365 Days, 100 Films #96 - Despicable Me (2010)

Despicable Me, 2010.

Directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud.
Featuring the voice talents of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove and Julie Andrews.


SYNOPSIS:

A supervillain adopts three orphaned girls so they can steal a shrink ray from his enemy’s lair.


Gru (Steve Carell) wants the moon, his reason being that once he has it, the world will give him whatever he wants for its safe return. But what, exactly, does Gru want?

Gru is a supervillain with his own army of short, yellow minions, a secret, underground base and an elderly, evil scientist, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand). What he does not have, however, is respect – not from the head of the Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers), nor from his uninterested mother. Gru doesn’t really want the moon, or all the riches it could provide. He wants that respect. He wants to be the greatest supervillain in the world.

Despicable Me’s world is an intriguing one, inhabited only by normal people and evil geniuses, with not a single superhero of which to speak. Such a lack of regulation involving frequent plot-foiling and ass-whoopery has created a climate where these supervillains can behave as they wish: crushing cars to find a parking space, popping a child’s balloons, casting a café’s queue in ice with a freeze ray to hop to the front. Incidentally, product placement is queasily rife in this film. That it is aimed at those poor, impressionable children makes the experience all the more nauseous.

All these supervillains are constantly trying to outdo one another, and Gru’s grand idea is the theft of the moon – but he needs a shrink ray to do so. The only one in existence is in the possession of Vector (Jason Segal), a spoilt twit (his father is head of the Bank of Evil) with a predisposition towards aquatic-life-themed weaponry. Upon his and Gru’s first meeting, Vector proudly displays his Piranha Blaster, which fires piranhas. Later, he unveils his new creation: the Squid Gun, which fires squid.

Only one thing can penetrate the many defences of Vector’s head quarters – young girls selling cookies. Specifically coconut ones. No, there isn’t anything pervy about this. Well, there might be in the subtext (immature, sociopathic man-child lures 12 year old girls in uniform into his lair), but the film doesn’t play his motivation that way. He simply loves their cookies (again, not a euphemism). So Gru adopts three girls from the local orphanage to smuggle a box of cookie-shaped robots into Vector’s mighty fortress. The obvious solution.

Before this point, the film intercuts between Gru and the three girls. Gru receives far more screen time, and they all encounter each other near the film’s beginning as the girls attempt to sell him some cookies – but that is all. This is the film’s structural and narrative flaw.

Gru is initially an unsympathetic character, and remains that way for the first two-thirds of the film (SPOILER: he and the girls foster a loving relationship by the end). He has a handful of tender moments to break up his inherent evilness – he is a supervillain, after all – when the film flashes back to his youth and his relationship with his mother. These, however, are few and far between.

If Steve Carell’s name wasn’t so large in the opening credits, you’d have no idea Gru’s was his voice. He grimaces out a poor Eastern-European accent that hinders much of Carell’s naturally comedic delivery. Those initial credits promise much – Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Jemaine Clement, Jack McBrayer, Danny McBride – but none of them sound as they do in real life. In an animated film, what is the point of having such a depth of audibly recognisable talent if they are unidentifiable? Why not cast proper voice actors? The only visible manifestation of Carell in Gru is his large nose (“Like when you go to the beach and someone yells ‘Shark! Shark!’ and then they realise that it’s Steve Carell doing the backstroke?”).

Rather, as Gru is so difficult to relate to, why not open on the three orphan girls? They are three cute, defined characters, particularly the unicorn-obsessed, youngest one, Agnes (“IT’S SO FLUFFY!”), that could easily carry the film’s opening 20 minutes. Their stories can be established – why they are in the orphanage in the first place, why the three have stuck together, why they desire adoption so very much. They’re sympathetic - they’re empathetic – unlike Gru.

Additionally, it provides a natural framework in which the three girls, who are in the dark about Gru’s supervillainary – as are we – can ask questions about his profession and backstory. Plot details and character history could be teased out organically, rather than through exposition or montage.

These are fundamental flaws, but grudgingly forgivable ones. Although the film failed in this respect, it at least tried something different - an unsympathetic, evil protagonist. Such daring is not often a trait of children’s films outside studios Pixar and Aardman.

However, one cannot forgive Despicable Me for missed opportunity. The one foot-in-the-door that the viewer is provided for a way into Gru’s psychology, so we can understand him better, is his relationship with his mother. This is told in flashbacks, when she uninterestedly sighs at her child’s increasingly impressive rocket models, and in the present day during a phone call, where she taunts him for not being the mastermind behind a recent pyramid theft. She’s the whole reason Gru is why he is. In another life, with another mother, he’d be an astronaut.

Yet the film treats her as nothing more than a cheap laugh. She only appears in the two aforementioned, very brief flashbacks and phone call scene, another appearance right at the very end of the film, and in one tiny segment of a montage during the middle.

Montages, he said through gritted teeth and a furrowed brow, there must be at least three montages in this film. It’s a short cut, an easy way of conveying character and relationship development, which should be permissible only in Rocky. They fool you into thinking you’re experiencing emotion, when really it’s just a surface level effect of music and editing. There are too many in Despicable Me. But fair enough.

What’s not fair enough is having Gru’s mother appear for no longer than ten seconds, for little more than an easy joke, during one of them. Gru and the children’s relationship is blossoming. They’ve been to theme parks and dance practices, and suddenly the moon isn’t looking quite so important – but then Gru’s mother appears. This should be a pivotal moment, where she embarrasses him and reawakens his insecurities, reminding him why he adopted the kids in the first place – to become the greatest supervillain in the world.

But she doesn’t. She gets out a photo album and shows the children a picture of Gru as a baby, his bare bottom completing the cliché. Gru places his hand on his forehead and groans. The children chuckle. They move onto the next insignificant part of the montage. Everything’s fine. Character development is ignored.

It’s not important anyway. Look at the Wii that Vector is playing on. Look how cute all these yellow minions are. Focus on them instead, and don’t forget to pester your parents about buying all our merchandise once you’ve left the cinema. That’s how we’ll get a sequel – through spin-off toys rather than characters you wish to revisit.

Gru isn’t the only supervillain at work here.

RATING **

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #95 - Gremlins (1984)

Gremlins, 1984.

Directed by Joe Dante.
Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Corey Feldman, Dick Miller and Judge Reinhold.


SYNOPSIS:

A small town is invaded by a gang of destructive creatures at Christmas.


“There’s a man out there. I-I-I don’t mean a man, I mean, I don’t know what I mean. I mean, maybe a…what did they call them during the war. You know, the pilots?…Gremlins. Gremlins!”

William Shatner whispers the above in his uniquely staccato way during The Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, arguably the most famous of Twilight Zone episodes. Boy, he sure looked like Orson Welles when he was younger.

