Nobody Knows Anything

Appallingly I’ve slacked off for a month and not written a post. In that time I’ve been on holiday for a week in Greece (see earlier post), during which I saw no movies, and received the James Bond Ultimate Collector’s Set for my birthday, and there’s a new James Bond film coming out October 31st, so what am I going to spend the intervening time doing? That’s right.

Infernal Affairs III (2003)

Reviewing Hong Kong police thrillers. This is my second time watching the third film in the trilogy, and I remain divided on the question of whether or not making the film so difficult to comprehend is down to filmmaker incompetence or my own failed perceptions and inability to follow the plot. Or maybe this disorientation is meant to mirror the disorientation of Lau Kin Ming (Andy Lau) as it becomes clear as the film draws to a close that some directorial slight of hand has been at work. Still, at least my reading of the plot (concerning who’s a cop and who’s a criminal) coincides with online plot summaries that have been difficult to track down, so I might be ready at some stage to declare the trilogy a work of genius. If only Andrew Lau and Alan Mak had done a Coppola with Part III and made a film that clearly wasn’t as good as the two that had preceded it, instead of making a film where it’s kind of hard to tell.

Escape from New York (1981)

I don’t like Escape as much as the two films that surround it in Carpenter’s filmography, The Fog (1980) and The Thing (1982), but it definitely has its moments, and it is, of course, rather more fun when watched with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell’s excellent commentary track selected.

Tropic Thunder (2008) *

Every bit as good as I hoped it would be. It does to stupid Hollywood actors what Zoolander (2001) did to stupid supermodels and the trashy tabloid celebrity-obsessed non-culture in which we all now find ourselves. And it has Tom Cruise in a hairy fat suit but may be a little too pleased with itself for having realised this. At a rough estimate it may be even funnier on later inspection than it seemed at the cinema since it actually has some fairly deep comedic ideas running alongside the endless and mostly good gags. And it probably means that when you read stories about Ben Stiller being a pedantic diva on set on the internet that someone somewhere is just making that shit up. It’s also an object lesson in how to make a proper comedy, and screeners should be sent to the makers of those wretched (fill in the blank) Movie movies forthwith.

Dr. No (1962)

Note presence of full stop after the Doctor. Well, well, just what the internet needs, another blogger wibbling on about the Bond movies and filling their posts with all sorts of anoraky details only interesting to fellow Bond anoraks, who love Bond and all those who’ve ever sailed within her, or in her, or Onatopp of her. Fuck that. Not interesting. I promise: no crappy Onatopp style puns (about from that one); no poor innunendo that makes you grimace like somebody’s just kneecapped you (apart from the title of the posts); the vague possibility that I might have something interesting to say about these films (pretty vague); a firm commitment that I am actually watching every minute of these films, even the weaker Roger Moore efforts that I don’t much like and am somewhat embarrassed to admit I now own.

To begin: although obviously intended for high definition presentation around the time of the next Bond movie (Bond Blu-rays have already been announced for later this year), the scrupulous scanning and correction efforts of Lowry Digital Images bear more remarkable fruit on the first few films in the series than on the later ones which have already been transferred pretty decently to the aftermarket. My memories of early Bond movies in ITV screenings is that they looked like absolute shit; they were quite clearly ancient telecines that had been rerun and rerun until the tapes had started to wear through. DVD resolution only really brings us an exceptional video image though, with, as Lowry Digital staff relate on the excellent featurette on Disc 2 of the Dr. No Ultimate Set, more onscreen detail and texture than has ever been visible on film, even back in 1962. The Blu-rays will presumably up the quality on this even further and deliver some proper film grain as well. It is really startling to see Dr. No with quite so much clarity as this. Does it make the film better? Yes it does.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

This film leans enormously on the sequenced music of Wang Chung, which dates it precisely but in a good way. It’s the kind of high octane, pedal to the metal cop movie (even though it’s about the Secret Service) that died at the box office in 1985 but has outlasted much else that was released that year. Quality has staying power, and if you make a good film, sooner or later people are going to see it and allow your film a shelf life. In about 2001 I signed an online petition to have this movie released by MGM with a commentary track, a documentary, a sound upgrade and a decent transfer, and in 2003 this actually happened. Pretty cool. But not in the UK, where apparently MGM thought (and still thinks) we don’t like extras on MGM discs. Pretty not cool.

