Nobody Knows Anything

Just one cinema release, marked with a *. Roll on, Hellboy 2, I’ll be able to see it on DVD from America sooner than it appears in UK cinemas.

Out of Time (2003)

There’s a second (or maybe it’s the third) tier of American film directors who can be relied upon to helm solid character pieces or decent genre work, the kind of films that are too good not to release in theatres, but a long way from being straight to DVD fodder. Discovering these directors is a little more tricky than being, say, a Tim Burton film, since the nature and scale of their productions means the promotional budget gets scaled down appropriately (worst case scenario: there is no marketing budget). Carl Franklin is one of those directors, and Out of Time is eminently solid genre fare with one absolute standout fight sequence that starts in a hotel room that really caught my attention (as it will catch yours, should you catch this film). Carl Franklin is not going to let you down if you want to see a real movie like they used to make them. And he’s not alone.

The Prestige (2006)

I want to see this again. Immediately. Even after it told me I was going to be sideswiped going in (the film is about magic and magicians after all), it still caught me out with the kind of twist that only seems obvious in retrospect. Almost casually thrown away between the two batbusters, this is Christopher Nolan reminding everyone that he’s the same director who made Memento (2000), and his mastery of non-linear storytelling that retains its clarity remains intact.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008) *

Hmm, yes, it was a bit of a let-down after the build-up, and it was more like a good TV episode than something that demanded to be told as a movie. Duchovny and especially Gillian Anderson remain very watchable, but Chris Carter et al really don’t seem to have quite worked out the climax of the A-plot and seemed at times rather more interested in the subplots of the narrative than the main event. The one thing the original X-Files movie had which this one doesn’t was size and ambition. And the final Easter egg for the fans in the credits may tell you that the filmmakers know this as well.

Planet Terror (2007)

Well, it took a year but I’ve finally had my Grindhouse (2007) experience (sort of). Although we know why Rodriguez and Tarantino did this (actually to deliver on the promise of grindhouse trailers instead of shortchanging the audience in true exploitation style), I remain ambivalent about the end results. There’s something very misguided about spending an awful lot of money to reproduce (sort of) the effects that were achieved back in the 1970s with chump change and a lot of audience goodwill (and sometimes not even that - some grindhouse films are so ineffably awful that even Tarantino can’t bring himself to champion them - maybe). The most celebrated moment in Planet Terror is the missing reel jump in which all sorts of mayhem happens. Oh, and Machete: there were times I was thinking I’d much rather have watched that movie.

Death Proof (2007)

There’s an awful lot of talk, then a really good stunt, then there’s an awful lot of talk, and a really good chase. And someone somewhere should start an online petition to remind Tarantino that he really isn’t a very good actor, and his cameos should be smaller rather than larger. Anyone for the 6th film from Quentin Tarantino? Me, I’m waiting for his 8 and a half.

One cinema visit this week, marked with a *. Contains one use of strong language. Sorry.

Jackie Brown (1997)

Film soundtracks are only intended for the seriously geeky. I mean, why would anyone buy the 2 soundtracks to Gladiator (2000) when they can have the same music delivered to them in 5.1 DTS with extra hacking and slashing and dialogue every time they watch the DVD? It’s very difficult to come up with anything resembling an explanation, but I’ve been buying film soundtracks for a long time, and in the days before the internet and indeed VHS, a film soundtrack was the only place to find that particular piece that seemed so transcendent when seen in the context of the film. Unless it didn’t make it to the soundtrack album. The best piece of music in The Hit (1984) was produced by Eric Clapton, and it isn’t on Paco De Lucia’s soundtrack. Among the frustrations of Blade Runner (1982) (see more later when The Week of Blade Runner starts) was the non-appearance of Vangelis’ soundtrack and its replacement with Vangelis’ music played by something called “The New American Orchestra”, an Alan Smithee style atrocity to line up with the worst of them. Away from all the conspiracy theories, what seems to have put paid to the 1982 Vangelis soundtrack we all wanted was nothing more exciting than legal bullshit of the kind that has bedevilled Blade Runner ever since the film went overbudget during production in 1981.

Quentin Tarantino very clearly loves film soundtrack albums, and, like me, he probably owns soundtracks to films he’s never seen, the ultimate example of soundtrack geekery. Jackie Brown, like all Tarantino’s films, is stuffed with pieces from other movies; in the case of the music from Coffy (1973) (see below), Tarantino uses the music more effectively in his film than Jack Hill did 24 years earlier. And Jackie Brown begins with one of the best title sequences in recent memory, Pam Grier in character as an air stewardess striding through an airport like an avenging goddess to the tune of Bobby Womack’s Across 110th Street, from the 1972 film of the same name. This short three and a half minute sequence sets up so much of what happens later. We sense Pam Grier’s attitude, her strength, her dignity, but also her haste, and eventually the realisation that her job isn’t so hot, but just all she could get, and why she’s in the place she’s in, and why she’s couriering money into the country for Ordell.