He’s accompanied by melodramatic music and filmed in a distressed close-up, but the immense terror of the situation blinds you to its exaggerated style. Shatner, playing a man recently recovered from a nervous breakdown, keeps seeing a figure on the wing of his plane. He’s aware it might be only a figment of his imagination – an understanding futilely strengthened by the fact no one else can see it - but is as successful of shaking the fear as Michael Shannon’s character in the recent Take Shelter. “Gremlins!” he later repeats in horror as he watches it rip away at the electrical wires of the wing.

“You gotta watch out for them foreigners ‘cos they plant gremlins in their machinery,” the xenophobic Marty Futterman (Dick Miller) warns Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) as he climbs inside his car during an early scene in Gremlins. “It’s the same gremlins that brought down our planes in the big one” – a distinct echo of the sentiments in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

Gremlins is a Christmas film written by Chris Columbus (later the director of Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter films) and directed by Joe Dante (Piranha, Small Soldiers, The Hole and, to further the connection, an episode of the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone). You’d imagine the two to cancel out each other’s respective sentimentality and horror. Instead Gremlins, although leaning more towards the dark, contains measures of each.

Billy is a teenager in a small town. It’s Christmas, but everyone is more hard-up than festively merry. His father, Randall (Hoyt Axton), is an inventor. His machines are kooky – a mechanised egg cracker, a portable bathroom – but all stop working properly after a few weeks. The contraptions litter the house to show faith in its breadwinner. Perhaps ‘loyalty’ is a better word, as the rest of the family approach each machine with caution and dread. But Randall’s a kind man, and they humour him out of love.

It means Billy is a central source of income for the Peltzers. Next-door’s Mr Futterman has recently lost his job, along with many in the neighbourhood. Kate (Phoebe Cates), Billy’s love interest, works two jobs. “I thought everyone was supposed to be happy at Christmas,” ponders Billy, looking a bit like the broken Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life that plays on the Peltzers’ small, black and white television in the film’s first few scenes.

However, not having enough money – a well-trodden theme for Christmas films – is both inconsistent and often ignored. In the film’s prologue, Randall purchases a cute creature called a mogwai from an old Chinese toyshop as a present for Billy. He initially offers $100, and then jumps to $200 for his subsequent haggle. These are not the actions of an impoverished man. Nevertheless, he buys the mogwai on three conditions from the previous owner:

1. Do not expose to sunlight. It could kill him.
2. Never expose to water. Not even to drink.
3. And probably most importantly, never feed after midnight.

As is the way with rules in films, all three are broken after a short while. The second one makes the mogwai replicate at an alarming rate, whilst the third transforms them into a dangerous, reckless gremlin-like creature.

The initial mogwai, Gizmo, stays cute and loyal to Billy. The others, led by one with a mohawk called Stripe, go about destroying the town and creating absolute chaos. They even murder a few of its inhabitants. It is here where the film becomes a sequence of set pieces and action scenes, forgetting the tales of economic woe of before. The scenes of destruction are both brilliantly executed and often very funny, but the previous warmth and subtext is pushed aside. The town’s many poor folk over Christmas are turned into mere fodder for the gremlin invasion, and the central characters only afforded a single, but heartfelt, scene to develop further.

If Gremlins were to be made now, the mogwai wouldn’t be puppets. Rather, they’d be generated digitally using CGI. Even though the gremlins are limited in what they can do, and their movement appears awkward in the way that stop-motion animation often does, their visibly tangible nature makes them far more believable, threatening and empathetic than the chipmunks, smurfs or Dobbys of today. Be thankful for Attack the Block.

But this is where we return to that man on the wing. There is a more distinct subtext than poverty that runs throughout the film – that the gremlins are a product of foreign, specifically Chinese, economic invasion. Anghus Houvouras wrote recently on this very site about the matter - “…we are shown the Godless communists attacking an American institution: Christmas.”

The observation is a perceptive one. The original mogwai, from where the gremlins came, was purchased from a Chinese man. Mr Futterman slips in at least one reference to foreigners every time he appears onscreen, specifically in relation to their manufacturing exports. Randall is an inventor, attempting to realise the American Dream, but is thwarted by overseas quality at a convention he attends. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an allegory for the Communist invasion of America, plays in the background of a few scenes. However, subtexts are rarely that simple. Instead, Gremlins is a mirror held up against suburban America, demonstrating their self-imposed siege mentality and paranoid fears.

The old Chinese man never wanted to part with the original mogwai. Mr Futterman is a caricature, a recently made-redundant patriot channelling his anger towards foreign countries rather than the reasons for his unemployment residing closer to home. Randall can’t sell any of his inventions because they don’t work. He is an impatient man who peddles his prototypes, becoming uninterested once they start to go wrong, adding on a new feature rather than addressing the fundamental problem. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was never anything more than scaremongering, and has an argument itself that the true threat comes from Senator McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunts at the time.

No, the gremlins are not symbolic of a Chinese threat. They are too unruly, too politically unmotivated. They are depicted twice playing video games in separate instances. Their leader, Stripe (as in ‘Stars and…’) wears a mohawk like an 80s punk. They drink until they pass out and roar inappropriately at Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, making a mess of the cinema whilst they do. The gremlins are an articulation of America’s constant fear of the moral deterioration of its youth. They are mischief-makers, not political insubordinates.

RATING ***

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #94 - The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The Night of the Hunter, 1955.

Directed by Charles Laughton.
Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce.


SYNOPSIS:

Two children are chased down the river in West Virginia by a man who claims to be a Preacher.


“Beware of false prophets. They will come to you in sheep’s clothing,” Mrs Cooper (Lillian Gish, the muse of D.W. Griffith) warns the camera in the film’s prologue, her head superimposed upon a starry night sky. Mrs Cooper doesn’t return until the final third of the film, but her guiding presence is felt throughout.

She is presented as a guardian angel of children, a fairy godmother - a protector against the fake Preacher, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). Establishing shots often swoop aerially from the sky, as though Mrs Cooper’s watches from above, while Powell hunts the children through the night like a big, bad wolf.

The children are John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl Harper (Sally Jane Bruce). One day their father, Ben Harper (Peter Graves), returns home with a bloody hole in his chest and a bag full of stolen money. He hides his treasure and forces his children into swearing its secrecy – not even to tell Momma.

Officers arrive and handcuff Ben on the floor. “Don’t!” is all John can whimper, half aimed at the policemen, half aimed at his father for stealing his childhood with this burden. The boy is aged instantly by his secret. Harry, that fake Preacher, learns of the money when sharing a cell with Ben, who is waiting to hang.

Harry has made a strange pact with God. He mutters to the Lord as the crazy would to an imaginary friend. It allows him to claim his twisted beliefs as the convictions of God, and he wields it powerfully over the easily manipulated and weak.