From Russia with Love (1963)

In Basic Instinct (1992), Catherine Tramell delivers an important speech about suspension of disbelief while on her first journey to the police station where she intends to disconcert a roomful of sweaty males with her cunning no underwear strategy. The Bond films have always been about suspension of disbelief, so much so that Roger Moore found himself unable to believe in the character because everybody Bond ever meets around the world from megalomanical supervillains to humble hotel bar staff knows that Bond likes his martini shaken not stirred. Which isn’t going to do you much good if your job description is secret agent. The Bond movies, even this one, are all absurd, they all take place in a different universe to ours even when it may look like they’re trying to represent our own universe, they are all subject to the same easily-levelled criticisms that they don’t make sense on even a very basic level (sample dialogue from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997): Dr. Evil: Scott, I want you to meet daddy’s nemesis, Austin Powers. Scott Evil: What? Are you feeding him? Why don’t you just kill him? Dr. Evil: I have an even better idea. I’m going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death), they recycle the same formula again and again (if you’ve seen You Only Live Twice (1967) you don’t really need to see The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) or Moonraker (1979) since they are essentially the same film), they’re sexist, racist, out of touch, out of date, old-fashioned, we’ve seen it all before, there’s nothing new here, please move along, nothing to see here (this is perhaps why critical response to them can vary so enormously).

And yet I was watching the ski chase from OHMSS (1969) (see below) just last night, and the sheer kinetic energy with which this sequence has been photographed, scored, brought to the screen, and cleaned up by Lowry Digital, was absolutely exhilarating. In short, critical objections to Bond miss the point: despite all of the shortcomings which most Bond fans, including myself, recognise the films have, we are all willing to suspend our disbelief and enjoy visiting this improbable fantasy world because what the Bond films offer is cinema of an almost Bressonian purity: a beautiful man, a beautiful woman, more beautiful women, an evil villain, assorted bad guys, explosions, chases, fucking big sets, and more explosions. It’s formulaic but we don’t care. And there are a lot of us, and we’re growing by the day. And Quantum of Solace (2008) is only going to spread the word of Bond even more.

Goldfinger (1964)

Stephen King in Danse Macabre (1980), his book length answer to all those questions journalists kept asking him about why he wrote this horror stuff, talks about the Set of Reality in serial television. What he means is the difference between scenes that have clearly been filmed on location, and scenes that have clearly been filmed in a studio but are meant to look like a location except they do not, and he mentions the Ponderosa ranch in Bonanza as an example, though he could have referenced that place allegedly outside the house where everybody had breakfast in Dallas. Or the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami at the start of this film. Even in 1964 with Eon Productions having come off two straight successes, they still only had a limited amount of time at the location and ended up rebuilding a Fontainebleau set in Pinewood to finish off the sequence. Poor old Margaret Nolan as Dink, she didn’t even get to fly to Miami, because she delivers her one line on the reverse of Felix Leiter (who as the scene develops goes from standing in front of the real hotel to standing in front of a back projection of it) and this is a studio set and you can tell because the lighting is high key and it doesn’t match the Miami sunshine. This is how it was done because this is how films were made at that time because of a number of factors including the quality of the film stock, the size of the cameras, the size of the lights, how long they had the location for, and so on. Yet now it can look like an amateurish assembly of everything that’s wrong with studio filmmaking. And yet we should remember that since all films were made this way then, no one cared about it at the time and we in 2008 have to suspend our disbelief just to watch the first ten minutes of Goldfinger made in 1964. Tough ask.

Thunderball (1965)

A lot of what makes Thunderball watchable (about from that guy who gets fed to the sharks obviously) are the underwater sequences. I’ve been trying to think whether or not any film made since this one has ever ended up with the extraordinary underwater melee in which what looks like 50 divers are going at each other with knives and spear guns, all on screen, all at once, no CGI, no special effects. And I can’t come up with one. There are some pretty neat shots in The Abyss (1989) that have a lot of blokes underwater on a submersible, but is that it? Is Thunderball the high watermark (low watermark would be a pun: no puns, remember) of underwater action movies? Maybe so.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Snagging John Barry to work on the music for a lot of the Bond films was definitely one of the smarter decisions that the producers made. For me, the music to this film, in which Bond becomes Japanese by putting on a wig, there’s a giant interior volcano set and a white cat stroking villain, is so good it hides nearly all of the film’s shortcomings. Barry brings a soul to the potential soullessness, a romanticism to the possible routine of Bond’s dalliances with a never ending succession of women, and a driving force to the action sequences. Barry set the bar high, and only David Arnold has stepped up to the mark to meet him there. The most important contribution of Monty Norman, of course, is that bass guitar riff of the Bond theme, which all Bond composers have quite possibly been contracturally obliged to employ at the right moment, and sometimes at the wrong moment, and sometimes not at all (Eric Serra wasn’t asked back after the GoldenEye (1995) score was adjudged too light on proper Bond moments).

