TheFilmFreak1 Reviews

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Dial D for Destiny and Some Entertainment

[6/10 · 28 June 2023]

I'm not an enormous Indiana Jones fan. It's always been a second-rate James Bond helmed by a first-rate director. Raiders, the first and unquestionably most beloved entry in the franchise, struck me as two thirds of a great film, and then a dull third act where Indy gets captured and the villains kill themselves. Last Crusade was the same, but better. Crystal Skull was the same, but far worse. Temple of Doom was the most unique, a dark descent into a vivid and rather racist hell climaxing in a symphony of violent thrills, and it stands as my favourite. I didn't come into Dial of Destiny with stratospheric expectations, and neither should you, except maybe the hope that it's an improvement over Skull.

On that front I am happy to report that it is. Yet Mangold is no Spielberg, regardless of how good Logan was, and the blocking and camera work of the latter is terribly missed, especially in the opening action scene that on paper reads so much like classic Indiana Jones adventure but in reality plays like a Captain America set piece. Mangold often needs three shots to communicate what Spielberg could do in one. That isn't so bad when the action is brightly lit and well photographed, like with two exciting chase scenes in New York and Tangier, but it's a bigger problem during the opening and climatic action set pieces where so much of what is happening can only be glimpsed through night and fog. Otherwise, a clear step up from the last film. Compared to the original trilogy, Dial of Destiny is cast in a less flattering light.

The biggest problem is the script. It has vestigial, necrotic plot elements from earlier drafts in its narrative body that put one in mind of the Disney Star Wars trilogy. Shaunette Renée Wilson's character, the Lance of Longinus, a certain character surviving a virtually unsurvivable injury in the prologue, the Moroccan baddies... all strangely superfluous. There's also a sense of missed opportunity. I know many will hate the climax for its outlandish nature, but personally I didn't think it went far enough. It's such a mesmerizing left turn it feels insulting when the writers put the car in reverse.

In the end, it's fine. I like that Indiana's age is acknowledged beyond wry dialogue, incorporating his vulnerabilities into the action. I like Mads Mikkelsen. I like Helena Shaw's kid sidekick and that the story acknowledges the existence of tourists for I think the first time in the whole saga.

It's fine.

The Whale (2022)

A Fridge Too Far

[4/10 · 26 January 2023]

Darren Aronofsky has always trafficked in extreme scenarios and grotesque images to convey either addiction or obsession, depending on the film. His scripts would be comic in how OTP they are if they weren't bolstered by flourishes of hyper-intense editing, sound design, score, and photography. I know this because The Whale lacks many of those flourishes until its final act, where they arrive with all the enthusiasm of a student late for a (video) lecture. That's not a slight against the look and sound of the film; it's fine. It's Aronofsky at his most impartial, which makes the extremely repulsive dramatic beats of the film - including but not limited to heart attack masturbation, Brendan Fraser inhaling pizzas, Brendan Fraser vs gravity, and Sadie Sink being the world's most terrible teenager, if not person - hilarious. The filmmaking doesn't mix with the story being told, that's the problem.

I don't imagine too many people would legitimately object to the film's framing of morbid obesity as bad. No sane person would consider Charlie's lifestyle and body shape anything other than an illness or malformation. It is perhaps condescending at times, certainly. The scene where Brendan Fraser cannot pick up a key because of his extreme corpulence has the same feel as that episode of The Simpsons where Homer becomes obese. The fat suit prosthetic is not at all convincing, though I don't dispute the need for it. I can think of no working actor who is Charlie's size, and even if there was, there'd be something perverse about ensuring they remained that size throughout production, like enabling a drug addiction. What IS extraordinarily offensive in the film's messaging, though, is its strong and seemingly intentional message that cyberbullying at worst is an authentic expression of the self, and at best an act of charity.

The elephant, or whale, in the room is the matter of Brendan Fraser's acting. Is he good? Of course he is. Not Oscar winning material, but perhaps Oscar nominee material. He makes a character that is a near-saint feel real. The stagey script always pushes these anguished declarations from Charlie of how much of a martyr he is. Fraser has to fight against a narrative pull toward a sort of Christ for fat people, countering the resistible impression left from scene after scene of self-pity.

Everyone in the film is good, maybe excluding Sink. She's supposed to imbue Ellie with a hidden empathy, but I never saw it in her performance. Such a disappointment from one of my favourite directors.

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

A Conversation More Sating than Any Meal

[10/10 · 2 December 2022]

I loved this film so much I ordered a Criterion Blu-ray copy of it the very night I watched it. It is a sublime work of minimalism and perhaps the most audacious entry into the documentary-hybrid genre I can think of, essentially being an interview in the skin of a drama. I also loved the way Wallace Shawn for so long just echoed Andre's sentiments until he realised the implications of Gregory's philosophy and did a complete 180. That is a pattern of conversation I have often observed in real world discussions of philosophy and theology, but rarely in fictional renderings of such conversations.

On a personal note, I side more with Shawn's view of the world than Gregory's, but Shawn seemed too deeply motivated by fear in how he came to this view, when really such a view should be the product of considered rumination. One also notes the prescient nature of the film's metaphors, with the image of lobotomised humans in a prison of their own construction presenting uncomfortably close to the CCTV, live-streaming panopticons that are our major cities today.

This Is Not a Film (2011)

This is THE Film

[10/10 · 9 May 2021]

There is no greater pathos in this world than a free spirit admitting defeat to a bully. Noted filmmaker Jafar Panahi, a political prisoner under the thumb of the theocratic Iranian regime, play acts within his apartment the major beats of a screenplay he could not film; a story for which he is so enthusiastic he has staked his reputation and liberty on it. He gets through the first scene, then hesitates a moment. Utterly deflated, he asks 'If we could tell a film, then why make a film?'

That line hit a nerve with me. Every film-maker feels this to varying degrees. Panahi's experience is as bad as it gets, save for the hypothetical artist facing death itself as the possible consequence of self-expression. Nothing I have experienced compares to this man, but at its base I know what it feels to want to have something to say to the world and lacking the means to say it.

It is then with the greatest irony that Panahi, anxious about being inauthentic every step of the way, records a 78-minute video diary with fellow filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb that manages to convey so many facets of his person that you come away feeling like you actually know the man. I am simply in awe of Panahi's ability to communicate what he does with the camera. The film's final scene, ostensibly an awkward conversation with a landlord in a elevator, has enough drama, humour, terror, and even action to take any other 2010s movie to the cleaner's.

Perhaps the most glorious thing about this film is that its mere existence is an act of defiance against a group of bullies, passing themselves off as a government. Panahi remains free in spirit, but still lacks many of the rights of self-determination a peaceful citizen of any country deserves. And he is comparably lucky compared to so many oppressed within Iran and virtually every other country around the globe. It's easy to understand why we have laws that try to minimise harm for all citizens, but unless there is a direct causal link between an act and harm caused, no law should ever exist that can deprive a person of liberty or a chance at self-actualisation for the mere expression of an opinion.

Tenet (2020)

Sixis out of Tenet

[6/10 · 4 December 2020]

It has finally happened. Christopher Nolan has pushed me, a longtime admirer and irate apologist, over the edge. This madman cannot expect me to develop superhuman hearing just to discern his incredibly complicated, armchair temporal physics theory exposition over Ludwig Göransson's droning base. That's 80% of the film!

Top marks for spectacle, medium marks for suaveness, low marks for pacing. Nolan's films usually go at a breakneck pace, but with a new editor working on this one I think Chris' worst impulses were indulged a bit too much. The film never allows itself to breathe, which for a film that revels in exposition should be impossible. The reason is that only Elizabeth Debicki's character is provided any screen time just to convey her character's state of mind, and even then that time is precious little. Another is that the film doesn't indulge in its travelogue elements; the audience is transported to about six different countries and barely gets a sense for any of them. Such an error is inexcusable for a filmmaker obsessed with the old-fashioned extravagance of Bond films and David Lean. If you don't have character, you should at least have immersion.

