Nobody Knows Anything

In a first for the blog, I had a very “busy” Sunday and didn’t post. Oh no, it’s all going horribly wrong. No cinema visits this week.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

One of the most frustrating things about growing up in the UK as a film buff in the last thirty years was the gradual discovery that I was unable to watch A Clockwork Orange because Stanley Kubrick didn’t want me to. I have to say that now something resembling the reasons for his withdrawal of the film have come to light (Kubrick feared for the safety of himself and his family), I still believe Kubrick let it go on too long. The perfect time to re-release Clockwork would have been around the time of the release of Full Metal Jacket in 1987, but this didn’t happen. The BBFC as represented by James Ferman made some noises along the lines of Clockwork would have to be cut before it could be reissued. So, thanks for that. I didn’t see Clockwork for the first time until the mid 1990s, when I saw the same bootleg of the Dutch release that everybody else in Britain had been passing around for some years. And then Kubrick died, Clockwork was re-released with a certain amount of haste, and I actually got to see it in a cinema before buying it on DVD twice. But Kubrick had to die first. Bum deal.

Firewall (2006)

Harrison Ford in another thriller for which the word “workmanlike” could have been coined. Unusually for me, I actually watched this movie on Sky and it reminded me why I have such a large DVD collection (see link at right). [In terms of size, my DVD collection is relatively modest, I’ve come across people who own 3,000 DVDs and up so I don’t feel so bad about my 1,375.] Sky apply so much compression to their picture that it feels like watching a movie on VHS, the action’s blurry and all the fine detail has gone. All very unsatisfactory.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)

Irritatingly for filmmakers, releasing a film is all a matter of timing. When Mallrats (1995) came out in 1995, America wasn’t ready for a R-rated comedy, but that audience was there just a few years later for American Pie (1999) and There’s Something About Mary (1998). The film was released just a little early. Similarly, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came out and tanked in 2001, but if you re-released it now, it would be like Al Gore’s best friend. The zeitgeist is now ready for an all-CGI movie with an eco-friendly message and sensational eye candy, and instead we get Shrek the Third (2007). Go figure. If you haven’t seen this film, and you’re into computer animation and out there movies, check this one out. It’s like a hippy classic from the 70s made with a big chunk of change.

Batman Begins (2005)

All you have to do to make a successful comic book movie is to take the original subject matter seriously. This is why Tim Burton’s Batman movies are better than the two Joel Schumacher debacles. And why employing directors like Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan is going to pay off for you in the end. Even if Nolan was only directing this film to raise his profile in Hollywood to put him on the A-list and give him access to the big money, it still wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t turned out a decent product. And Batman Begins is a very decent product. If only all comic book movies could be as good as this. Alas.

Down with Love (2003)

Peyton Reed cut his filmmaking teeth as a behind the scenes video documentarian on the Back to the Future movies, and Bring It On (2000) is one of the great guilty pleasures of our time: a cheerleader movie starring Kirsten Dunst that manages to be not cheesy and really rather cool. Down with Love underperformed at the box office on its original release, which is odd because it’s one of the most fully achieved films of recent times. Stuffed to the gills with snappy dialogue, absurd situations and classy performances, it’s an ironic recreation of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day sex comedies of the 1960s, a recreation of a dozen of them, all in this one movie. The entire cast, as they say, explodes.

Clerks II (2006)

Kevin Smith fans in the UK have been ill-served by film and DVD companies over the years; most of his films that I own have come from Region 1 because the Region 2 offerings, if they even existed, tended to be bare bones releases, and Smith loves his DVD extras, oh yes. I really think Kevin Smith should stop with the self-deprecating bit, making excuses for his own failings as a director (lack of visual style, etc). It’s actually been a pleasure over the last dozen years to see him grow in stature. Kevin Smith is a good filmmaker, he might become a great filmmaker, and I think the best is yet to come from him. The bar has been raised again by this film, funny as hell and full of heart. And it has the donkey scene, which is going to be appalling people for decades. But in a good way.

No cinema visits this week.

Avalon (2000)

This film may be too much of a secret. A lot of barriers have been placed in front of it to stop it appearing too commercial or mainstream. All of the dialogue is in Polish, all of the post-production was completed in Japan. It’s a beguiling mystery, a mannered reflection on the nature of games and reality, life as a game, the kind of film Andrei Tarkovsky might have made if he’d lived longer, lightened up a little, and bought a PlayStation. The director Mamoru Oshii is probably an unfamiliar name, but he’s the guy Jim Cameron and the Wachowski brothers look to for inspiration because they treasure his point of view.

Corpse Bride (2005)

The stop motion is almost too exquisite. The whole thing is a visual fest of design and innovation. Filmed alongside Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), this is as pure as Tim Burton gets, a dark sensibility smuggled into a children’s film.

Tarzan (1999)

Disney seemed to have got the whole animation thing completely worked out here. The heavy duty implementation of the Deep Canvas software had allowed their 2D painters to paint backgrounds in 3D, and animators have always been able to move their characters through 3D space. It has catchy songs from Phil Collins in Peter Gabriel mode, a fantastic vocal performance from Minnie Driver that alone is worth the price of admission, and a Tarzan who actually seems to have been raised by apes, rather than selected to play the role because he won a muscle building contest. Yet, in a few short years, Disney would be firing animators and switching to CGI, having dropped the ball completely and seen Pixar pick it up and run with it, scoring touchdown after touchdown. You know, there is a reason they call these films animated classics, and it isn’t just empty marketing hyperbole.

The Apartment (1960)

When was the last time a Hollywood actor played as weak and passive as Jack Lemmon does in this Billy Wilder film? As the story proceeds, you find yourself willing him to finally take a stand, admit his love for Miss Kubelik, and tell his boss to take his job and shove it. Billy Wilder, knowing this is what we want, knowing this is what Lubitsch would do, denies us this for as long as he can.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

The majority of Americans who’ve seen this film have not of course seen exactly what Stanley Kubrick wanted them to see, which is pretty ironic given the film’s title. During the party scene at the mansion, a number of CGI figures were superimposed over some of the more, shall we say, athletic performances. This, as Roger Ebert and others have pointed out, is a desecration of Stanley Kubrick’s work, memory, and reputation. The film runs two and a half hours and could probably have benefited from the removal of a good twenty minutes or so. The pace would then be not quite as glacial as it is. But Kubrick died and it was not to be. A lot of people concentrate on how good Nicole Kidman is in this film (and it’s damned difficult to take your eyes off her; back to the title again) but I think Tom Cruise actually delivers as well, it’s some of his best work on film. Arthur Schnitzler’s original novel Traumnovelle appeared in the 1920s alongside the work of his Viennese compatriot, Sigmund Freud, though their views on sexuality are quite different. In fact, this film has more in common with Fight Club (1999) than might first appear. It too is playing with fantasy and reality. After all, how much of what happens to Bill Harford on his night on the town is a male fantasy? How much has he been pushed into imagining/living these situations by his reaction to his wife’s female fantasy? The female fantasy that could have so easily ruined all of their lives if enacted in reality, just as the male fantasy threatens to do.

The Proposition (2005)

It’s taken him twenty years but director John Hillcoat has finally made a good film, and it’s an Australian Western. Discovering a pretty much untapped resource is a film director’s dream, and here Hillcoat has brought to life a forgotten episode in Australia’s history. Of course, it had been deliberately forgotten. Although Nick Cave’s script is fiction, a lot of the darkest deeds contained in his screenplay are, as they say, based on true events. The Wild West in America was a fairly out there place, but the real Wild West in Australia was every bit as crazy as a Spaghetti Western like Django (1966) or the films of Sergio Corbucci.