Nobody Knows Anything

One cinema visit, marked with a *. Contains one use of strong language, Shine a Light style.

Good Night, And Good Luck. (2005)

David Strathairn turns up as Estes Kefauver in The Notorious Bettie Page (2005) (see last week) organising a searing Senate investigation into the deadly effects of pornography and comic books on juvenile delinquency. At presumably around the same time, Strathairn had also been cast by George Clooney on the other side of the prosecutorial fence as legendary journalist of the old school, Edward R Murrow. Strathairn belongs to that unique group of second-string supporting players that exists in Hollywood to gladden the hearts of too-frequent cinema-goers like myself. Strathairn’s presence in a film, like that of say Dan Hedaya or Jeffrey DeMunn, once spotted in the opening credits, in an odd kind of way automatically steps the film up a notch in quality; the movie doesn’t just revolve around the big star, the supporting players have been properly cast as well. Strathairn occasionally plays lead roles in movies, as he does here, but he’s not Tom Cruise style leading man material, he’s an exceptional character actor, and he makes Murrow and Murrow’s contempt for McCarthyism and the witch hunt mentality it created burn off the screen.

Shine a Light (2007) *

I don’t even like The Rolling Stones that much, but I still got a kick out of this film. To me, the Stones were always a singles band (and what singles), who never really assembled a coherent album statement in the manner of the Beatles, and who have effectively been creatively dead for 25 years: their last decent recording was Undercover of the Night, and that was in 1983. And yet curiously the Rolling Stones have stayed pretty much together (some members having been shed along the way) and not stopped touring, perhaps turning into the blues band they really wanted to be in the first place. It’s probably just as well for all the other directors of live concert films that Martin Scorsese only directs one of these concert films every 30 years or so, since he has raised the bar once again as he did with The Last Waltz (1978). For example, the opening sequence of documentary material, probably through the timing of ever shorter cuts, creates a rising sense of excitement exactly the same as standing in a concert hall waiting for the show to begin, then ups the ante on it again, so that when the band hit the stage with Jumping Jack Flash, you feel like you’re in the presence of something really exciting, even though you’re not! What’s particularly great is the sense of communication between the band members on stage, especially Keith Richards’ self-deprecating grin after he’s slightly fucked up the opening riff of Start Me Up, and also Scorsese’s manipulation of the sound mixing desk so as the camera focuses on Ron Wood, we hear exactly what he’s playing. The film doesn’t have the end of an era gravitas of The Last Waltz, what Shine a Light is about is what happened to the band that carried on playing long after it was formerly proper for them to have retired. The new ground the Stones are breaking is discovering how old can you be and still be able to rock and roll? On this exhausting evidence, some time yet…

Sympathy for the Devil (1968)

For the record, this was the producer’s cut of Jean-Luc Godard’s film, the one where Sympathy for the Devil is played in its completed form at the end; apparently it was always Godard’s intention to deny this pleasure to the film’s intended audience, whoever the hell that was. Coming from the high Marxism period of Godard’s career, this now looks as absurdly quaint as Georgy Girl (1966) or Barbarella (1968). The film has essentially two streams: the Rolling Stones recording one of their most notorious songs (which evolves in an utterly fascinating manner from a slow blues stomp into the adrenaline rush, tribal percussion and woo-woos of the finished piece), and various humourless revolutionaries carrying out acts of defiance against The Man: a girl graffitoes left wing slogans on buildings and cars; a phalanx of Black Power revolutionaries brandish guns in a scrapyard and “shoot” white female victims in sacrificial dresses. There are voiceover readings from a non-existent Russian political pornography novel, and lots more time capsule stuff. I’ve always thought that the essential message of the film was that The Rolling Stones and the revolutionary groups are engaged in the same practice at different ends of the scale: that of protest.

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.