Using his imposing charisma, Harry swiftly brainwashes and marries Willa (Shelley Winters), Ben Harper’s widow. Not a hint of his hidden callousness is detected, but John sees the evil in him. It is revealed to Willa on their honeymoon night, where Harry embarks on a condemning monologue against her wanting to consummate their marriage. The woman’s body is a temple for producing life, he preaches, not a slave to the lust of man. The terror is twofold. First at the grave error Willa has made, now committed to this faux-Holy man forever and ever. Second that Harry is not simply there for financial gain. He believes he is doing right by the Lord. He is truly a madman, becoming increasingly obsessed with the Harper kids’ money. He chases those two poor kids until they have nothing left, and they become lost in a sea of children orphaned by recession.

Mitchum’s Harry Powell might be cinema’s definitive psycho, with his booming New York baritone, sounding like a demented Yogi Bear. He’s a child-catcher, a fairy-tale villain, and as he howls and bangs at the basement door that he is at one point locked behind, you almost think he’ll roar “AND I’LL BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN!”

He has a perverse side, too. Along with the ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ tattoos across his knuckles, he always carries with him a switchblade. During fits of anger, he will finger the blade within his pocket, flicking it out through the fabric of his jacket in a phallic outburst. That these most commonly occur around women – in the striptease joint at the start, or when he treats the young Ruby (Gloria Castillo) to ice cream – hints towards a disgust at his own desires.

As the film progresses, the tone and narrative twist into a dark fairy-tale: the set and lighting become more expressive, the music increasingly disquieting. Shot with a deeply focused lens, Powell and Willa’s tall bedroom, with a slanted ceiling that points towards the night’s sky, momentarily takes the appearance of a church. This, along with other aesthetic tricks of superimposition and split focus, recall the experimental visual style of Citizen Kane.

Yet scenes of immense lyricism break up these dark episodes. As the two children gently sail down the river in their commandeered fishing boat with John fast asleep from the day’s chase, Pearl starts to sing. The scenery around them doesn’t appear real, as though the current has drifted them into an illustration from an old Hans Christian Anderson book. Animals are shown going about their daily business, indifferent to these two kids in the middle of nowhere, just as night is becoming day, escaping the mad Preacher who wants to slit their throats.

This was Charles Laughton’s only film he ever directed. He was an English actor who preferred to play his characters as large as his frame (he was Gracchus in Kubrick’s Spartacus, one of his last roles), and increasingly incompatible with a Hollywood that favoured realism. The Night of the Hunter channels his artistic expressionism and is all the richer for it.

But the film was a critical and commercial failure, and he was never behind the camera again. Now it sits in the United States Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. Cinema was denied a potentially great practitioner, and one cannot help recall those saddest words of tongue and pen: “It might have been”.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #93 - Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011)

Bobby Fischer Against the World, 2011.

Directed by Liz Garbus.


SYNOPSIS:

A documentary about arguably the greatest chess player of the 20th Century.


Bobby Fischer cuts an awkward figure. Even at the chessboard he seems to be in pain, sitting lopsided to the right, his torso sharply angled into the chair and his head supported by an open palm. If Bobby didn’t appear so deadly serious, you could slap a moustache above his top lip and call him Groucho.

The muscles in his face visibly tense as he attempts to smile in television interviews. In one he sweats so profusely that beads spot across his forehead.

But for all his social retardation, you can’t help but admire his passion and the way his mind whirs when observing the black and white pieces in front of him, calculating moves at a rate beyond most human comprehension. But that mind was fragile as well as formidable. And he became engulfed by the larger chess game of the era, one between the United States and the U.S.S.R. – the Cold War.

Bobby Fischer Against the World pays most attention to the period of his career that typified that international tension – the 1972 World Chess Championship against the holder, a Russian, Boris Spassky. The archive footage of the match and various news reports are accompanied with a wide range of talking heads; some big and unnecessary, like Henry Kissinger; some tiny and pivotal, like Bobby’s Icelandic bodyguard, Saemi Palsson, who would later be the subject of another documentary, Me & Bobby Fischer.

They don’t always know exactly where to look. Some stare to the right of the camera, where the interviewer is presumably seated, others glare directly down it. There’s something unnerving about a biographer looking right at you.

Jump cuts are occasionally used during these talking head shots. For a documentary filmed so conventionally, these cuts don’t quite make sense and could have been easily avoided by showing archive footage in their place, or perhaps zooming in on a still, black and white photograph – a technique with which the filmmakers appear to be obsessed.

The structure lazily avoids narrative satisfaction and is split into chapters, all with chess-pun names. Which would all be forgivable, if it weren’t for the title card Photoshop jobs. The font looks like the bastard offspring of Time New Roman and a cheap, italicised comic sans whore, and the background appears to have been sourced from typing ‘chessboard’ into Google, circa 1999.

As Bobby struggles during the 1972 World Chess Championship, the documentary intelligently splinters off to explore the tangent of his wayward mother, hippy activist Regina Fischer. This history was only hinted at previously, and worked within the narrative to ‘flashback’ to Bobby’s unconventional upbringing. It goes some way to explaining why Bobby is like he is. The rest of the documentary, however, orders itself either chronologically or mundanely.

But despite the filmmakers’ best efforts, the story of Bobby Fischer is a remarkable one, and the 1972 World Chess Championship is a historic moment in the game. The old grandmasters talking to the camera can barely withhold their admiration and awe when describing that match’s 6th game. A symphony of placid beauty, one of them eloquently described it as. At its end, even Spassky stood up and applauded. This isn’t shown, as Bobby demanded that the match was played without cameras present, but the way it’s described. Oh boy, it’s like you were there.

“Genius or madman?” is the question Bobby Fischer Against the World proposes throughout. Perhaps you need to be one to fuel the other, and Bobby certainly seemed to embody both throughout his life. But once the 1972 World Championship was over, he rapidly descended into the latter, sacrificing his genius to cult-like religious organisations and paranoid conspiracy theories. A pariah, a Jewish anti-Semite, his old, blotchy face looks like another person’s.

The story of Bobby Fischer and that remarkable match redeems what is otherwise a below-average documentary.

RATING **

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #92 - The Unforgiven (1960)

The Unforgiven, 1960.

Directed by John Huston.
Starring Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Doug McClure, John Saxon, Charles Bickford and Lillian Gish.


SYNOPSIS:

A strange old man and a local tribe of Indians start to bother the Zacharys. They claim the Zacharys have something of theirs – a baby girl snatched from them many years ago.


The grave of William Zachary sits in the family’s front yard – a small mound of soil with a modest, wooden cross at its top. At first it appears as a sign of pride, the family’s tribute to their father, a man slain by an Indian arrow. However, as their history unravels before the townsfolk and assorted cowboys, the cross becomes a constant reminder of the mess with which he left them, and the lurking presence of death.

