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evan-richards
Reviews
The Beach (2000)
Underwritten
Two great performances in this movie, by Leonardo DeCaprio and Robert Carlyle, and it has an interesting plot that could have worked better. In the commentary Boyle explains that he generally avoids back-story, which is undoubtedly a sound approach, especially in thrillers. But the drawback in this movie is that everything ends up in the same dimension. Nothing is in relief, nothing in the plot casts shadow or throws light. This happens and then that happens and for what reason and anticipating what end aren't very important. Basic storytelling starts with character X wanting something. Boyle's first movie, Shallow Grave, is such a fine movie because of how well that principle is put into effect. In that case, the thing wanted, i.e., the money, is basic and self-explanatory as a motivation.
The characters in The Beach are drifters and pleasure-seekers to whom nothing seems like such a big deal. I have no idea how you can build a thriller around that, but one thing I know would have helped would have been to give the actors better-drawn characters to work with. Some pretty terrific actors, including Virginie Ledoyen, Patterson Joseph and above all Tilda Swinton, are wasted in underwritten roles here. They do interesting things from time to time, but they always fade almost immediately until they are brought forward again to serve the plot. The movie feels like a showpiece for DiCaprio (and, briefly, Carlyle), and his acting is remarkable, especially considering that the writing of his character is pretty unfocused too. I recommend this movie for his performance.
Africa addio (1966)
At some point during the last fifteen minutes of this movie I heard
somebody say, "Disgusting!" and when I realized I was the person who had said it (I was alone) I also realized that I didn't just mean the movie was disgusting but that I was disgusting for sitting through it. You want a spoiler? Here's a spoiler: the movie shows people getting killed, the camera sharing the killers' point of view, and not just once but twice, ad hoc executions of men, the second of whom is desperate to survive, to explain himself, but instead he is shot point blank twice by an affectless white mercenary, who says, "I'll do it," and walks up to him and shoots him dead. No due process, no proof of any crime except the voice-over's say-so. The first execution, about a minute earlier in the movie, is by a firing squad, sloppily carried out, and once the man is on his knees, face in the dirt, either dead or seconds away from it, a final, egregious shot is fired, apparently hitting the victim in the face and sending up a splash of dirt and blood.
If you haven't figured out by halfway through that this is the direction the movie is headed in, then you have been sucked in and manipulated by probably the most cynical excuse for a documentary ever made. Red flags immediate go up with the film's opening claim that the camera is completely objective and only reports what it sees. The film then proceeds systematically to contradict this claim by mocking everything that comes before the lens. The movie pretends empathy for the displaced, abused and murdered whites in Kenya, then shows them behaving ridiculously and exposes their complacency. A white judge sentencing Mau Mau rebels to extremely harsh punishments (though not necessarily harsh for their crimes) stifles a yawn. Telling details, you'd think, cleverly captured, except when they take their place next to other instances of derisive sound effects and people (supposedly) saying ludicrous things in ludicrous voices with their backs to the camera.
The movie combines its mocking with the kind of prurience you'd find in 1950s "sun worshipper" magazines and then with out and out salaciousness. In a scene obviously staged, the movie illustrates its completely racist point that black men, given the opportunity, lust after white women, by putting a group of clueless Africans in front of a white stripper. They don't seem to know how to react as she caresses her body, and when she encourages one man to remove the pasties from her nipples, and he does so only because he was instructed to, the poor, embarrassed man is left looking at the pasties in his hands as if he doesn't know what has just happened. The bizarre scene is then punctuated by a revelation of the stripper's face, which has been angled away from the camera to this point, and it is horsey and grotesque, with a smile that reveals frighteningly long, vampirish teeth.