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Would this be the greatest Bond film of them all if Sean Connery had stayed in the part for this one and let Roger Moore take over on Diamonds Are Forever (1971)? The question that haunts Bond fandom. George Lazenby is not as bad as has been suggested, and the extreme, almost avant garde editing of the fight scenes is something to behold, as is that ski chase I remarked upon earlier. I could listen to John Barry’s opening title theme forever and if you don’t start feeling a bit misty when Louis Armstrong promises you All the Time in the World, then you’re probably in the wrong cinema. And it’s only a Bond movie, after all. This never happened to the other fellow, indeed.

One cinema visit this week, marked with a *. Contains one Indy plot spoiler, but I guess you’ve seen the film now, right?

Trading Places (1983)

Denholm Elliott, who co-starred in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), turned up here in a role vaguely reminiscent of John Gielgud’s role in Arthur (1981). I still don’t understand commodities trading, and still don’t understand the film’s ending. Which is why I haven’t earned millions in the city and retired at forty.

The Fog (1979) 

Jamie Lee Curtis, who co-starred in Trading Places (1983), which includes a topless scene she now regrets (but we don’t), turned up here as the kind of happy-go-lucky hitchhiker that could only exist in a movie made in the 1970s. There are John Carpenter movies that are in a certain sense better movies than this (The Thing (1982) for one), but I think The Fog is my personal favourite of his work. It has the perfectly stripped down mechanics of a really creepy ghost story, is not let down by its low budget and creates the majority of its mood through atmosphere and Carpenter’s own haunting musical score. Apparently, some Hollywood assholes remade this recently; another one of those films I will never see; how can you remake perfection?

Quest for Fire (1981)

There are some films you just never get around to seeing, you miss them at the cinema, never quite catch the VHS release, find something else to watch on another channel when they turn up on TV in the wrong aspect ratio, and then finally a DVD appears with a decent amount of extras, you find it in the May Madness sale at Borders for £4.99 and suddenly you can watch it in a week when I had a 1980s thing going on. I was completely blown away by this, one of the few movies since the silent era to be almost totally devoid of intelligible dialogue, and instead reliant on the pure tools of visual storytelling, which, sad to say, not every film director is able to draw upon. It’s a very simple story (see the title), magnificently scored by Philippe Sarde, and deeply impressive in every area. And it took me 27 years to get around to watching it. Duh.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Shia LaBeouf (show me the beef) is the Jar Jar Binks of Indiana Jones. Discuss. Or rather not. How on Earth does this guy get parts in films? He can’t even act. He’s like a less attractive Jason Mewes (and Jason Mewes, lest we forget, ain’t that pretty himself). Well, it’s been a long time coming, and at least it was better than Temple of Doom. Basically, the film is about the 1950s (Area 51, atomic bombs, witchhunts), but it also touches on just about every unexplained artefact of the uncanny from Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of… series from the 1970s: crystal skulls, Nazca lines and flying saucers. You name ‘em, it’s got ‘em. Considering that the fourth movie sequel in any modern movie franchise can be as rotten as all get-out (Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) anyone? thought not), we should instead be grateful that Crystal Skull is as good as it is, and that’s still pretty good. Yes it has flaws for internet fanboys to pick over endlessly, but you know what, the whole Indiana Jones thing was only ever meant to be barely better than an old Flash Gordon movie serial anyway, and thankfully, it’s much better than that.

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).

Two cinema visits this week, marked with a *. There’s a particularly irritating trade ad in the cinemas at the moment promising that 2007 will be THE ULTIMATE SUMMER OF CINEMA. I’ve had a dislike of the use of the word ULTIMATE in marketing hype ever since, I think, Empire film magazine started using it to describe a coming attractions article as THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to some films coming out soon. If you actually look ULTIMATE up in a dictionary, you’ll find that describing the summer of 2007 as THE ULTIMATE SUMMER OF CINEMA means there ain’t gonna be any more summers of cinema because this is the last one and the best one. Which is not true. Describing something that is not ULTIMATE as if it were ULTIMATE is actually something else: BULLSHIT.