And who keeps letting Kenneth Branagh do accents?!

Game of Thrones: The Last of the Starks (2019) Season 8, Episode 4

The abuse of the Rating System is Just Appalling. Oh, and the episode was Good.

[7/10 · 6 May 2019]

The insanity of the show's fans over the last episode has come precariously close to outdoing the sheer pettiness of the Last Jedi's band of un-merry manbabies. They can gloss it up as outrage at the increasingly lackluster qualities of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' writing as much as they want, but considering a lot of these same people endured the show's previous and significantly more grievous screenwriting disasters (not that I'd even call 90% of the last episode a disaster) from the 'wight hunt' of season 7 to the Dornish coup of season 6, I hazard what really bothers them is that the plucky girl stole Jon Vanilla's kill. Never mind that 90% of the (notoriously unreliable) prophecies that foreshadow Jon's role as this story's chosen one are exclusive to the books, or that Arya performing the kill had quite a large amount of foreshadowing itself, or that the other 'chosen one' Bran essentially arranged the event... no, this show clearly lost all sense of realism and audacity because it didn't have the evil fantasy overlord die in the final episode in a sword fight. That is literally the only way that George R.R. Martin's supposed allegory for global warming can end. We need to see the Night King use his Popsicle sword for the majesty of Martin's themes to be communicated to the screen.

I'd make this a review for the infamous 'Long Night' episode itself, but I was just blown away by the pointlessness of these alt-lite loons spamming the ratings for this episode before it even came out that I had to direct my own insignificant outrage here. The episode itself is very good, by the way, with the first half devoted to numerous conversations loaded with drunken sexual tension. Interpersonal scenes like these haven't been this good since season 6. A particular favourite was the exchange between the Lannister brothers and Bronn, in which the latter's cut-throat tendencies and pragmatism are firmly re-established after seasons of the character being relegated to the role of sounding board for the former two's witty remarks. Then things go to hell, with a dead dragon, a dead adviser, and an inconvenient truth all hanging over Daenerys' head. Emilia Clarke truly is on fine form in this episode, capturing the increasing (and somewhat justified) paranoia of this character who we DO want to succeed, but not at any cost. The script really shines at making us feel sympathy for Daenerys' plight, who is so close to achieving a goal we have watched her strive towards for some eight years now, but it also tempers our personal identification with her with the reality that she is disturbingly willing to kill thousands of innocent people because of her impatience.

Technically, the episode is the usual top-tier production quality, Starbucks coffee cups notwithstanding. Viewers will be happy to know that no scenes set predominantly at night take place in this episode, so make sure you restore the brightness settings on your television to non-Fabian-Wagner-approved levels.

And no, the stupid Azor Ahai prophecy isn't mentioned. Maybe the next two episodes, where Stannis Baratheon shall come back from the dead with Lightbringer, kill all the pretenders, and rule over a dominion of loyal Redditors.

An Open Secret (I) (2014)

Effective, but Tainted

[7/10 · 7 March 2018]

Since the horrific revelations concerning Harvey Weinstein, this documentary has received a significant amount of renewed interest, mostly due to the decision by executive producer Matthew Valentinas to re-release the film on Vimeo after an extremely limited theatrical release in 2014 not long after the scandal broke. Whilst the category of people that are the target of sexual abuse differ between the Weinstein story and this documentary, the incompetence (and potential complicity) of the Hollywood system evident in the abuse is much the same. This gives the already emotionally heavy documentary added weight that was only compounded by the revelations concerning actor Kevin Spacey and the further accusations directed against director Bryan Singer.

Unfortunately a great deal of the coverage it has received since the Vimeo release has been from reactionary conservatives such as Mark Dice and Alex Jones, which has given the film the surface appearance of an exploitation piece designed more to permit Middle America their two minutes of righteous hate for the mean liberals who challenge their senpai Trump than to actually guide the film industry to better things. Producer Gabe Hoffman is to blame for much of this, as it has been his voice on the film's social media platforms that has associated the film's cause with lots of ugly, reactionary right-wing opinions and, worse still, memes. He should learn that people who complain about Hollywood's depravity are more often complaining about Hollywood's hypocrisy in pointing it out in others than decrying the horror of ignoring credible accusations. Furthermore, I find it suspicious that the film fills its run-time ENTIRELY with five stories of male-on-male abuse (one who I think might have even been over 18 when the abuse happened), ignoring the half of the population that has historically had less power in Tinseltown. Could it be that Hoffman wanted to capitalise on the aversion some viewers have towards homosexuals to try and make his pedophilia movie shock viewers more?

Ultimately, however, the film itself is objective and non-sensational whilst retaining a strong sense of the suffering of its five subjects. Evan Henzi, a charming, compassionate teenager who suffered terrible molestation by his talent agent from the age of 12 (and threats of being sued by Hoffman when Henzi complained about certain elements of the documentary), has the most engaging story to tell, whilst Michael Egan III, who a year later was convicted for fraud (and whose accusations against Bryan Singer have essentially been discredited), has the least engaging story, primarily because it is so vague. I attribute the tone and quality of the footage captured solely to Amy J. Berg, an Academy Award winning documentarian renowned for her ability to speak truth to institutions awash with corruption and complacency. Her flare for the subtly dramatic also gives the film something of a tear-jerker ending mixed with a twist for one of the five subjects followed that, if not for the contentious suitability of the subject for a documentary about abuse of underage aspiring actors, is the film's greatest artistic triumph.

Yet Berg is by no means a perfect fit for the material, as her aforementioned focus on depraved institutions results in the film having a lack of focus. It tortuously struggles to find a root cause for the whole problem, but unlike the Catholic Church or the American justice system (both past subjects of hers), Hollywood is not hierarchical enough to be reasonably declared totally apathetic on an institutional level. There's no chain of command that would have had to have known about these complaints, and the film's one attempt to try and blame a consortium of shadow investors for having knowledge of 'pedophile pool parties' is it's biggest research failure. In reality (certainly according to Chris Turcotte, who complained about being grossly misquoted in the film) most of the attending models were likely 18 years plus or one or two years shy, with a small - but nevertheless disturbing - minority of 15 to 13 year olds mixed in, and only three people were ever said to be present whilst these underage boys were skinny-dipping in the pool. The owner of the house where these parties were held, Marc Collins-Rector, is painted as the head of this conspiracy, but about the only co-conspirators the documentary can confidently offer up are his two live-in male concubines, Brock Pierce and Chad Shackley... PEDOWOOD CONFIRMED!! At least we can all agree Collins-Rector is horrible.

Nevertheless, the film does a fine job at demonstrating that there are far too few safe guards against child predation, and far too few professional consequences for those found to have committed gross violations of standards of fundamental human decency. See this film to get a sense of the problem, but don't expect it to give you any clear direction of what action to take next, and against whom.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

A Bad Day for the Die Hard Franchise

[4/10 · 27 June 2017]

A Good Day to Die Hard, the latest in the multi-million dollar series, is a deceptive film. It's opening five or so minutes, which see multiple plot threads being set up with Nolanesque aplomb, seduce you into letting your guard down… which is when the film's putrid awfulness strikes.

But what is this awfulness? Well, it's not the meagre script, nor is it Bruce Willis' disinterested performance, nor is it the absence of any remotely interesting or intimidating villains, nor is it the fact that this film turns Willis into a bloody sidekick – because obviously the producers thought that what the public wanted to see from in the next Die Hard film is John McClane being made to look a useless twit by his punk kid – no, it's simply the cinematography. Oh, the cinematography. I swear, if you had given the camera to a drunken geriatric with Parkinson's, you would have gotten a better image. Shaky-cam, zoom- ins and shutter-speed are just some examples of the visual savagery Moore employs in this magnum crapus of his.