It isn’t the only reminder of death. An old man (Joseph Wiseman) with a sabre has been frequently sighted near the Zacharys’ home, his tall hat casting a disquieting silhouette amongst the reeds. His face is difficult to make out, obscured either by the piercing sun or a wild dust storm. Everyone can hear his God-fearing voice, though. He claims to be an agent of the Lord. He isn’t a man who will simply fade away and die, Ben Zachary (Burt Lancaster) remarks to his brother. He’s the kinda man who needs to be killed.

Ben, as the eldest brother, has positioned himself as the head of the Zachary household. There’s also his mother, Mattilda (Lillian Gish), younger brothers, Cash (Audie Murphy) and Andy (Doug McClure), and adopted sister, Rachel Zachary (Audrey Hepburn). They’re a relatively wealthy, much liked and respected family amongst their Ol’ West community. Until that old man comes claiming Rachel has Indian blood coursing through her veins.

The characters’ prejudice against Indians is fierce in a way similar to Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Ben and the rest of his men are openly racist towards Johnny Portugal (John Saxon), their best horse tamer, but an Indian all the same. Cash is the most aggressive. He has harboured a grudge since an Indian murdered his father.

The old man’s claims are damaging to the Zacharys’ reputation, and a local tribe have taken interest in Rachel. She might be the long lost sister of one of their men. All this makes the cowboys anxious. They’ve a lot of money tied up in these here cattle, and they don’t want no Indian raiders jeopardising their investments.

In the film’s finest scene, the Zacharys and their men capture the old man. He’s revealed as Abe Kelsey, an old friend of their father who has since gone crazy. He’s brought into their outback court at night, illuminated by torch fire. It’s the first chance you get to really study the man’s face. He’s covered in dust, making the lines in his face look considerably deeper, and one eye appears to be entirely black. With a noose around his neck, he explains his delusional crusade against the Zacherys, his version of the truth skewered by grief, revenge and hate. He speaks with the same fluency and flow of Michael Parks’ preacher in Red State.

John Huston, the film’s director, originally intended The Unforgiven to make a statement about racism in America. He constantly fought the film’s financers, who demanded a less controversial movie. The result is neither a commercial film, nor one that completely tackles racism. Huston would later recall that it’s the only one of his films that he dislikes.

But although the film doesn’t make a statement about racism, the subject still haunts every frame. Rather than propose a socio-political message, racism is made part of the characters and their relationships. Sometimes this is in a purely hateful way, as in Cash. But others are far more complex. Ben flickers between camaraderie and conflict with Portugal, whereas the bond between Rachel and the Indian claiming to be her brother is tragic. Racism is never glorified, but it is portrayed. Doing it that way rings more true to the era.

When the film ends, none of the characters come across as heroic, much like their counterparts a few years later in the Spaghetti Westerns. Instead they look up at the sky, alone in the cold, hard West.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #91 - Une Femme est une Femme (1961)

Une Femme est une Femme (a.k.a. A Woman Is a Woman), 1961.

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo.


SYNOPSIS:

This isn’t just any musical comedy. This is a Godardian musical comedy.


“Émile and Angéla’s greatest flaw is that ‘They wrongly believe there are no limits to their everlasting and reciprocal love.’”

These words are printed onscreen at one point during Une Femme est une Femme (A Woman is a Woman). Angéla (Anna Karina) and her lover Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy) are in a rare moment of agreement when it does. For the rest of the film, they bicker. They argue and they fight and they quarrel, seemingly without end in that specifically 60s kind of campiness.

Angéla wants to have a baby. When? Now, tonight. Don’t be ridiculous, is Émile’s main defence. There is no foreground or exposition to their relationship prior to this discussion, bar a frosty exchange of glares in a Parisian book shop. Godard presents these two characters to us as warring from the start, as though they have been at it since the dawn of time. Une Femme est une Femme is only the most recent battle in the eternal conflict of Man Vs. Woman.

Émile’s best friend, Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), complicates things. He insists that he’s madly in love with Angéla, sometimes even in Émile’s presence. Alfred pops up between the two when they storm off from one another, mischievously either trying to pick up girls with Émile, or charm Angéla into bed, like some enchanted Puck, toying with the emotions of these two mere mortals.

Alfred is a notorious namedropper, behaving with Jean-Luc Godard, the film’s director, like a couple of arrogant school boys. À bout de souffle, the pair’s first film together, plays on a television in the background at one point, Belmondo appearing on both screens. He suggests they all go to see a film that has just come out because “my pal Burt Lancaster is in it” – at which point he stares directly at the camera, pulling a grin cheesier than Brie.

However, the self-reflexivity is not limited to just one character. Both Émile and Angéla constantly break the fourth wall, directly addressing the camera or sharing with it a disdainful look. Before one of their fierce arguments, Angéla tells Émile that they should “bow before we act out our farce”. Both turn and bow to the camera, and then back again to face each other as though nothing happened. “Why don’t you love me!?” Angéla immediately reprises. It’s an explicit statement to the viewer of how we watch these characters’ torment as entertainment. It’s an odd position to be put in, but from the awkwardness, a self-realising laugh arises.

The film’s form itself joins in on the self-reflexivity. Essentially, Une Femme est une Femme is Godard’s parody of this musical genre. Dramatic music will underpin the most ordinary of exchanges, the humour being in the juxtaposition. “Would you like lamb?” Angéla enquires about Émile’s dinner for the night, accompanied by the grandest of orchestral scores usually reserved for Hollywood’s most emotional moments.

Godard tinkers with the soundtrack with the same mischievousness of his characters. A particular scene will begin normally enough, with dialogue, background noise and a musical score – but then everything will fall mute, then just diegetic sound, and then only the music. Like the stopping and starting of a traffic jam, you’re prevented from becoming involved in the narrative. Watching these scenes becomes a frustrating chore, but that’s Godard’s intent. You’d like to think it’s because of some majestic deconstruction of the use of music in film, revealing how a score can affect one’s perception of a scene, or perhaps a distancing example of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt to make you better understand the cinematic apparatus of which you are a part. More likely, however, it’s Godard’s childish side wanting to see how far he can annoy his audience, cheekily searching for a reaction or a storming out. There is something remarkably admirable about such playfulness, and, for me, it is his greatest trait.

“Why aren’t you sulking?”

“I’m not sulking so you won’t sulk.”

“I’ve finished sulking”

“My turn to sulk, then.”

The above exchange encapsulates the recurring narrative of Émile and Angéla’s relationship, as it does of most couple’s. The initial disagreement is over whether to have a child, but their arguments riff into countless other territories. It’s difficult to keep up with them, and you find yourself not knowing what they’re bickering about. But then again, maybe neither do they.

Yet their quarrelling does have a constant theme: who loves the other more? When you care for someone deeply, it is often easy to assume you love them far more than they do you. It creates a love deficit that is exercised and, hopefully, reassured by these disagreements over nothing. That’s why neither wants to give in, as both feel they should receive an apology; that both require reciprocation, a vindication, of their love. Arguments are a vital necessity in relationships.