The Rapture (1991)

With that said, let us cast our minds back 16 years to a film very few people have ever seen, but which has nonetheless been issued on DVD with a DTS soundtrack. The premise of the film is very simple. What if all that mindless guff about the Rapture that fundamentalist American Christians claim to believe in were actually true? What if they’ve got it right, and their nonsensical beliefs are the one true religion, and they’ll all be saved, transformed into light and transported to heaven? And all the rest of us, the, if you like, infidels, well, we’ll all be consigned to the fiery pit of Hell. And what would you do if you believed all this stuff and there was a voice in your head telling you to commit an atrocity if you wanted to be saved? What would you do? That’s what this film’s about.

Dogma (1999)

Spookily, Kevin Smith takes a slightly similar line 8 years later in this notorious religious comedy. The notion is that the Catholic doctrine of plenary indulgence (you can look it up) provides a loophole that could bring about the end of the world (though I guess you have to believe in this stuff first for it to work) (and even then…). I find it amusing that American Christians responded to The Passion of the Christ (2004), even though the endless spilling of blood would have looked more at home in a low budget horror movie gorefest, and came across as profoundly unrealistic (although I guess that was Mel Gibson’s point about the suffering of His Lord). But those same American Christians (though to be fair the protest was centred around a fairly small, fringe group), took umbrage at a film with a shit monster and lots of dick jokes.

Safe (1995)

Ooh, global warming, that’s pretty scary, right? Well, here’s a film that’s a lot more uncomfortable than Al Gore’s Keynote presentation. There really is something out there called environmental illness, and people really do have their immune systems rebel against them. And the spooky, insidious way that Todd Haynes has directed his film starts to make everything a suspect: the gasoline from passing cars, household cleaning products, and the new black couch. Julianne Moore’s descent into ill health is genuinely disturbing in a way that many horror films aren’t; Wes Craven called this the best horror film of the year.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

As a premise, the first part of John Carpenter’s two picture deal with Alive Films is pretty silly. There’s this low budget, green swirly effect in a big jar that’s going to bring about the day of judgment, and a team of university research assistants have 24 hours to stop it. But, and this is a big but, this film is all about how the silly premise has been executed, and it’s been executed very well. Composing the musical score for his films has always been very important for Carpenter, and here he produces one of his best: dark, intense and atmospheric. The music raises the game for the whole film and makes it work. Without it, it’d would just be another forgotten low budget programmer.

Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

For the record, this was the theatrical version of the film. Despite all the heavy detailing and grungy aspect to it, there is something of the Boys’ Own guide to the Crusades about this film. And Orlando Bloom has not just one but two occasions when he has to deliver a big speech to a huge crowd, and all I could think of was the Sermon on the Mount in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). You know, blessed are the cheesemakers. Still, as a Ridley Scott film, it remains a great watch, and I’m looking forward to the director’s cut.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Which is why I’m not an entrepreneur or a salesman, since I don’t have a desperate, hollow emptiness at the heart of my soul, and a compulsion to lie to perfect strangers in order to sell them things they don’t want, don’t need, can’t afford, and which may not even exist in the first place. It’s fascinating that David Mamet can make poetry out of a small group of guys all telling each other to go fuck themselves, but that’s what he does, and that’s what this is. A valediction to the American salesman in the tradition of Arthur Miller.

Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) *

Reviewers everywhere have declared this to be a return to form after the supposed debacle of Ocean’s Twelve (2004). Well, I liked Ocean’s Twelve, perhaps because I’m more aware of the kind of European filmmaking styles Soderbergh was experimenting with, and I liked this third installment just fine as well. There is, as William Goldman has noted, something just marvellous about these movies that assemble a team to do an unlikely task against impossible odds with numerous obstacles along the way. Reason and logic fly out the window, and you just sit in your seat and marvel. Three’s probably enough though.

Lucky You (2007) *

Curtis Hanson’s follow up to In Her Shoes (2005) is a slightly bloated father-son story with a romantic comedy lightly glued on top, set against the start of the World Series of Poker phenomenon that drives so many internet search engine pop-up ads these days. It’s a good 20 minutes too long, and telegraphs its plot points in advance, but it does have a lot of cool poker stuff and a decent cameo from Robert Downey Jr (and has everyone noted how better an actor Robert Downey Jr is now he’s off the drugs?).

Mission Impossible (1996)

This along with Die Hard (1988) is my action movie of choice when I want a no-think evening in front of the telly instead of a dark and brooding movie about the Apocalypse. Essentially three long action set pieces strung together into one movie, nevertheless when done with this level of brio and confidence by master craftsman (and my favourite director) Brian De Palma, it’s never dull. Funny, isn’t it, that even though you know a movie like this by heart, it remains a fascinating watch as you try to work out just how he does it.