I don’t watch TV. I’ve almost completely abandoned it as an entertainment medium. Instead, I’m all about the DVD. And the cinema. And surround sound. There will be DTS references, oh yes, there will. The only thing I’m going to do here is basically list every film I watch this calendar year and offer something like a things I’ve learned from watching them, probably in brief. Or other comments, which may or may not relate. I’m also going to do my level best not to edit my comments excessively, so this is pretty much straight from my head to cyberspace. Since I’ve already been too lazy to start this in January, I’m going to start with everything I watched in January.

Since the cinema visits will be rarer than the DVDs, I’ll put a * next to the cinema visits.
The Incredibles (2004)
Because I was in need of cheering up.

Ran (1985)
And having been cheered up, I needed to feel a little more miserable again. This was the Criterion Collection’s release of Ran, which has pretty much rendered all other releases redundant. I first saw Ran 20 years ago in a cinema, in all probability at the Aston Triangle, and remembered two things: it took a fair old time to get going, and that the villainness met with a fairly spectacular end. These things remained true, but what’s even more true is that the film ends by dumping you in a big black hole and saying, well there we all are, what do you think about that? Another thing: Chris Marker’s excellent making of documentary, AK, included on disc 2, underlines something very important: it was all done for real. Kurosawa had a giant castle set built on Mount Fuji, which he then attacked with real extras on real soldiers, and then burnt to the ground in real time, placing his leading man in real danger (since the poor guy has to stagger out of a burning castle down very steep steps covered in vision obscuring makeup all the time pretending that he’s completely insane).

The Doors (1991)
I love this film. I think people who don’t are people who don’t love cinema. A slightly older academic friend of mine once told me that this is what the sixties were really like; even though the film is wildly inaccurate about a whole bunch of things, it gets the tone of the period absolutely spot on.

Hannibal (2001)
Possibly because I’d just read Hannibal Rising. I think people are right: it was a lot better when we didn’t know why Hannibal Lecter had become the way he was. Anthony Hopkins is still too camp for me, but I have a lot of time for Julianne Moore, and she is great in this.

Apocalypto (2006) *
Is it just me or should this have been a widescreen movie? I could’ve sworn the trailer was widescreen. Anyway, this was a big step up from The Passion of the Christ; at least Mel Gibson’s used all those pieces of silver to do something interesting. The reason this film was shot on digital cameras is that in a jungle there’s not enough light at ground level to register an image on film without bringing in an enormous array of lighting equipment, which would negate the reason for filming in the jungle in the first place. The film may have a whole bunch of problems (its purported historical and ethnological accuracy among them) but it worked for me.

Lady and the Tramp (1955)
I needed a break from human sacrifice and brutality and this was perfect. The 2.55:1 frame seems a strange choice for a film that largely takes place in houses and alleyways but it leads to some fantastic compositions. And the animation is gorgeous: people who think that 3D CGI is the future of animation really need to check out the sequence in this film where the owners try and lock Lady in the dining room on her first night in the house. And the raindrops in Bambi; Bambi has lots of great character animation in it, but the animation of nature is breathtaking.

Where the Truth Lies (2005)
I don’t know how convinced I was by this. I think the film needed a more intriguing premise than demonstrating just how cute Alison Lohman is.
Evil Aliens (2005)
This makes an interesting companion piece to The Descent (see below), which also directly references a whole bunch of scenes in other films, but is a far superior work because cast and crew take the central premise seriously, and they’re not afraid to scare. Unfortunately, Jake West takes nothing seriously, and his film and his cast suffer badly as a result. If you as a filmmaker don’t believe in your premise, neither will anyone else. This is just a diversion from real filmmaking. Fun but a shame. Just because you can rip people’s spines out doesn’t mean you should.

The Conformist (1970)
Wow. It’s been an awful long time since I watched this, and it’s only improved with time.

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
And so this is Robert Altman’s last film. The imaginary death of an imaginary radio show with warm humour, country songs, and Lindsay Lohan. This film was shot digitally.