Even the stupid ending can't overshadow the horribly rough look of this film, though by God it tries. I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say, it makes the Fighter Jet antics of Die Hard 4 look positively Dogme 95 in comparison. Yet that's to be expected when you get the guy who wrote X-Men Origins: Wolverine to do your screenplay. However, if you can get over the aesthetic and intellectual deficits, this film DOES have a lot of explosions.

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Nothing is so Black and White

[10/10 · 27 June 2017]

The reputation 'Do the Right Thing' gained upon its release as a racially incendiary picture has defined both the film itself and the reputation of its director and star, Spike Lee. Its rather pessimistic depiction of urban race relations had many people fearing it would incite the African-American community to riot. Their main qualm was that a piece of 'white property' was destroyed because of a riot that the film's main character incites. The same people, however, mostly forgot that a black man lost his life to police brutality first. Lee took, and still takes, offense against those mainstream critics who almost seemed to both suggest that black people could so easily be persuaded to destroy public property and that white property took precedence over black life. That critics also complained about the way the film portrayed a black, 'ghetto' community in a reasonably positive light only served to aggravate Lee further.

And now in the era of increased accusations from conservatives towards liberals for 'race baiting' - educating or highlighting instances of institutional racism -, the tensions 'Do the Right Thing' created at the end of the 80's have become thematically relevant and rich to the contemporary viewer as they were during that earlier, quite neo-conservative decade. But despite Lee's reputation for creating pictures that flirt with Black militancy and supremacy (I personally find this not so common among his films as in his personality), DTRT's framing as 'a black picture' does a disservice to the universality of its perspectives, from the rough but benevolent white pizzeria owner Sal (Danny Aielo) to the lazy and rather selfish but lovable protagonist Mookie (Lee). The relationship between these two is fundamentally the key focus of the film, with the giant and seemingly threatening Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) the lighting rod that tests their already fragile friendship. By the end, we have seen both men's point-of-view and are hurt not only by the death and destruction that has snowballed from what was originally a minor complaint from the belligerent Buggin' Out (an unrecognisable Giancarlo Esposito), but also by how the conflict has divided them for reasons that to both men seem so unfair.

Lee has been clear that he sides with his own protagonist by the film's end, and the film itself supports this by how Mookie ultimately loses little compared to Sal (though unlike the friend Mookie loses, the pizzeria Sal loses is recoverable). However, Lee rather optimistically has the two cautiously reconcile, and with that a hope for tranquility and even equality between the two, and by extension Blacks and Whites of the US, can be inferred.

The film remains one of the best examinations of American racial politics. Its dialectical style, especially its subversion of political melodrama archetypes (the sympathetic minority victim, the brutal racist, etc.), demonstrate an intent not to manipulate audiences into feeling pity for black people but to get them to think about why these humans of both races, with all their flaws and prejudices, are the way they are.

As the film ends with two juxtaposed quotations from MLK and Malcolm X on the ethics of violent residence to oppressive regimes, we are left to wonder, with all that we have seen and heard, how we can respect each other as human beings without compromising our autonomy. Such a query should be so simple, but the world keeps making it so complicated.

Arrival (II) (2016)

Arrival Left Me Frustrated

[7/10 · 27 November 2016]

2016 has been an awful year, in both the cinematic realm and the real-life one. With virtually no above average blockbusters released save for 'Civil War' and the second 'Conjuring' movie, I hoped that one of the first mainstream movies designed for the upcoming awards season would provide a respite from this year of idiocy. It did, but not to the extent I had hoped it would.

The first act of this film is, quite simply, exceptional. Denis Villeneuve plays up the mystery and tension of this scenario - which in many ways resembles the first act of Independence Day - to levels of true excellence. We do not get a proper glimpse of one of these alien crafts until the moment our protagonist Dr. Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) sees one first-hand, at which point we are treated to a wonderfully composed long shot of the bizarrely shaped vessel levitating above a green, mountainous expanse of land as a truly haunting leitmotif for the alien presence plays. Subsequent scenes expertly maintain the tension by staging the first occasion Banks boards the ship, joined by theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (played by Jeremy Renner), with near Kubrickian precision and pacing. The 2001 parallels are inescapable here, and indeed very welcome, as such an occasion as this can only rightly be played for every moment it's worth.

The second act then rolls in and turns the movie into a puzzle story, as our heroes try to figure out exactly for what the aliens are intending to do on Earth. It's arguably the 'funnest' section of the movie, and it is certainly the most interesting. At this time of increasing divisions, people trying to figure out how to successfully communicate with someone else seems like a very prescient story to tell. The trailers have already spoilt their initial answer, but I will not. What I will say is that it rather rightly has the people of the Earth perturbed, although I still insist the reactions of many of the world's governments to the answer was frankly schizophrenic. Still, a solid second act that proceeds an exceptional start.

But then the third act begins, and the screenwriter rather inexplicably develops a seething contempt for his audience. Up until this point, we have been treated to flashbacks of Banks' past traumatic experiences with a child who died of cancer and a vicious divorce that followed soon after. They were not particularly well-directed scenes, and I felt their presence as shorthand for character depth only succeeded at lessening the film. Well, certain revelations occur about the nature of the aliens' language that, shall we say, cast these scenes in a different light, and with that the film suddenly explores a concept that I had not anticipated that it would explore at all, nor really wanted it to, upon entering the cinema. This is a spoil-free review, so I won't tell you what it is. I will give you a hint, though; Christopher Nolan covered it rather recently, and it is a concept that is infamous for allowing characters to be quite literally handed the solutions, having done almost nothing to earn them.

I applaud the film for dealing with this concept in this particular way, and hope it will interest people in exploring the theory behind it, but this intellectual adventurism comes at the considerable cost of narrative tension and plausibility.

I loved so much of this film, but by its end, it had let me down, and I cannot give it anymore than 7/10 for that grave sin.

Spellbound (2002)

Who Gets the Last Word?

[8/10 · 23 October 2016]

In 1999, 8 contestants of the 72nd Scripps National Spelling Bee (THE spelling bee to win in the US of A) were documented by film maker Jeffrey Blitz for his Oscar nominated 2002 feature documentary 'Spellbound'. Coming from a broad range of cultural backgrounds, these eight youths traveled across the county to recite letters. Many of them were social pariahs, whose fascination with words put them at odds with their peers; and to get to Scripps, they needed to pass a plethora of regional spelling bees, which required countless restless nights reading dictionaries and memorising stems and affixes from as many languages as possible.

It cost them time. It cost them friends. One former Scripps winner even said it cost him love (albeit jokingly). So why did these kids do it? The film doesn't try to explicitly answer that question, because ultimately it is an unknowable. However, when I watched the movie, I saw the children could be divided into two groups:

1) Three of the children were first-generation Americans (two from India, one from Mexico), one was an African-American girl from a low-income background, and one was a socially-awkward Caucasian teenager. All of them had something to prove with their contention in the Bee, whether it was to make their parents proud or to boost their own self-worth.

2) The other three children, among them two girls from well-off families and a precocious and highly talkative boy, were motivated far more by a sense of academic curiosity, and showed a greater degree of indifference to the idea of 'winning' the Bee.

As a potential microcosm of American society, I saw how mastering spelling and words was for some a pursuit with high stakes, tied with the approval of family and one's self. And it was one that had a cost, as friends were driven away by the ambitions of these children.

Of the two groups, no one group demonstrated any greater skill with spelling. The first group did indeed contain the winner, but it also contained the first of the 8 children to be knocked out of the Bee. The second group, meanwhile, was more consistently resilient, with one member of it coming in third place overall. What did I glean from this? That ultimately, knowledge of words can be a great way to prove your worth to others and yourself, but it is the love of words that is the source of the most emotionally rewarding of relationships one can have with language. Or in other words, don't be clinical about the language when passion is open to you.

Bad VHS style film stock aside, this is a fascinating documentary, and one I highly recommend. All the children are given a fair amount of coverage, and best of all there is a strong narrative that structures the film.