Comedy or tragedy? the film constantly asks. Without the music and the campiness, it could easily be the latter. And that’s Une Femme est une Femme most astute insight: relationships are both.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #90 - The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, 2009.

Directed by Werner Herzog.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Coolidge, Michael Shannon and Xzibit.


SYNOPSIS:

A detective in New Orleans find his life unravelling due to a fierce drug addition.


There’s a story about Nicolas Cage from when he was filming Kick-Ass. He played Damon MacReady, an ex-cop, normally enough, but whenever he donned the superhero suit of Big Daddy, Cage would break up his speech and sound overly husky. When he first did this on set, everyone was a little too confused and respectful to point his ridiculous voice out.

So Cage walks off set between takes to get a drink from his trailer. Matthew Vaughn, the director, understandably concerned, absorbing the puzzled stares of his perplexed cast and crew, went off after him. Cage is already in his trailer by the time Vaughn catches up, so he lets himself in. The small front room is littered with videos of the 60s Batman television series. It quickly dawns upon Vaughn that he’s being Adam West.

Conclusion: Nicolas Cage is insane.

Yet, gloriously so. There’s a bizarre logic to his eccentricity, and an admirable boldness in the way he doesn’t feel the need to explain his actions – all traits that aid his characterisation immeasurably in Werner Herzog’s equally outlandish The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans. It’s a remake of sorts of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant, which had Harvey Keitel in the lead. I wouldn’t really know, though. I haven’t seen that one. Maybe next year.

Herzog and Cage appear to be kindred spirits, much like how the former and Klaus Kinski once were. “Why are there two fucking iguanas on the coffee table?” Cage asks during a stakeout scene, as the reptile begins to serenade him with Release Me by Engelbert Humperdinck.

None of the others in the room can see the signing iguana. Herzog takes this as an opportunity to switch cameras from a professional digital one to a low-grade consumer camcorder. You can tell by the amateurish light typical of homemade movies, and the handheld way in which the camera moves. You get the sense that the rest of the cast and crew have departed, leaving only Cage, Herzog and two iguanas on set, all singing Release Me in a drug induced haze.

Yet how does this fit into the film’s grander narrative scheme? Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a cop in post-Katrina New Orleans. He was dirty before the hurricane, but a back injury he sustained whilst rescuing a prisoner during it has made him significantly more so. McDonagh walks with a permanent limp and a half-hunch, and runs off a consistent intake of confiscated narcotics lifted from the evidence room to dull his injury’s pain. A gun always protrudes worryingly from his waistband like an erection. You need real balls to wear a gun pointing that way.

McDonagh is tasked with investigating the brutal murder of a Senegalese family. He means well, showing a genuine passion for capturing the killers, but his methods are perverse and he often strays into lengthy periods of drug taking. Sometimes it helps. When he pulls out a crack pipe during some one-on-one interrogation time, his suspect becomes so disquieted that he gives up some very helpful pieces of information.

McDonagh’s increasingly outlandish techniques get him taken off the case. Additionally, he has another addiction – gambling. He’s in severe debt and has gangsters on his back about it. McDonagh becomes a man trapped in a corner. And you know what they say about wild animals stuck in corners…

He runs around town picking up drugs like they’re health packages in a video game. He pulls over one guy and gal who’ve just exited a nightclub. Flashing his badge, he confiscates all their drugs and smokes them on the spot. This turns the gal on, so they have sex over McDonagh’s car bonnet. Her boyfriend flounders helplessly in the background as McDonagh pulls the gal’s hair back and sinisterly whispers into her ear “did your parents molest you?”

The film continues to outperform itself on acceptable levels of decency. McDonagh later breaks into an old people’s hope and traps two elderly women. “I’m working on 1 ½ hours sleep over the past three days and I’m struggling to remain courteous,” McDonagh announces as he suddenly appears from behind a door, trimming his emerging stubble with an unexplained electric shaver.

Yet amongst all this chaos, there is a strange, overactive heart to the film. McDonagh and Frankie Donnenfeld, his lover and a prostitute, appear to be sincerely in love. McDonagh’s father, Pat (Tom Bower), battles obsessively with his alcoholism to the neglect of his family’s issues.

During the film’s most subdued scene, which is still a notch or two on the crazy belt above most others, McDonagh takes Frankie to the shed at his family home. He remembers how when he was young, his mother would tell tales of pirates sailing up the Mississippi. Before she died, his mother had bought him a metal detector to look for any spoils that might have fallen from their ships. One day it started to beep, so he began digging and digging and digging, and he found a silver spoon. “And I went, ‘Hey man…this is treasure. This is Pirate’s treasure!’ And I hid it somewhere…I still can’t find it.” The scene ends tenderly, with the crazy man and the whore tentatively searching for an ancient silver spoon in the old family shed.

These oddballs genuinely feel for each other. It makes their actions almost entirely contradictory to their relationships, and a complexity this great within a film so seemingly unconcerned with complexity should be applauded. You’re unlikely to see much else like it.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #89 - Shoah (1985)

Shoah, 1985.

Directed by Claude Lanzmann.


SYNOPSIS:

A nine hour 36 minute long documentary about the Holocaust.


Shoah is almost as hard to write about as it is to watch. It isn’t the subject matter that gets to you. We’re all exposed far too much to the Holocaust and World War II through television, literature and film for it to have a truly visceral effect anymore. As discouraging as it is, the years truly have anaesthetised the heart. Instead, it is the length that one feels, its incomprehensibleness – nine hours and thirty-six minutes. The longest film you’ve ever seen is but a pebble in a grand lake in comparison.

That’s the intention - it’s incomprehensibility. To picture a thousand people is near impossible. The mind wretches at the image of six million; all of those Jewish, all of those dead.

The film’s form, of its immense length, is entwined with its overarching statement: the Holocaust was an evil apart from all others. Claude Lanzmann takes offence at the very name, entitling the mass extermination ‘Shoah’. The word ‘Holocaust’ has connotations of sacrifice, whereas the ‘Shoah’ is Hebrew for ‘calamity’.

It is an experience, an endurance test, rather than a film. It is segmented into four, two hour long chapters, each concerned with a different topic. Although this hints that a slight concession has been made in creating these four ‘parts’, making the film easier to watch and digest, the themes and players that leak into their surrounding parts keep its entire form still very much whole.

There is a part on Chelmo, where gas vans were first used to exterminate Jews. It then moves onto the more advanced, industrial methods of slaughter at the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Finally, the film concerns itself with the Warsaw Ghetto.

The relentless search for efficiency, a desire that scaled up those initial processes into death camps, is manifested in an evaluation form of the gas vans, read by Lanzmann at the end of the film’s first half. His monotonous voice, in French, repeats the following over footage being filmed from a car window, driving through the industrial district of Ruhr. Those murderous gas vans wouldn’t have had windows, you think morbidly to yourself.

