Nobody Knows Anything

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.

Oh dear, three months in, and I’m already adjusting my DVD watching so as to make a nicer set of movies to write about. See next week, if things work out.

Trading Places (1983)

This is why I’ll never make a killing on the stock market; I flat out just don’t understand the commodity trading scenes in this film. It’s a reminder of a lot of things, of a time when John Landis could still direct, and Eddie Murphy could still be funny, and American film comedy could still have something to say.

Showgirls (1995)

By now, I’ve clearly gone insane. I spent all my time talking about Pandora’s Box last week talking about Showgirls, and this week I’m gonna spend all my time talking about Showgirls talking about Pandora’s Box (sort of). Taking my cue from the Pandora’s Box commentary track from academics Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane, here are some very odd thoughts about Showgirls that link the film to Pandora’s Box more than they should. Consider the film as a fetishistic object. Consider the following as an allegory of cinema: the prostitute, the pimp and the client standing for the leading actress, the director and the spectator. These themes can be found in the films of Godard and Fassbinder, especially in films concerning the spectacle of women. And Showgirls is about nothing else than the spectacle of women. It all fits. Nomi Malone is clearly the prostitute figure at the heart of the film, who denies that she’s a prostitute at the same time as she exploits her body to get ahead; the late plot detail that she’s been arrested for soliciting earlier in her life is not much of a surprise. Nomi is surrounded by pimps, men who exploit her and encourage her to exploit herself: the guy in the pickup truck at the start, the boss of the Cheetah, the guy at the disco, all of the men at the Tangiers, and the rock star who rapes her friend. Nomi is also surrounded by clients who watch her and pay for her services, whether with money or employment; it starts on stage at the Cheetah, continues in the lap dancing back room, and finishes on the stage of the Tangiers. And somewhat inevitably, this plays into the subject of the film itself. A naive and inexperienced actress, Elizabeth Berkeley, has been persuaded into exposing more of herself than perhaps she should have done by a couple of pimps: Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven, all for the supposed delight of anyone who’s ever watched Showgirls. The exploitation of Nomi is the exploitation of Elizabeth, so how complicit is the viewer of the film in this exploitation?

All That Jazz (1979)

There was a fair amount of accusations of pretentiousness levelled at this film when it first appeared and did all those things that Hollywood would prefer American movies don’t do: win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, excoriate the whole business that is show, reveal that the man behind the curtain isn’t a wizard but a painfully flawed human being after all. And yet All That Jazz is one of those films that’s improved over the years like a fine wine. Bob Fosse only directed five films, but all of them are great, and I guess that isn’t so bad.

Chicago (2002)

Rob Marshall’s directed two, and nobody has anything good to say about Memoirs of a Geisha. It is odd that Chicago has the structure it has, in which the musical numbers all take the form of dreams or nightmares (except perhaps the last number). It’s almost as if Harvey Weinstein had a backup plan in case the film didn’t work for an audience: Chicago the musical without the songs.

Ed Wood (1994)

How fabulous is this film? Before the Academy recognised Johnny Depp, I already knew he was one of the best actors of his generation. As Joel Schumacher and Michael Bay continue to prove, all you need to make a bad film is a total lack of talent. Ed Wood’s films were terrible, of course, but at least they didn’t drain the resources of Hollywood and clog the multiplexes of the world to keep the studio limping on for another year.

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

So here is the flip to David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001). Norma Desmond is really creepy and it’s great to see an actress really commit to playing completely unhinged on the big screen. This is a film about what happens when the studios don’t want you anymore because there’s always someone younger and hungrier waiting to push you down the stairs backstage and take your place in the show. This is a film about what the show does to you, and what’s left when there’s no one remaining to worship your image any longer.