Spectre (I) (2015)

Probably not what People were Ex-Spectre-ing

[8/10 · 23 November 2015]

There is a sad irony to the even numbered Craig movies. The producers hit on a gritty, bare-bones style and a mood that worked in 2006's acclaimed Casino Royale, and then decided to play it to the hilt with 2008's chronically-derided Quantum of Solace. Four years later, the producers strike gold again with a tone of melancholic nostalgia with 2012's adored Skyfall, and now we have the incredibly nostalgia (sans melancholic) Spectre. Much has already been said about this film, and the compliments only outweigh the complaints by a slim margin.

The film's alleged problems certainly do not rest in its technical aspects. Roger Deakins' utterly lavish cinematography for Skyfall was always going to be an impossible act to follow, but Hoyte van Hoytema delivers some gorgeous and arguably more dynamic images that, though they never surpass Roger's work, come close to equalling it. Sam Mendes is also on top form, blocking his scenes with a delicate and graceful touch. Observe the opening action scene, the near-assassination and subsequent seduction of the widow Lucia Sciarra, and the Spectre board meeting, a cabal headed by the mysterious Franz Oberhauser. These scenes, as well as many like them from Skyfall, shall go down as some of the finest in the Bond canon.

The problems are neither to be attributed to the cast, who all deliver excellent performances. Daniel Craig exudes both boyish charm and homicidal menace in every frame he's in, much like Connery did, but on this adventure he allows himself to embrace his inner Moore, smirking and cracking wise to a far greater degree than ever before. Fiennes, Whishaw, and Harris fall smoothly into their time- honoured roles, whilst Kinnear and Christensen establish a sense of cosy connection to the pre-Skyfall Craig movies... though Judi Dench gets a post-mortem cameo that, though certainly nice, is little more than rather clumsy fan service. Léa Seydoux is probably the worst Craig Era Bond girl, but that still puts her head and shoulders over half of Connery, Moore, and Brosnan's love interests. Andrew Scott, Dave Bautista, and of course Christoph Waltz are all quite excellent as villains, whilst Monica Bellucci captivates in a small role that needed significant expansion.

Ultimately, the film's problems really come down to two elements. The first is rather minor compared to the second, but it still drags proceedings down a bit and was a much bigger problem for me than the second (which I'm only really mentioning to address the cause of this movie's bad reception). This first element is Thomas Newman's score. When I first heard that Newman, a composer known for providing soft, simple themes for dramas, was going to do the score for Skyfall over series regular David Arnold, to say I was skittish would have been an understatement. Arnold had essentially synthesised the sound of modern Bond after the departure of the legendary John Barry, and here was this art-house composer threatening to turn the Bond sound into something that could play over a tale of a man suffering a mid-life crisis in American suburbia. But despite my reservations, he handed in a pretty darn good score for that movie… and then he handed in the exact same score for this movie. I am exaggerating a bit, as Newman does reorchestrate and develop the various leitmotifs he conceived for Skyfall, but only just enough so that you don't think he actually just mixed the Skyfall soundtrack CD into the Spectre print. There are precious few new tunes and melodies to be found here, and it just comes off as a bit pathetic after a while. Newman clearly spent all his action movie scoring abilities on Skyfall, and now he's just collecting a pay check.

The second is, of course, the script. In terms of logic problems, the film is no worse than Skyfall. The implausible links between (as well as the true identity) of Oberhauser and Bond are no more absurd than the Silva's precognitive abilities in Skyfall's second act, and the rather clumsy attempts at saying something relevant about modern espionage with condemnations of extensive surveillance and the overuse of drones actually coming off as half-way intelligent in the face of the ridiculous portrayal of cyber-terrorism in the last film. Where this script fails, and where Skyfall succeeded, is in setting up emotional stakes and character arcs.

The past three films in the series (even Quantum) have been lauded for giving Bond a proper emotional journey, from his relative loss of innocence in Casino Royale, to developing emotional discipline in Quantum of Solace, to accepting and overcoming the barriers of age i Skyfall. That Skyfall also had the swansong element for the exquisite Judi Dench gave it a power and resonance with viewers that raised audience expectations far above what they probably deserved to be for the emotional currency of a Bond movie. So when Spectre comes out, with Bond now as an absolute who's only arc is 'should I settle down?', you get the sort of reactions that lead to a mere 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That the film still has the darker, edgier visual style of its predecessors arguably doesn't help matters, as the film's otherwise old-school screenplay just can't find expression as the campy delight that rival franchise's Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation was.

As I said earlier, though, the 'problems' of this script do not bother me. The franchise has not had a good classic Bond romp since the 80's (because screw the Brosnan movies), so to finally get one is really a nice bit of variety at this stage; and by the same token, the film's commitment to its art-house aesthetic makes it feel faithful to both the Craig movies and the early 60's entries. In short, this is a Bond movie that really only exists to please Bond fans. And y'know what? That's fine.

And no, I did not like Sam Smith's song either.

Arachnophobia (1990)

The Horror is the Comedy

[5/10 · 18 September 2015]

The directorial debut of Frank Marshall, otherwise known as the producer of everything you ever loved from the 1980's, Arachnophobia is a creature-feature that was heavily marketed as both a comedy and a horror film. It is one of the better regarded disaster films from the 1990's, the decade that saw a dramatic resurgence of the genre, with a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. At best, it deserves a low 60.

Strangely for a 90's disaster movie, Arachnophobia's acting and screen writing are both quite sturdy. The reliable Jeff Daniels plays a dry-witted but rather pleasant urbanite GP called Dr. Ross Jennings, who has arrived from San Francisco with his family (all of whom are played reasonably well). Jennings, who (big surprise here) suffers from arachnophobia, clashes with the colourful locals before having to confront a sodality of aesthetically displeasing arthropods from the rainforests of the Amazon. The plot is largely logical and believable in its progression, bar a few inexplicabilities here and there. While it is all rather run-of-the- mill, it is competent, enjoyable, and at times even clever.

But where the film thrives on writing and performance, it falls pathetically short of the mark on matters of tone and technical ingenuity. For being an individual with the titular phobia, I found this film profoundly flat and pedestrian. You'd think that if Alfred Hitchcock was able to instil blind terror with the mere sight of a flock of disgruntled birds, then Frank Marshall would be able to at least quietly unsettle with the image of spiders invading a living room. It would be unfair to say he did not manage to extract any terror from those scenes, but where Marshall could have spent a nice chunk of his 103 minute runtime building a pronounced aura of menace, he instead tries to crack jokes so tepid a late 80's sitcom wouldn't dare touch them with a ten-foot pole.

The film, quite simply, should not have been a comedy. Besides the Sam Raimi-esque camp of the climatic showdown between Jennings and the boss spiders, the jokes just do not work. Some of them are even downright grating. Halfway through the film, the arach-attacks start taking centre stage, and the narrative is given a sudden surge of suspense. What does the film do then? Why, it devotes an inordinate amount of our time to a stupid comic relief character called Delbert, because that makes sense. It's not as though there's infinitely more interesting material to be followed up about extremely venomous spiders; no, what we all need – nay, what the 90's needed – was an insect exterminator (played by John Goodman) whose entire humorous conceit is that he's fat, has a weirdly effeminate voice, and may or may not be very good at his job.

Worse still, the production values have a television film vibe about them, particularly the music. Composer Trevor Jones gets some nice strings and brass involved in the climax, but otherwise the whole thing sounds more dated than the incidental music for 'The X-Files'. Delbert's leitmotif is the undoubtedly the worst offender. You could overlay it on the 'Too Many Cooks' video and it would be a perfect fit.

The film's best moments are its scenes of rather understated horror. There's no grey-blue style Platinum Dunes lighting, few grating musical stings, and the actors never play fear as some grotesque pantomime of terror. It's subtle and it's sincere. In conclusion, Arachnophobia is an enjoyable but forgettable creature feature that might serve as appropriate viewing for a rainy Sunday afternoon, but little else.