If you've been fooled into thinking the film has any empathy whatsoever, you should be undeceived by the episode in which the film makers, along with some German colleagues, try to land their two planes in rebel territory in Zambia? Rwanda?, the Germans landing first and being swarmed by rebels who take them captive and burn their plane. The Italian film makers get away as their plane is shot at, leaving the Germans to their fate, and the movie excuses itself from any followup when the voice-over says, "At least they were still alive." It occurs to you at this point that the Germans may have been patsies, decoys sent in to test the waters, the proverbial canaries in the mineshaft. It occurs to you that the film makers are guilty of much more than just disingenuous bad taste. By the time we get to the animal carnage it should be clear that what we are watching is pure adventure porn. It finds the place in the viewer that is disgusted by man's inhumanity to man and to nature, panders like crazy, and then treats us to scene after scene after scene of slaughter and dismemberment. Is there empathy for the animals? Can you imagine there is in a movie so up to its chin in blood and guts? The movie goes so far as to show stillborn calves being pulled from slaughtered elephants. Point of view is a real issue here. These film makers had to have participated willingly in these travesties (including the human murders at the end) in order to turn them around and toss them in the viewers face, purposefully making you feel implicated, while they throw their hands up and say, "Hey, the camera only reports what it sees." This is a movie that lies even when it tells the truth. This is a movie that pretends sympathy with the animals while displaying almost complete ignorance of their habits and behavior. This is a movie that can't tell the difference between a stork and a vulture. This is a movie that cheapens the value of a human life for the sake of a spectacle. This is a movie that wallows in rotting corpses, the victims of political upheavals, the aftermaths of colonialism and other versions of political opportunism and corruption, and then ignores politics, ignores causes, for the sake of wading into rivers of blood, and then the movie says, "Don't blame us. The camera only reports what it sees."
Profondo rosso (1975)
Best of the Argento movies I've seen.
I keep hearing so much about Argento's movies that every time I find one I get it and watch it and am always disappointed. In Deep Red the characters are more interesting than in the other Argento movies I've seen and the story more involving, and the dialogue is full of interesting details. The best thing about Deep Red is that it is very cleverly photographed in a way that suggests all sorts of plot possibilities, many of which are red herrings that prove that what you are looking at is not necessarily what is going on. For instance, the camera, through several preceding scenes, sets you up to be very nervous about Gianna's hands as she walks behind Marcus in the darkened school building.
Old as this movie is, the violence in it is still revolting in ways that subsequent movie makers have tended to avoid. Those that approach Argento's level of gruesomeness tend to mitigate it with a bit of humor, but Argento would rather turn your stomach without making you smile about it. That would be intolerable in every horror movie, but Argento doesn't really pile it on, so we can appreciate his honesty (there is nothing nice about violence) at the same time that we are glad he exercises some discretion.
But what seems always to be missing in Argento's movies is sufficient motivation. Why, really does Marcus feel compelled to track down the murderer? The best the movie can offer is that the trauma of witnessing a bizarre murder produces in him a strong curiosity. His psychology seems no deeper than that of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. At least the denouement almost manages to turn this limitation into a somewhat of a virtue, in that the murderer seems to have no motivation at all for the murders, at least for the initial murder, which occurs in flashback, except an unexplainable psychosis. The unexplained is always creepier than the explained. This unravels somewhat, though, when you consider that the most recent murders have been committed so that the murderer can excape detection. They are savage and demeted acts, but planned with a degree of ratiocination that the character, once we learn who it is, seems incapable of.
I do think the directorial and photographic skill of the movie put it on the plus side. It's in the canon, and anybody really serious about the horror genre ought to see it.
Livin' tha Life (2003)
It has one or two moments
Given the budget and the inexperience of everyone involved, Livin' tha Life could have been worse. Jamal wants to be Chris Tucker (whom I've always found very annoying), as a previous commentator has noted, but Peanut (Edward D. Smith), while some of his (over)reactions go on way too long (a director's problem), has some comparatively subtle and funny moments, such as when he is trying to instruct Jamal on the proper method of smoking a joint with a buddy. Throughout, he is usually more poised and self-possessed than Jamal, which could have been the germ of a nice exploration of the contrasts in the relationship but wasn't developed very far.
But the inexperience of the writer/director/cinematographer/etc. is no excuse for his inattention. Has he ever seen a movie? Faces are important! Has he ever heard of a closeup? Even Ed Wood could do a closeup. I don't think it's much of a budget issue. I could only give a general description of what any of the actors look like, and not just because of no closeups, but the lighting ...! Lights for outdoor shooting may cost too much, but you can make a reflector with pieces of paper! That would have required moving the camera closer to keep the reflector out of the shot, helping to solve the closeup problem at the same time. If that's too technical you can turn the actors around so they are not in shadow, or you can expose for the shadows, and if it hadn't been shot in L.A. I'd say take advantage of cloudy days. It goes without saying that the movies this one steals from are all, with the possible exception of Weekend at Bernie's, better than this one, but Livin' tha Life would have left a much better impression if it hadn't made the viewer squint all the way through just to catch a glimpse of whatever the human element might have been.
P.S. The scene in the barbershop is just stupid.