Berlin, June 5 1942

Changes for special vehicles now in service at Kulmhof (Chelmno) and for those now being built.

Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed ("verarbeit" in German) by the three vehicles in service, with no major incidents. In the light of observations made so far, however, the following technical changes are needed:

1. The vans' normal load is usually nine per square yard. In Saurer vehicles, which are very spacious, maximum use of space is impossible, not because of any possible overload, but because loading to full capacity would affect the vehicle's stability. So reduction of the load space seems necessary. It must absolutely be reduced by a yard, instead of trying to solve the problem, as hitherto, by reducing the number of pieces loaded. Besides, this extends the operating time, as the empty void must be filled with carbon monoxide. On the other hand, if the load space is reduced, and the vehicle is packed solid, the operating time can be considerably shortened. The manufacturers told us during a discussion that reducing the size of the van's rear would throw it badly off balance. The front axle, they claim, would be overloaded. In fact, the balance is automatically restored, because the merchandise aboard displays during the operation a natural tendency to rush to the rear doors, and is mainly found lying there at the end of the operation. So the front axle is not overloaded.

2. The lighting must be better protected than now. The lamps must be enclosed in a steel grid to prevent their being damaged. Lights could be eliminated, since they apparently are never used. However, it has been observed that when the doors are shut, the load always presses hard against them [the doors] as soon as darkness sets in. This is because the load naturally rushes toward the light when darkness sets in, which makes closing the doors difficult. Also, because of the alarming nature of darkness, screaming always occurs when the doors are closed. It would therefore be useful to light the lamp before and during the first moments of the operation.

3. For easy cleaning of the vehicle, there must be a sealed drain in the middle of the floor. The drainage hole's cover, eight to twelve inches in diameter, would be equipped with a slanting trap, so that fluid liquids can drain off during the operation. During cleaning, the drain can be used to evacuate large pieces of dirt.

The aforementioned technical changes are to be made to vehicles in service only when they come in for repairs. As for the ten vehicles ordered from Saurer, they must be equipped with all innovations and changes shown by use and experience to be necessary.

Submitted for decision to Gruppenleiter II D, SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauff.

Signed Just.

The language of bureaucracy veils the request’s true intention, the devil lurking in the details. Faeces, piss and vomit become “fluid liquids” and “large pieces of dirt”. Lanzmann’s monotone echoes the efficiency of the language. On listening to the requests, it’s impossible to avoid outrage. Lanzmann recognises this, and to express his own would be to over sentimentalise its impact. Instead he allows the camera to drift onto the truck next to his, specifically the mudguard on its back wheel. It reads SAURER in white, bolded letters.

Lanzmann shares an obsession with such details. When questioning/interrogating survivors, murderers and bystanders throughout the film, he avoids those lofty questions of horror – variations on ‘how could anyone commit such atrocities?’ – and instead focuses on facts. It is a sentiment shared by the historian Raul Hilberg, whom Lanzmann interviews in the film. “In all of my work I have never begun by asking the big questions because I was always afraid that I would come up with small answers, and I have preferred, therefore, to address these things which are minutiae or detail…” Although Hilberg talks both quietly and eloquently, the manner in which he draws out the vowels of certain words, or cuts short mid-sentence, gives the impression its all through intensely gritted teeth.

In one scene, Lanzmann interviews Abraham Bomba, a barber in Tel Aviv. Bomba had been spared from the gas chambers so he could cut the women’s hair before they went in. Lanzmann questions him, often harshly, about his experiences whilst Bomba snips away at a customer’s head. The choice of scenery is a smart one; the familiarity presumably giving Bomba some small comfort, while also recalling the conditions of his story.

Lanzmann asks about what Bomba had cut with, whether there were any mirrors, how many barbers were there. They are unemotional questions, seeking for similarly dispassionate responses, yet they are charged with poignancy. The camera becomes uncomfortably tight on Bomba’s face when he can no longer continue to cut the man’s hair. He starts to weep and begs not to go on with the questioning. “You have to do it. I know it’s very hard. I know and I apologise,” Lanzmann forcibly replies.

These are old men and women whom Lanzmann has tracked down and interviewed – people who were there when it happened, people who won’t be around for much longer. During Shoah’s filming, the Holocaust was passing out of living memory. Lanzmann’s determination to preserve it, a resolve fuelled by his aversion to documentary footage, is propelled by this unfortunate fact. The human experience is far more important than any strip of celluloid.

Lanzmann’s argument is that by portraying the Holocaust through archive film and images, it is in some way simplified and made more attainable. Certainly, the scenes the various interviewees paint through their stories are far more vivid and affecting than the black and white photos of corpse piled upon corpse. After a while, the film places in you a distrust of both mediums, restoring the essence of truth back to human testimony. Because, for Lanzmann, the Holocaust was genocide beyond most evils, and it is of the upmost importance not to trivialise this.

It is a debatable principle, but a noble one in the context of this extraordinary and affective documentary.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #88 - A Night at the Opera (1935)

A Night at the Opera, 1935.

Directed by Sam Wood.
Starring Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Margaret Dumont and Sig Ruman.


SYNOPSIS:

The Marx Brothers make fools of high society’s opera lovers, and try to help their two friends-in-love along the way.


Groucho always gets the most ridiculously stately names. Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding from Animal Crackers, for example, or Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff from Horse Feathers. Mr Otis B. Driftwood is his character in A Night at the Opera. He’s still Groucho, though. He’s always Groucho.

Groucho acts as an advisor of sorts to Mrs Claypool (Margaret Dumont, of course). She’s trying to break into high society and solicits Groucho’s help. Why, we have no idea. This is a Marx Brothers film. Logic and rationality are the enemies.

He chooses the opera as their way up society’s ladder, encouraging Mrs Claypool to donate large sums of her dead husband’s money to an opera company in New York. It is at the final performance of the season in Italy where Groucho comes across Fiorello (Chico) and his friend Tomasso (Harpo). They’re still Chico and Harpo, though. Hell, they’re always Chico and Harpo.

This was the Marx Brothers’ first film for MGM, under the supervision of Irving Thalberg – a man Groucho deeply admired. During their Paramount days, they made great comedies, but the films were never treated as anything more than that. Animal Crackers and The Coconauts were based on their old vaudeville stage shows.

Thalberg, however, insisted they stick to a narrative. The audience needs an emotional hook, he’d argue. Then we can thread the gags around that. He channelled the Marxes’ anarchy solely at the stuck-up and the villains, making the audience more sympathetic towards them. In previous films they had unleashed their chaos on anyone close enough.

He demanded more clearly established villains, a lowest point for the protagonists, and a love story were the Marx Brothers would be needed to save the day. The romance in Animal Crackers was fudged into the film alongside the antics. A Night at the Opera incorporated them.