Marble Hornets (2009–2014)

Slender Men and Thin Plots

[6/10 · 16 May 2015]

The Internet is a weird place. One moment it's making you laugh at Russian men with brilliantine hair and amazing eyebrows sing lyric- less songs from the 1970s, and the next it's making you scream at a tall albino in a nice suit who resides in a forest. The latter is of course the infamous Slenderman; a tall, vaguely Lovecraftian creature that feasts on your fears and is always, always watching you (despite not having a face). Though Slenderman originated on the forums of Something Awful, it was the ARG web series Marble Hornets that truly put the character on the map.

The premise of the series is relatively simple; a guy named Jay stumbles upon some tapes of an old friend's unfinished college movie that contain images of a creepy tall man stalking the production crew. From there, Jay gets embroiled in a Blair Witch-style scare fest where he desperately searches for answers.

Having finally concluded last year - adding up to a total of three seasons - Marble Hornets did tend to try its luck a bit when it came to concealing information from the audience. And much like other supernaturally-orientated mystery shows, it concluded with about as much resolution as a report commissioned by a bureaucratic committee. It also had a habit of being repetitive, with one episode out of every five using the 'wondering-aimlessly-through-the-forest- while-supernatural-freak-trolls-you' format. Yet what it lacked in originality it more than made recompense with good writing and a meticulously-conceived atmosphere of foreboding.

And if none of that sells it for you, just imagine the game Slender as a web series. That should do the trick. Best avoid though if you're the sort who masturbates to the thought of Damon Lindelof and his ilk being strangled by the threads of his own tangled 'plotting'.

Moonraker (1979)

The Moonraker Blows

[5/10 · 15 April 2014]

Most agree that the 70s was not kind to 007. It was an age of dramatic change and rebellion, where the auteur and the art-house were fully realised as commodities and the exploitation genre arose from a lack of the social inhibition that the previous decades so delicately cultivated. The Bond films, too civilised to be exploitation and too mainstream to be art-house, had simply lost their audience. That was until 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, which shocked many by embracing the uniqueness of Bond instead of limply re-contextualising the spy in then popular genres like Blaxploitation and Kung-Fu. It was fresh, it was inventive, it was over-the-top, and it was strangely poignant in regards to the treatment of Roger Moore's lothario Bond. It was, in short, a resurrection, attracting rave reviews and great box office.

So producer Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli, having made Bond cool again, was faced with the unenviable task of preserving said coolness. So what does he do? He makes the same film… IN SPACE! Enter 1979's Moonraker. And let me tell you, dear readers, I'm not joking about this being the same film. As a bit of an interesting exercise, try comparing the opening sequences of 'Moonraker' and 'Spy'. Perhaps you may notice a few similarities, like the villain hijacking a vehicle, M asking for 007 and instead getting an innuendo, Bond being lured into a honey trap by villains who want him dead for vaguely defined reasons, and finally Bond in free fall until the last minute when he suddenly has a parachute. Yeah, original.

And the similarities don't end there! You also get a billionaire Blofeld surrogate (this one played rather well by Michael Lonsdale) with a plot to destroy the world, Jaws, a rival intelligence agent as Bond girl, and a final scene where Bond embarrasses his superiors by engaging in a round of decidedly un-private fornication. I understand that a franchise as long running as the Bond series cannot avoid repetition, but this is ridiculous!

Even where this film does distinguish itself from its predecessor, it is flagrantly ripping off Star Wars. The final thirty minutes of this picture essentially constitute the highlights of that picture with a smug, alcoholic, sex-crazed sociopath thrown into the mix. The special effects are laudable, but you barely notice for all the Megalodon-jumping camp they represent.

And speaking of 'jumping the shark', what precisely were the producers thinking when they conceived of a hovercraft gondola? And a midget girlfriend for Jaws? AND A BLOODY DOUBLE-BLOODY-TAKE PIGEON!

What I find particularly aggravating about this film, though, is how little it resembles the book it is based on. Ian Fleming's Moonraker was one of the better entries in his iconic espionage series, with a simple yet suspenseful plot and some good, old-fashioned racism against the Germans, and to not see it realised on the big-screen simply because it wasn't 'ambitious enough' for Broccoli's tastes is utterly infuriating.

This is not my least favourite Bond film of the official series (because Never Say Never Again doesn't even deserve to be called a Bond film), but it certainly makes the bottom five. Even Roger Moore, who I unashamedly love as Bond, couldn't save it. In fact, his persona is so exaggerated for this installment that he comes dangerously close to being insufferable. The film does have some positive qualities – the mise-en-scene is lovely and John Barry delivers another superlative score (though his lyrics for the theme song are straight out of a George Lucas movie... how appropriate) – but in the end the whole product amounts to an utterly horrid piece of self-depreciating camp that revels in the fact it doesn't give a damn anymore about telling a compelling story.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Klaatu Barada Keanu

[3/10 · 19 November 2013]

1951's 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' was one of the better tales of spacial conflict from an era that was otherwise rather lacking in intelligent sci-fi. Unlike its peers, 'Day' was more of a cautionary tale about nuclear warfare than it was B-grade exploitation. It centred around an alien named 'Klaatu' who came to earth on behalf of a group of alien civilisations to warn mankind that, if we did not cease and desist with our atomic shenanigans, than we would, for lack of a better phrase, be turned into puppy chow.

Although some parts of Robert Wise's film have not aged particularly well, such as the awkward Americana and the inexplicable decision of the aliens to land specifically in Washington DC when there are over a hundred different Earth capitals that would surely have offered equally impressive photo opportunities, they're all relatively minor sniggles that ultimately do not detract from the enjoyment of what is a clever, thoughtful, and even occasionally witty piece of Cold-War sci-fi.

The same, however, cannot be said for the 'sniggles' I have with the 2008 remake of the film.

Forgetting the bland performances, the humdrum special effects, and the prosaic direction, this film still manages to be shockingly bad on the level of how it tackles some of the admittedly interesting ethical conundrums it sets out to explore, mainly because it mistakes its solutions to these problems as foreshadowing an advancement in human evolution when really they just mark the beginning of an arduously prolonged and humiliating end for the species. But even though I love the original, don't think I regard this film with pronounced vitriol just because it isn't an exact replica. I'm perfectly willing to admit that that film had its problems (some of which I outlined above), and I'm even willing to admit that I found Keanu Reeves' Klaatu a lot more interesting than Michael Rennie's take on the character (though I still regard the latter portrayal affectionately), but it's a pretty sad indictment of a film to say that the best thing in it is Keanu Reeves' acting.

Also, Jaden Smith might possibly be the worst actor in the history of the world. Just putting that out there.

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Stupid, But Fun

[6/10 · 3 May 2013]

Ira Levin's novels were known for containing outlandish plots that, against all odds, appeared plausible due to the understated way with which they were portrayed. What they were not known for was an intelligent prose style. As such, they were perfect fodder for film adaptations. After 'The Stepford Wives', 'Rosemary's Baby', and 'A Kiss Before Dying' were successfully brought to the screen, 'The Boys From Brazil' was the next viable candidate for the film treatment. And for good reason. It's plot - which I refuse to impart - is so absurd that even William S. Burroughs would do a double take. All the film needed to excel was a fresh-faced auteur with a knack for subtlety and nuance to capture the quiet menace of Levin's novels. Instead, it got Franklin J. Schaffner. Now we have Laurence Olivier as a Jewish grandpa, Gregory Peck as a Nazi (Dr. Josef Mengele, to be precise), and Steve Guttenberg as a Zionist. And that's only the first fifteen minutes...

However, whilst Schaffner abandons any attempt at capturing the quiet menace of the book, he does deliver the sort of well-structured, competently made thriller that an old-school director of his ilk is so adept at making. You're intrigued to follow Olivier's Yiddish caricature around the world as he pieces together the perverse conspiracy, encountering bizarre, scene-stealing characters along the way played by the likes of Rosemary Harris, Uta Hagen (making a rare film appearance), and Bruno Ganz. And you're intrigued to watch a group of Nazis viciously and spectacularly murder a bunch of old guys for no apparent reason, especially when Peck is hamming it up as their leader.

