?” And I’m like yes, and she’s like I can’t be doing with that, but I did like 28 Days Later. “But that’s a zombie movie,” I protest. But it does no good. What I liked most about Shaun of the Dead is that Simon Pegg has his hero make a lot of the same mistakes that Duane Jones makes in Night of the Living Dead. Even though Duane is meant to be the hero, his actions mean that most of the people he’s ostensibly protecting end up dead. I like the idea that Shaun’s brilliant plan is to go to the one place where there will be the most danger, and something horrible will happen to someone he loves. This may have annoyed frivolous people who like their horror served with a big dose of stupidity, but it makes Shaun into an actual film rather than an empty collection of injokes.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
What a surprise. I like this too. The thing is, though, I’ve liked this since that day sometime in 1983 when I read Stephen King’s original story, and was gobsmacked by the turn in the narrative that I did not see coming. Some of the best news I’ve heard lately is that Frank Darabont is going to direct The Mist, King’s exceptionally fine 1980 novella that was originally published in an anthology called Dark Forces. I wonder if Frank Darabont has mixed feelings about having his directorial career tied so closely to one writer. “Why do they call you Red?” “Perhaps because I’m Irish.”

Day of the Dead (1985)
More brains. I must have more brains. And guts. George A Romero reckons this is his best work, and maybe it is.
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
At a Memorabilia event at the NEC, one of the traders once tried to sell me the vinyl soundtrack of this film for £10 when you could buy it on CD very easily for £5. Some people just don’t get it, do they? This is one of the great undiscovered gems of 1980s cinema, and one of those times when William Friedkin hits instead of missing. This has one of those music scores which is great because it’s horribly dated: every time the syndrums and sequencers start pounding away, your attention is commanded and held.

Hero (2002)
Obviously, this would be the R3 director’s cut with the 6.1 DTS ES discrete soundtrack. You can hear every thwack of an arrow. This movie plays much better with the 10 minutes Harvey Weinstein had removed from it rather than without them.

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Unexpected tribute to Anna Nicole Smith. Okay, she wasn’t much of an actress. But here’s a spooky thing. This was the day she’d died or the day after it, and I’d decided it was time to watch this film again. And I had completely forgotten that Anna Nicole was even in this movie, and about halfway through, there she was. Cue X-Files theme. She was only two months younger than me, you know.

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Anna Thomson is in this movie as the magician’s first assistant (before Rosanna Arquette gets the job). She’s an interesting character well worth googling, also goes by the name of Anna Levine. She is, like Jerry Lewis, very popular in France. Madonna is really a character actress, and would have had a much better film career if she’d concentrated in that area. All of the times she’s played a character part, she’s been great: this movie, A League of Their Own, Dangerous Game, Evita. All the times she’s played a leading role (Shanghai Surprise, Body of Evidence, The Next Best Thing) she’s stunk up the place because she’s not a lead; she doesn’t have what it takes. And to those who would say that Evita’s a lead role, I say you’re wrong, it’s a character part. And you can dance, for inspiration.

Yojimbo (1961)
Not the new Criterion re-releases, but the older BFI discs.

Sanjuro (1962)
I think this is the equivalent of John Woo’s Once a Thief, a fun movie knocked out just for the audience. In which case it also has something in common with the two Zhang Yimou movies mentioned hereabouts.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
I was clearly having a samurai thing in the first half of February. Some say that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn’t really about anything in the way that Hero is a political drama and House of Flying Daggers is a love story; all Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is about is a green sword. I will end with Steve Martin’s fantastic joke from the 2001 Oscars (and I may not have this absolutely correct but I’m close): “I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with a friend and she complained that there weren’t any tigers or dragons in it. Don’t you see, I said, the tigers are crouching and the dragons are hidden.”

Battle Royale (2001)
Obviously this was the two disc extended director’s cut. Considering I hate reality television with a passion, I’ve gravitated towards a number of films which take a satirical view of the whole reality TV phenom, and draw dark conclusions from it. Films like My Little Eye and Series 7: The Contenders. Although the events of Battle Royale aren’t televised, you feel that it won’t be too long before they are.