This way, the brothers could get “twice the box office with half the laughs.” Groucho maintained afterwards that his experience with Thalberg was the first time he ever felt treated like an artist.

Chico’s best friend and client, Riccardo (Allan Jones), joins the brothers on the boat to New York. He’s the male half of the romance, the other being opera singer Rosa (Kitty Carlisle). They’re in love, but she sings alongside Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), the opera’s leading man. Riccardo is merely a dreamer in the chorus.

The Brothers take it upon themselves to make Riccardo a star. Grocho and Chico draw up a simple contract to assess how much they might make from him. “It’s alright, that’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause,” Groucho reassures Chico of the document’s final part. “You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Sanity Claus!” Chico exclaims in his most elaborate Italian immigrant accent. Wocka wocka.

The film contains many ingenious comedy scenes. There’s one on the boat, in Groucho’s tiny stateroom, where he invites person after person to join him. There must be at least 15 people crammed in by the end, all playing it completely straight, with Groucho standing in the corner admiring the disorder he has created.

A later one has the brothers transfer all the furniture from a room to one next door, to confuse a policeman looking for Chico, Harpo and Riccardo. There’s a lot of slamming doors, as though they’re channelling an ancestor of Basil Fawlty, which always helps in a farce.

In the final act, at the New York opera’s opening night (the one to which the film’s title refers), Chico and Harpo subtly switch the sheet music for A Day at the Ball Park. Just as their deed drifts out of your memory, half way through the performance of the opera, the orchestra shifts into the baseball tune mid-song. Groucho appears at the back of the theatre in a full vendor uniform selling peanuts. Chico and Harpo, who are amongst the orchestra’s pit by this point, produce a ball and two bats. They proceed to play over the musicians’ heads.

Their ability for the chaotic is sublime. Harpo runs up a wall at one point, and it’s believable. It’s as though they’re superheroes of mischief, or ancient Gods of anarchy, who whittle away their time tormenting anyone of high society.

But in all Marx Brothers films, amongst the chaos, there are these little islands of beauty. A profound tranquillity arises whenever Chico and Harpo find themselves near instruments. In A Night at the Opera, it’s when they join the Italian immigrants on the boat bound for America. Initially they fool around on the piano, shooting keys and making the kids around them giggle. Chico plays a bawdy tune and gets a laugh. The eyes boggle at his masterful skill, hitting notes like they’re funny bones.

And then Harpo gets on his harp. He plucks the strings with a hypnotising rhythm. Everyone falls silent, allowing for the instrument’s volume, knowing it will hardly rise above a whisper. The children’s faces are shown as in a trance. It’s a soothing contrast from the mayhem that fills everywhere else. Those are always my favourite bits of Marx Brothers films.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #87 - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, 2011.

Directed by Guy Ritchie.
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Rachel McAdams, Stephen Fry, Eddie Marsan and Kelly Reilly.


SYNOPSIS:

Sherlock Holmes finds a worthy adversary in Professor Moriarty, who is hell-bent on murdering Dr. Watson and his new wife, and instigating a war between France and Germany.


The film’s music is really rather good. Consistent from the first film, you recognise the clanging theme from its first few notes. It reminds you of all the fun you had watching the original.

Which makes for a nice transition into this sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The absence of a number from that – i.e. Sherlock Holmes 2 – implies the studios want this to be a franchise for quite some time.

The players are the same, with some disposed of rather quickly and a couple new ones brought in to replace them. Stephen Fry plays Holmes’ brother, Jared Harris is the dastardly Professor James Moriarty and Noomi Rapace hops over from Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film versions of the Millennium trilogy. Yet most importantly, Robert Downey Jr. remains as Holmes and Jude Law returns as Dr. John Watson.

Their chemistry is increasingly affable. They bicker back and forth like a married couple, endearingly so, like the old husband and wife who everyone enjoys to watch arguing. They match each other for wit, yet they are essentially an odd couple. Holmes is unstructured, drunk, ingenious, arrogant. Watson is restrained, a war veteran and soon to be married.

Holmes doesn’t much like that. Whenever Mary (Kelly Reilly), the soon-to-be Mrs Watson, is mentioned, his eyes beam a contemptuous glare. He begs Watson to put off the wedding so they can solve just one last case – possibly the greatest they have ever encountered – of a number of explosions in mainland Europe. Watson declines and marries Mary. Everyone celebrates outside the church but Holmes, who stares forlornly from the gate. As he walks off with a lonely waddle, you remember Downy Jr. once played Chaplin’s Tramp himself.

The two are quickly reunited, though, as men attempt to murder Watson on his honeymoon. Mary is placed under Mycroft’s protection, whilst Holmes and Watson go off on a honeymoon of their own – across Europe trying to thwart Professor Moriarty’s attempt to orchestrate a war between two European countries. “I can’t tell you their names,” Mycroft teases Holmes and Watson, “but I can tell you that they speak German and French.”

Guy Ritchie’s Holmes is a superhero in the Batman sense: a master detective with great foresight. As Batman has no metahuman abilities – no invincibility to bullets, no powerful green ring – he must rely on his preparation before encounters. One wrong move for Superman means he gets knocked back. One wrong move for Bruce Wayne means possible death.

It requires Holmes to think through his battles in advance with extraordinary precision, his fights and plans and rouses playing out like a game of chess. Grandmasters have the ability to see when and how a match is driving towards an inevitability. Holmes does the same, deducing action and reaction, action and reaction until it works its way through to his desired conclusion.

Ritchie depicts this by turning the lens into Holmes’ mind’s eye. He plots through the actions, narrating his thought process, identifying weak spots and how he can neutralise his enemy. The image takes a faded appearance, tending towards the monochrome. The edges blur slightly, too. “What can you see?” the gypsy woman asks him as they gently swirl around a ballroom, looking for the assassin who lurks amongst the ambassadors and delegates in the film’s final scenes. “Everything,” Holmes replies solemnly, “that is my curse.”

Chess is a recurring theme for Ritchie, and one that he explicitly presents in Game of Shadows, much as he did throughout Revolver. Moriarty and Holmes constantly tease a game of chess, finally settling down to a blitz version near the film’s end. A gentleman’s game, it allows them to exchange false courtesies of how they admire one another. The board game is entwined with the film’s visuals, yet people often argue that Ritchie’s stylisation lacks substance.

Ritchie receives a lot of hate from some circles. They seem to miss his point (Ritchie’s company is named ‘Toff Guy Productions’), and you’d think if he was from the East, and subtitles adorned his films, he might be more applauded.

He makes comic book movies – not ‘Superhero’ movies, as has been the Hollywood way over the last decade. The experience of reading a comic, the speech bubbles, panels and visual anarchy, is captured far more in a Guy Ritchie film than in Green Lantern, The Dark Knight or Captain America. In a climate so overrun by superhero films, it’s easy to forget that comics centre upon gangsters or master sleuths just as adeptly.