It's a seventies thriller through and through, replete with killer Dobermans and a gloriously Germanic score by Jerry Goldsmith that could legitimately rival the best of Wagner and the Strauss dynasty. You either like that sort of thing or you don't. But for my money, it's cheesy, it's stupid, and it is VERY memorable.

The Company You Keep (2012)

Dull Company

[6/10 · 3 May 2013]

In the wake of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it's only appropriate that we should get a generic political thriller to remind us of one of the US' earlier international farces: the Vietnam War. 'The Company You Keep', directed by and starring Robert Redford (yeah, he's still alive), is that thriller.

Redford plays Jim Grant, a widowed lawyer and father who gets exposed by investigative journalist Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) as a former member of Weather Underground (Google it) responsible for the death of a security guard during a botched bank robbery. Forced to go on the run, Grant must dodge the police as Shepard starts to doubt whether Grant is actually guilty of the guard's murder.

Seeking to combine a chase movie with a detective story, the film is bogged down by superfluous characters, caricatured villains, and a third-act that feels more like a soap-opera than a suspense picture. I wouldn't go so far as to say the film has a bad script, but it does have a clunky one. What makes this even more egregious is that 'Company' is filled to the brim with great veteran actors such as Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Julie Christie, and Susan Surandon (to name a few…), which almost always indicates that the producers have less faith in the script than they do that a Justice League film will actually be made (we all know it won't).

I don't want to make out that this was a bad film, though. In its own unambitious and minor way, it's reasonably entertaining. It could be argued that the actors alone are worth the price of admission. But I can assure you of one thing: when you leave the multiplexes after seeing this, you'll be hard pressed to remember even the last minute of it.

1941 (1979)

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to View

[2/10 · 14 October 2012]

THIS REVIEW IS ON THE THEATRICAL CUT OF THE FILM

Spielberg, what horror have you wrought?

Buoyed by the success of 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (both films that I consider to be somewhat overrated), the young auteur Steven Spielberg decided that the time was right for a vanity project. The project? A screwball WWII film littered with numbing spectacles straight out of Cecil B. Demille's period epics.

On paper, such a project boasts great potential. One cannot deny that, amid all the atrocities and horrors of the Second World War, there was an underlining sense of heightened and morbidly hilarious tragedy that, in the right hands, would be the perfect fodder for farce. It also has the added benefit of attracting the adoration of critics for it's gutsy agenda and subject matter. Yet, through the lens of one of Earth's most naturally gifted filmmakers, it is an unparalleled abomination of comedy.

If one wanted to summarise in a mere four words just what is wrong with this film, I would humbly suggest that you use these so ordained vocables: 'IT NEVER SHUTS UP!' Every single second of '1941' is filled with explosions, car crashes, plane crashes, brawling, and gun fights. I gathered that the film was supposed to be a farce, but farces only really work when one has a sense of escalating catastrophe. With '1941', there is no sense of escalation because nothing really escalates; it's uninhibitedly mad from the get-go and it's uninhibitedly mad by the end. Indeed, the only vaguely quiet scenes in this film are those featuring the villains (Toshiro Mifune and the great Christopher Lee deserve to have their name associated with a better Spielberg picture than this), and even they are sullied by a grating cameo by Slim Pickens.

The controlled and demonstrably contrived anarchy of '1941' made the hour and fifty minutes it took to watch this film feel like the longest and most grueling one hour and fifty minutes of my life. It's not that I have a distaste for screwball shenanigans, considering that almost all of my favourite comedies in some shape or form incorporate such pantomimic elements of that titanic arena of absurdity that we call farce; it's more that I dislike comedies that have almost no concept of the constitutions of a good joke. Though such a thing is considered subjective, I dare you to deny that my definition is an all-encompassing one. The constitutions, or rather constitution, of a good joke is a sharp contrast. Take any joke, good or bad, and you'll find that the reason it is either good or bad is because the contrast between two separate ideas is either elegantly or poorly highlighted.

Well, the contrast in '1941' is very, very poorly highlighted. I'm guessing, from the film's narrative, that it was something along the lines of 'War is a serious business, but the participants are adult children'. Well, it gets the 'adult children' aspect right, what with the crew of a Japanese submarine emerging from the water with a naked night swimmer on their periscope and fighter pilots blowing up the petrol stations of innocent, elderly citizens to the sound of heroic themes by John Williams; and what with US military personal rioting in Hollywood Boulevard whilst a Benny Hill sex romp ensues between a zoot suit wearing dancer and a sex-crazed soldier (that culminates in what appears to be a rape... charming) and an officer having sex with a girl he fancies as the two pilot an aeroplane over a crowded city with reckless abandon; aaannnndddd what with a platoon shooting out lights in Hollywood Boulevard whilst people are still standing beneath them just because an air raid siren has sounded and a black out has not gone into immediate effect... AND WHAT WITH civilian patrolmen stationing themselves in Ferris Wheels that can somehow roll perfectly down peers just in case any 'Japs' show up on the horizon (which of course they do).

What it doesn't do is highlight anything resembling the reality of war, something the film sorely needed to do if it wanted to get a laugh out of us during the many elaborately choreographed slapstick sequences that I'm sure cost more money than the United States presently owes to China to film. Instead, we get innumerable scenes of intricate physical comedy that seems uncertain about whether it wants to emulate Jacques Tati or 'The Three Stooges'.

Perhaps I wouldn't mind so much if the film had some colourful dialogue that I could endlessly quote to befuddled acquaintances. But it doesn't. In fact, the film has so little wit that I'd swear it was a big-budgeted 'Death at a Funeral', but then I would be doing that film a disservice for failing to acknowledge it's ability to recognise a need for contrast. The only vaguely witty jokes in this film are the ones about ethnicity, and it's a bit of a sad thing when the best jokes that a big-budget film like this can cough up are to do with such a pedestrian topic.

And it's almost pitiful that the man responsible for such brilliant films as 'Duel', 'Schindler's List', and 'Minority Report' can produce something so obnoxiously unfunny. And I thought 'The Terminal' was bad...

After Hours (I) (1985)

A Scorcese Comedy Doesn't Sound Right for a Reason

[7/10 · 19 January 2012]

Martin Scorsese's idiosyncratic 'After Hours' is, if nothing else, an interesting film. It explores thematic and visual avenues that most films would barely dream of exploring. Regrettably, it chooses to pursue these avenues through comedic means rather than dramatic or thrilling quasi-philosophical ones, which is highly detrimental toward any effort to maintain the paramount stable of great comedy: that every single scene and story element must have some type of structural or humorous payoff. This is not always necessary with thrillers or epics (though it is certainly beneficial), but with comedies it is absolutely mandatory. It is arguably the cinematic equivalent of telling a joke well; no matter how witty or inherently funny the concepts that are addressed within the gag are, the transference of the joke teller's understanding of the humorous merit of those concepts will only be actuated successfully if every cadence (camera shot), pause (edit), and phonetic (actor) involved in the regalement is predetermined with tremendous precision. Frankly, Scorsese just wasn't up to the task.

The editing is just absurdly ostentatious. We're not even ten seconds into the film before over two dozen shots are thrown at us. Once again, if this was some type of Nicholas Roeg-esque Lovecraftian Horror film (or a pop-political conspiracy movie), that would all fine and dandy, but this is a midnight Kafkaesque cringe comedy – an emotionally disturbed 'Out-of-Towners', if you will –; we're not supposed to get a headache until the third act! It was a sign of Scorsese' declining adeptness as a filmmaker, really, and it is perhaps the recognition of these tragic auspices of directorial ineptitude that make the film just that little bit harder to watch. Yet, while the editing is distracting, 'After Hours' is no 'Cape Fear (1991)'.