American Gangster (2007) *

Across 110th Street turns up on the soundtrack to Ridley Scott’s latest movie as well, somewhat critically dismissed but popular with two key constituencies: moviegoers and Oscar-voting Academy members. If you’re being unnecessarily harsh (which I would suggest is a bad place to start when criticising anything), you could say that this film doesn’t contain anything that hasn’t been played out before time and again in any number of films: The Godfather (1972), Scarface (1983), Heat (1995); in short, the touchstone films of modern crime cinema. The important ace that American Gangster has to play is that it’s based on a true story, the vague details of which have surfaced above ground in my cultural memories, but never been connected together in quite this way before. I was aware of the police corruption endemic in New York City in the 1960s and 70s because I’d seen Serpico (1973), but not aware that the later cleanup and arrests of corrupt officers were in part informed by the testimony of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), the drug kingpin at the centre of events here, a man prepared to deal to the end to stave off life imprisonment.

The Big Doll House (1971)

Not being overly familiar with the Filipino women in prison films that supposedly inspired this one, a typically opportunistic Roger Corman intervention into a potentially lucrative market, it’s hard for me to say just quite on what level of satire this film operates. Or whether it’s just the low budget and odd performances that account for the all round low rent atmosphere. Christiane Schmidtmer’s overwrought performance as a Nazi prison governor into snakes, whips and torture is just one of the film’s baroque pleasures. The Big Doll House is the Halloween (1978) of women in prison flicks, the new set of clichés that spawned a parade of imitators, including the following year’s…

The Big Bird Cage (1972)

Pam Grier appears in both these films, first as a bitchy lesbian opportunist in Doll House and then as a bitchy revolutionary in Bird Cage. One of the clichés of women in prison films is that all of the prisoners have butch personas, skimpy clothing, and surprising access to haircare and makeup, with the exception of the one femme inmate who can be heard weeping softly in the corner. This excess of female machismo naturally results in encounters in the showers (no WIP film is complete without gratuitous nudity) and wrestling in the mud and sex-starved women holding knives to men’s throats and bellowing ominously, “Get it up or I’ll cut it off,” and mowing down rows of Filipino prison guard extras with machine guns. All tied off with a soupçon of revolutionary politics to keep the student crowd happy.

Coffy (1973)

Jack Hill directed both of the previous films, and this 3rd collaboration with Pam Grier effectively moves her centre stage as a vengeful nurse intent on taking out the drugdealing motherfuckers who got her 11 year old niece addicted to heroin. She does this by wielding a shotgun, having an affair with a potential congressman, posing as a highclass Jamaican prostitute to penetrate the organisation (as you do when you’re a nurse) and finding herself in quite a few situations where her clothes seem to fall off, no more so than in a hilarious fistfight with a whole bunch of other bitter and resentful (and indeed bitchy) prostitutes, during which their clothes fall off as well. This is a solid entry in the blaxploitation genre, complete with wah-wah guitars, absurd cars and really bad clothes (and that’s not bad as in good).

Not only am I late after the Russ Meyer blowout, but I’ve only watched three films this week. I really needed the break. One cinema visit this week, marked with a *. Language may offend.
Death Proof (2007) *

I’m too tired to rehash the whys and wherefores of this film that crept into UK cinemas and out again after two weeks because American audiences are so stupid that they start walking out of Planet Terror (2007) when the credits roll and don’t stick around to see the second feature, which is probably the better film (Planet Terror verdict forthcoming). Duh. Thankfully, what Death Proof has going for it is that rather than being a totally out there breakthrough film, it’s just a cool place to hang out and watch two groups of girls talk and interact before they’re interrupted by some vehicular madness that is some of the best vehicular madness that has ever been filmed by anyone. However even as I’m typing this, I can imagine Tarantino giving an interview in which he talks about the films with far superior car chases he was aiming to emulate but did not succeed. Can you too? The only thing that’s a slight indicator of the beginning of the Tarantino decline (apart from the receding incline of his hairline) is the self-referential phrase that forms this week’s title. It’s really, really not a good idea to be so indulgently quoting yourself 13 years after you made Pulp Fiction (1994). Really, really.

A Good Year (2006)

Would this have been a better film if it had been a Working Title production with Hugh Grant, just like all the reviews said? NO, IT FUCKING WOULDN’T. Oh, I’m sorry, didn’t you hear me at the back? As a man of advancing years, Ridley Scott has been slipping micro productions inbetween his macro films for the last few years before time runs out on him, and this French sorbet, filmed, as Scott says on the audio commentary, all within eight minutes of his own home in Provence, must have come as a welcome change of pace after Kingdom of Heaven (2005). There is a slightness to the project that suits the subject matter perfectly, and people with too ingrained an image of Russell Crowe hacking people to death in the Colosseum only have themselves to blame. Crowe was an actor long before he inadvertently became a movie star, and there are plenty of scenes in this film in which Crowe’s character acts like a total shit that a lesser actor would have had removed from the script before he would even deign to read it. Hugh Grant and his schtick are not welcome here.

Deja Vu (2006)

Meanwhile, brother Tony was busy in New Orleans with this thriller that begins with an explosion (it is a Tony Scott movie, after all), edges into science fiction of the mindbending Twelve Monkeys (1995) kind, and ultimately becomes a unexpected love story. To say more would spoil a treat you know you owe yourself. Meanwhile, brother Tony was busy in New Orleans with this thriller that begins with an explosion (it is a Tony Scott movie, after all), edges into science fiction of the mindbending Twelve Monkeys (1995) kind, and ultimately becomes a unexpected love story. To say more would spoil a treat you know you owe yourself. Wait a minute…