The Fifth Element (1997)
The best moment in this film: Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich have boarded a spaceship that will take them to a far off planet to retrieve magical stones they need to save the universe. But first, the spaceship must be refuelled. Cut to a location beneath the ship. Cue reggae music. Cue rastas and working stiffs who look like they’re smoking something. One guy bangs on a hatch, pulls out an empty fuel cell, picks up a full cell glowing bright green (it’s radioactive), and slams it home. They guys head off for lunch. End of scene. If this film had been made in Hollywood, this scene would never have made it past the first script development meeting because it does absolutely nothing to push the story forward, it doesn’t involve any of the leads, and it is in essence pointless. Except that the point is that it’s an integral part of the world of the film and the film would be poorer without it.

Novecento (1976)
I watched this five hour plus film in one day. Not something I would particularly recommend. I am now convinced that a communist revolution from the grass roots of peasant farmers is the only way to stop the ruling oligarchy of fascists and child murderers from destroying all that is great about our country. And that Dominique Sanda is one of the most beautiful women ever to have been photographed. See The Conformist above.
The Descent (2005)
See Evil Aliens above.

Babel (2006) *
I’m not sure how convinced I was by this movie. The connections between the four stories were, it has to be said, awfully slight and really more of a contrivance than such a film so convinced of its own importance really has any business getting involved in. The actors were all terrific though, as was the score. I just don’t know if the movie has anything to say. And it’s all rather put in perspective by Short Cuts (see below).

Contact (1997)
I love this film, and I’m not ashamed to admit it in a public forum. Hey, Contact haters, get with the programme.

Seven Samurai (1954)
The Criterion Collection hit another home run. The extras on this disc occupied me for another month. That Kurosawa, he was really good, you know.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
I remember this as fairly uneven when I saw it in the cinema, but it seemed much better in a home environment, particularly when you can pause and go back and check out the sheer weight of injokes and action going on even in the deep background.

Tommy (1975)
I love Ken Russell, and Tommy is Ken at the height of his powers. The surround sound is overwhelming, and it’s quite a surprise to discover that this film is one of the innovators in the technology that led to the 5.1 home cinema systems of today. Critics at the time complained that the film was too loud; they were unaware that this was one of the first films where the sound was just right.
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Which has to be followed by:

Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Roland Barthes wrote a book called Le plaisir du texte, and this is just an example of that.

The Usual Suspects (1995)
Still holds up. Still makes other crime thrillers look ordinary and underplotted by comparison.

The Color of Money (1986)
I think what I like more than the performances (and everyone here is at the top of their game) is Richard Price’s crackling dialogue which never fails to cut to the point of every single scene.

Mean Girls (2004)
I must be insane but this film gets better every time I see it. We pray for you, Lindsay, we pray for you.

Short Cuts (1993)
This film is embarrassingly good. Alejandro González Iñárritu should be locked in a room for a month with Robert Altman’s entire back catalogue, and not let out until he’s repented of his foolish ways and vowed to become a better filmmaker. The Criterion Collection really spoil us with this one: the film newly remixed in 5.1, Luck Trust & Ketchup a terrific 90 minute making of documentary, and all the Raymond Carver short stories and poems that inspired the film in a newly published version of an out of print book.

Gosford Park (2001)
A film that rewards you for paying attention. Dense and packed with backstory and incident, it’s a film that inherently criticises the society and world it’s depicting at the same time as it recreates it in all its forensic detail.

Zwartboek (2006) *
In an interesting development, this film was projected digitally, and looked absolutely fantastic. It retained the clarity, depth and grain of film projection, but will of course never be subject to scratches, flaws or fading.

Soldaat van Oranje (1977)
So I had to check out Paul Verhoeven’s earlier WWII epic again as well.

Starship Troopers (1997)
And I really love Starship Troopers: “Rico, you kill bugs good!”

Dreamgirls (2006) *
Every bit as good as promised. People who don’t like musicals are clinically dead. There’s just no hope for them.

Wild Things (1998)
Sex crimes. Oh yes.

De Vierde Man (1983)
Perhaps not the best film to watch in the afternoon.