The screenplay brazenly borders the line between Daedalian farce and abrasive pointlessness, revealing its amateurish design with every plot turn (though more frequently 'plot contrivance') and development. By no means aiding the credibility of the script is the fact that the writer, Joseph Minion, plagiarised a good deal of the damn thing (some esoteric comedian's standup routine was the primary fatality). There are flashes of genius in it, of course (a cash register key is a surprisingly efficient plot device), but the lack of polish is really quite repellent at times.

I suppose 'After Hours' is successful at being a work of particularly grim jocularity, but it is essentially the cinematic equivalent of a joke without a punchline. With less Kafka and more farcical frivolity, the end product might have been an open-ended joke of a more satisfying mould.

Me and the Big Guy (1999)

Comic Relief from Orwellian Dystopia

[8/10 · 7 December 2011]

Whether you love it or loathe it (I am of the former category), you cannot deny that reading George Orwell's modern literary Dystopian classic is one hell of a depressing experience. The book realises every fear that one could possibly harbour against governments, feeding the reader's suspicions of 'their obedient servants' possible totalitarian tendencies and reducing them to nothing but paranoid carapaces of their former selves. Well, this little known comedy short should act as the perfect tonic for accelerating your convalescence.

'Me and the Big Guy' tells the story of Citizen 43275-B, a subject of the oppressive Oceanian regime, whom eerily celebrates his oppressed lifestyle whilst maintaining a disposition so jovial that any sane man would want to put a bullet in the back of his head within five minutes of meeting him. Each and every evening, he returns to his sterile apartment to engage in a somewhat one-sided conversation with a live, two-way video-feed of 'the Big Guy' (known by the greater populace as 'Big Brother'). One day, after Citizen 43275-B tells a story so mind- numbingly inane that even the cast of that pathetic sitcom 'Gavin and Stacy' would take offense, 'the Big Guy' vents his frustrations on this scrawny dapifer of verbal diarrhea and, after 43275-B tries to play word games and all other manner of flippant activities with the very manifestation of omniscient authoritarian callousness, permanently shuts off the surveillance feed. It is then that we learn that 43275-B is in fact a closet political dissenter and aspiring revolutionary whom has just tricked the pansophical Big Brother into switching off the telescreen. 43275-B then retrieves a hidden diary and mentally recites an alleged quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre: "So long as a man can look into the eyes of his oppressor, he is free."

It is a genuinely inspirational message (a rarity) that makes you wonder why Winston Smith just didn't feign masochistic inclinations when O'Brien was 'coercing' him into proclaiming that two plus two equals five. For that matter, why was he so blatantly morose all the time?! Surely the thought police would have been focusing their iniquitous gazes on the introverted intellectuals rather than the loud and obnoxious patriots. As Mel Brooks once said, 'if you're loud and annoying, people don't notice you'.

In terms of the short's production values and acting, I wasn't exactly mesmerised. The two principles were by no means bad, but neither did they exactly excel at playing their respective parts. Frankly though, none of that interests me here. I was just too damned inspired by that supposed quotation.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

A Dull Dostoyevsky Dramedy

[4/10 · 2 December 2011]

If one is going to merge two short films together, one should at least establish stronger links between them (a tenuous one in the form of a blind Rabbi simply does not suffice). Yet Woody Allen is evidently content with the near-terminal drudgery of his screenplay as he directs his duel tale of existentialist infidelity and Jewish despondency.

To give you a brief overview of these stories, half of the film follows the catastrophic developments of affluent ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal's (Martin Landau) affair with emotionally volatile stewardess Dolores Paley (Angelica Huston). Dolores wants Judah to annul his marriage to the blissfully ignorant Miriam (Claire Bloom), but Judah is not too keen on the prospect. Unfortunately, Paley is not too keen either on the prospect of Judah just discarding her like a Mark Twain novel and decides to put pressure on her lover. This proves to be an unacuminous move on her part as Judah recruits his brother to annul her metabolic processes. It works, but Judah ends up having moral reservations over the murder. The other half of the film depicts the HI-larious trials and tribulations of frustrated filmmaker Clifford Stern (Woody Allen) as he is forced by his disenchanted wife (Joanna Gleason) to direct a documentary about his successful and impossibly obnoxious brother-in-law Lester (a very amusing Alan Alda). However, Clifford is bewitched by one of the film's producers, a woman named Halley Reed (Mia Farrow).

The film, of course, ends with the separate protagonists meeting by happenstance at a wedding reception and engaging in a pseudo- philosophical discussion about the nature of guilt and the unfairness of the universe. And, Allen, of course, has to telegraph his nihilistic leanings by having amoral cad Judah 'walk off into the sunset', as it were, and Lilliputian moralist Clifford look morosely into the camera. An Oscar nominated script, people!

It just defies believe that the screenplay for this film was actually nominated for an Academy Award. How exactly can great Gordian farces like 'Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)', 'Kind Hearts and Coronets', 'Nuns on the Run', 'The Dinner Game', and 'Burn After Reading' be snubbed whilst blunderous trite like this gets a top mention? Now, I have always tried to respect the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their encouragement of higher technological and intellectual content in films, but really, the Academy is not doing themselves any favours by blindly bestowing Oscar nominations on venerated screenwriters just because they are venerated. It was bad enough that 'Raging Bull' lost to 'Ordinary People' for Best Picture in 1981 and that 'Miller's Crossing' was all but entirely snubbed during the 1991 Oscars.

Thankfully, Woody Allen's sophisticated and intermittently acerbic wit prevents the task of viewing this film from falling into a level of internal haemorrhage inducement. The acting is generally passable, too. And, to Allen's credit, he did make a penance for his sins with 2005's 'Match Point', a true Hitchcockian triumph whose screenplay was deservingly nominated for an Oscar.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Million-Word Picture

[10/10 · 2 December 2011]

For those of you whom are unfamiliar with the story of 'Dorian Gray', you really need to read more. It is only one of the most inspired and intelligent tales ever committed to paper! Seriously, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Go to your nearest book depository and purchase a copy of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' post haste to ameliorate your grievous error. GO NOW!!

But I digress. The plot of Oscar Wilde's original novella is pretty run-of-the-mill Victorian Gothicism, but the mordancy and erosiveness of Wilde's captivating and ingenious wit circumvented the tired tropes of the genre and permitted the more philosophical Faustian themes of the tale to take centre stage. It was that perfect amalgamation of the irreverent and the meditative that convinced me to name the book as the greatest literary work of all time; and it was the refined visual style of director Albert Lewin that finally - after viewing a total of six meager adaptations of the novella - satisfied my high standards for the book's adaptation. Certainly, the film does not have an efflorescent effect on its source material (man cannot reach a higher standard of perfection than that which is seen in Wilde's novella), but it does as much justice to it as is physically possible.

There is so much to commend about this film that it can be rather a daunting task to do justice to its multitude of virtuous qualities. Perhaps it would be best to compartmentalise the film under three banners:

1) Mise en scene –

Not much really needs to be written about Harry Strandling Jr.'s cinematography. Its 'deep focus' meticulousness is really just breathtaking and, although I dare not belittle the talents of the brilliant Gregg Toland, markedly more sophisticated than the comparatively fastidious imagery of Orson Wells' flawed masterpiece 'Citizen Kane'. The brilliance of the production design is equally apparent, with Dorian Gray's baroque apartment being possibly one of the most attractive fictitious properties I have ever seen in my life. The editing, too, is excellent; with not a single scene overstaying it's welcome and not a single rough transition or continuity gap to speak of. What is admittedly less impressive than these features, though, is the score by Herbert Stothart. Despite a nice oriental influence, it really is just another pedestrian Old Hollywood musical arrangement. Fortunately, to alleviate this minor flaw Lewin repeatedly plays Chopin's 'Prelude' (to the point that it becomes an important plot device).

2) Acting –

The great Hurd Hatfield (who?) portrays the titular character and, despite playing Gray quite differently from how he's depicted in the book, does a wonderful job. In much the same way that Buster Keaton and Keanu Reeves fail at conveying emotion, Hatfield inexplicably succeeds as his simultaneously wide and hawkish eyes offer the viewer an ingress into the clinical mind of a sociopathic Satanist (or Egyptian feline worshiper). George Sanders is even better as the poisonous Lord Henry Wotton, whose hedonistic charm has a lot to answer for after the tragic unfolding of this ghoulish tale. Peter Lawford is slightly awkward as David, but luckily that's what the script called for; whilst Donna Reed and Lowell Gilmore are solid in their respective roles as Gladys and Basil Hallward (uncle and niece). The standout performer, however, is Angela Lansbury, whose angelic presence on screen fuels one of the film's most aggressive emotional blows. An Oscar nomination well deserved let me assure you.

3) Storyline –

The screenplay for 'The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)' is stupefyingly underrated. It is terrifically paced, classically structured, and often extremely suspenseful. To address the use of otherwise clumsy narrative techniques such as third-person narration and montages, the film, like 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' and 'The Man Who Wasn't There', is able to 'get away with it', as it were, as the events of the film are supposed to serve as catalysts for the protagonist to evolve emotionally rather than physically. In other words, the screenplay's focus is not so much on plot as it is on the journey of the individual.

Ultimately, this is a truly beautiful and intelligent film - with an extremely underrated screenplay, to boot - and one that should be remembered for eternity (or at least longer than the portrait would ideally last).

A Time to Kill (1996)

Populist Silliness

[8/10 · 1 December 2011]

The premise of 'A Time to Kill' is relatively simple: little black girl is raped by big white men, bigger black father (played by designated scary black man Samuel L. Jackson) is vexed by said rape and in retaliation kills the offending white males (and injures a white officer of the peace in the process), and the media (mostly white), district attorney (white), and Ku Klux Klan (white, surprisingly) descend upon him like vultures. Jack Brigance, a hotshot lawyer who doesn't play by the rules (though would rather get Sandra Bullock to break them for him), takes black father's case.

Of course, with a simple premise comes a need for substantial queries: can a single man or a state better serve justice, and should a judiciary be designed around idealistic or pragmatic sentiments? The problem is, though, that the film tries to answers these questions. From 'A Time to Kill's opening moments the audience is made painfully aware of the director's adamancy that we invest our sympathies with Jackson's character. The quick-cutting and distorted angles of the film's introductory rape sequence offer vicarious punishment for the viewer that makes us not only feel nothing but emphatic passion for the raped child, but also unconditional hatred towards her attackers (who are by no means the most difficult people to despise). This means that, regardless of the odd Horatian jab at insincere affirmative action advocates, Joel Schumacher clearly wants us to feel that the cosmically correct outcome of this trial is for the father of the victim to be found innocent of charges that were very rightly made. In other words, this film might as well be called 'Vigilante Justice: The Wave of the Future'.

The filmmakers go even further by forcing the audience to be diametrically opposed to and even repelled by all parties featured in the film who are opposed to Schumacher's desired conclusion, even if they are parties of a somewhat honourable disposition (such as the son of the policeman who gets shot). By doing this, 'A Time to Kill' supports fascist ideals of vigilante justice, thus is conservative propaganda. Yet it tries to cover this up by throwing the race card on the proverbial table (a card which essentially permits persecuted minority groups to be placed above the law). This means that 'A Time to Kill' combines two of the worst attributes of both sides of the American political spectrum and in the process becomes a frightening hybrid of oligarchic ideologies and victim mentalities that nobody in their right mind would want to take credit.

Despite all this, 'A Time to Kill' is strangely dynamic drama. Maybe it's the thrill of watching Armageddon fall upon a small and decidedly fragile town, with white supremacists having Molotov cocktails thrown at them and courtrooms playing host to drunkards and snide doctors; or maybe it's because Schumacher actually does a pretty good job of directing some utterly wonderful supporting actors (Donald Sutherland, Kevin Spacey, Kurtwood Smith, Oliver Platt) and some rather mediocre main ones (Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock).

At any rate, this piece of populist exploitation works like an inexplicable charm. Unlike Grisham's novel, the film hooks you from the get-go and keeps you practically on the edge of your set until the beautifully delivered closing statement by McConaughey (his talent did not live through the 90's, but this scene is at least a marvelous requiem to it), after which things starting getting a bit anti-climatic.

Ultimately, 'A Time to Kill' is a very solid film that does not deserve to be condemned purely on the basis of its fallacious morals. Not as intelligent or well made as 'The Pelican Brief', but certainly just as thrilling.

Contagion (2011)

Inexplicably Dull

[6/10 · 19 October 2011]

How does he do it? How does Steven Soderbergh do it? How does he manage to turn a film with a great cast and a bloody terrifying premise into a piece of remediless tedium?! How, how, HOW?!! It's not as though he has to try very hard. The film, after all, is about a damned global pandemic! But Soderbergh, in his independent American film sagacity, would much rather spend the majority of his allegedly terrifying parable of mother earth's diabolical revenge plot showing us static shots of people talking about the direr implications of a disease than actually showing us the blasted chaos. Not that I am adverse to listening to exchanges resplendent in scientific jargon that concern widespread death and pandemonium, but, seeing as this is a primarily VISUAL medium, it would be nice to actually see a few more people falling in front of buses and salivating at an alarming rate than hearing Kate Winslet talking about some asinine supposition that an average individual touches their face four to five times a minute. Call me old fashioned, but I like disaster films to be more aesthetically interesting.

I will grant you that my views are slightly barbarous in this regard, but I have a few more 'bones to pick' in the name of a more righteous anger, though. They come in the form of objections to the film's needlessly muddled plot, which juggles multiple story lines and ultimately fumbles with most of them. Certain threads, such as Damon's paternal struggles and Fishburne's quest for a vaccine for the disease, are indeed relevant to the film's overriding story arch at one stage or another, but I fail to see how Jude Law's arch contributes anything to the film other than the overused dictum 'the worst thing we have to fear is fear itself'; and what does Cotillard's story have to do with anything? Maybe in other circumstances I would trust that the writer had included these threads to rectify small plot contrivances that they could not otherwise remove, but by the mere fact that these arches don't even have a conclusion to really speak of, I just suspect they were included simply to fill in time. Hell, even the main stories didn't really go anywhere. Come to think of it, this film doesn't even go anywhere (other than the whole planet, but I assume you know I am writing figuratively). It doesn't even have a third act! It just consists of an admittedly nicely paced first act, an overly long second one, and... an ending. Just an ending; an ending where the fricking twist is something we've already been told about repeatedly within the film itself. I won't reveal the twist to you, of course, but I will inform you that it is only slightly more surprising than the ending to 'Titanic', and only marginally less predictable than the ending to 'Fight Club'.

As usual, Soderbergh's direction and cinematography (Soderbergh working under the pseudonym of Peter Andrews) lack any sort of energy or drive. Although the lighting has improved this time around (many scenes in 'The Informant!' were akin to having someone use a mirror to refract the sun's rays onto your eyes), the whole thing still looks like a slideshow (the only difference this time being that the film's globetrotting narrative permits proceedings to be elevated to the level of excitement usually found with a showing of an acquaintance's holiday snaps).

The film does have some redeeming features, though. The cast, for one, are mostly very believable in their respective roles, particularly Jennifer Ehle, Jude Law, and Elliot Gould. The script, for two, is also impressively realistic in its depiction of the mayhem produced from the threat of Armageddon. For a final three, there is a refreshing absence of hyperbole, something that is practically a hallmark of this genre of film.

All this can't change the fact that Soderbergh is just a bad filmmaker, though. Admittedly he does have a good sense of pace, but his continued efforts to turn fascinating premises into unleaded dullness simply make him a menace to society. This is the man who made a spaceship orbiting an effeminate planet, a case of corporate farce (well, I find that exciting), a heist film about an assortment of Hollywood Adonises draining Las Vegas dry, and George Clooney robbing banks boring. Surely he is some sort of demigod.