This is helped by Ritchie’s capability for visuals of immense awe. In one scene, Holmes, Watson and an assorted bunch of gypsies run through a forest, fleeing a German arms factory that is launching all its might at their heels. The film cuts between extreme slow motion long shots of the escapees running, to close ups fixated on a specific part of their person – an arm, the side of a face, a thigh. It is as though a steadycam rig has been fitted to the side of an actor, so their body is always the central position of the shot, with the rest of the environment moving around them (a far more advanced and aesthetic version of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar). The resulting image is spectacular, and one cannot deny the chaotic atmosphere it captures, as individual bullets splinter trees or brush past clothing, or how it isolates the panic of individual limbs and heavy, heaving breaths.

However, this is more a defence of Guy Ritchie as a filmmaker. The film itself is slightly bloated and too long. Some scenes aren’t nearly as funny as they think they are, and nobody would miss them if they were to be cut. The chief antagonist, Moriarty, lacks the intensity of Mark Strong’s predecessor villain, and the overall film is weakened because of it. After all, a hero is only as great as the foe he is up against. Additionally, Eddie Marsan’s Lestrade, the most incompetent man in Scotland Yard, is only afforded the briefest of cameos.

Game of Shadows is an enjoyable film. It passes the time with ease and will garner more than a few belly laughs. The action is riveting and the characters entertaining. It’s a great way to see you through a cold, Winter night.

It’s just that after I saw the first Sherlock Holmes, I literally tried to be him for a week. I slightly altered my pattern of speech and would play silly games in my head of how best to discombobulate potential enemies on the tube during my commute to work. I felt the same again after I watched it earlier this year.

Unfortunately, Game of Shadows slipped out of my consciousness the very next day.

RATING **

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

The Top 20 Films That Weren't Released In 2011, But Which I Had Never Seen Before

Oli Davis presents an alternative to the usual year end Top 10 with 'The Top 20 – YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, A WHOLE TWENTY - of Films That Weren’t Released In 2011, But Which I Had Never Seen Before'...

I’m in a bit of a difficult position. I wrote my last review, of Raging Bull, at 4pm, Saturday 31st December. I’d seen it back in November, but backlogs have a habit of creeping up on you. It was my final review of 2011, having set myself the challenge to watch 100 films I’d never seen before, and write an article on each one.

However, there was a different backlog creeping up on that backlog. A sizable chunk of reviews still fester in the editor of Flickering Myth’s inbox – not because he’s negligent, far from it, but because my planning was poor. I’d been writing reviews at a leisurely pace from January to October, forgetting there were only two months left. I thought there were three. Sometimes I confuse calendar months with lunar ones. I could’ve sworn there was a Smarch last year.

So I ended up doing what anybody would do when tackling grand goals over lengthy periods of time – I did it all in the last five weeks. That’s what the backlog is, and why ‘365 Days, 100 Films’ reviews are still appearing on the site every now and again. As though they’ll. Never. End.

It means I’ve sort of missed the chance for a parade in my honour. Imagine if I had planned it so review 100 was put up on Flickering Myth on December 31st, 2011. Passers-by would insist on shaking my hand. People would have been partying in the streets. Women-folk would be offering me their bodies. I could have been the guy that won 2011.

But I didn’t, so here’s a half-hearted attempt at closure – my Alternative Top 20 of Films That Weren’t Released In 2011, But Which I Had Never Seen Before...

20. Miracle on 34th Street
-best served originally and on Christmas day.

19. Bride of Frankenstein
-an exploration of the monster’s more human aspects, with an incredibly enchanting score.

18. Harry Brown
-foreshadowed last year’s Summer riots, as sponsored by JD Sports, by two years. Also a very accomplished and mature revenge film.

17. The Unforgiven
-a dark Western, where the heroes are forever tainted by their long-dead father’s actions.

16. Bad Lieutenant
-batshit crazy Nicolas Cage having iguanas sing Release Me by Engelbert Humperdinck to him with Werner Herzog, and other, more ludicrous happenings.

15. Lethal Weapon
-the ultimate buddy-cop movie.

14. The Warriors
-a remarkably self-contained mythology, where rival teenage gangs roam across an urban sprawl.

13. Red River
-John Wayne’s second best film. A lot like uncle Ethan from The Searchers, but mean rather than racist.

12. My Neighbor Totoro
-Catbus.

11. Event Horizon
-a film with the power to induce paralysing terror. The same sci-fi/horror blend as Alien, but far more cerebral.

10. Top Gun
-Baby, baby, I’d get down on my knees for you (the best homoerotic film for men ever made).

09. The Tin Star
-Henry Fonda starring as such a classic, blue-eyed good guy that you forget he was ever in Once Upon A Time In The West.

08. Frankenstein
-a heartbreaking tragedy.

07. Rio Bravo
-Dean Martin’s best film. He plays a drunkard, ex-deputy to John Wayne’s sheriff. Manly stuff, yet also endearingly fragile.

06. The Proposition
-a poetically nightmarish Western set in the Australian outback.

05. A Night at the Opera
-the Marx brothers’ best, most anarchic and structured film. Contains some of the funniest set pieces ever committed to screen.

04. Raging Bull
-an incredibly expressive character study of the boxer Jake LaMotta, with a perfect fusion of substance and style.

03. Night of the Hunter
-a very dark fairytale in the tone of the Brothers Grimm. Robert Mitchum plays one of the most complex and frightening bad guys in cinema history.

02. Rocky
-a completely overwhelming experience of pure awesomeness.

01. Stand By Me
-because nobody has friends like they do when they’re 12.


I watched Return to Oz on New Year’s Day. It’s the first film I’ve seen since December 2010 that wasn’t accompanied by a notebook. It felt good. Hopefully now I should have considerably more free time to pursue my other interests. Predominantly, the career of the late professional wrestler, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, from the late 80s to early 90s, and obscure branches of Japanese Hentai pornography.

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films #86 - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, 2011.

Directed by Brad Bird.
Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Anil Kapoor, Vladimir Mashkov and Josh Holloway.


SYNOPSIS:

Ethan Hunt and his new team have a new mission, if they chose to accept it. Russia’s nuclear launch codes have fallen into the wrong hands.


I was a bit late arriving for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. I never usually buy concessions at the cinema, it being an expensive habit and all, but I had a voucher for one large popcorn and two large drinks (World of Cine’s recompense for an hour and a half of ruined audio in True Grit). “You only want one drink?” the lady asked me as stood there willing for her to hurry up. “There’s only one of me today,” I replied dejectedly, as is the loneliness of the long distance film reviewer.

Ghost Protocol quickly does away with any such agitations you might have brought with you into the cinema. The film opens on Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) breakout from a Russian prison, orchestrated by Jane (Paula Patton) and Benji (Simon Pegg). Before you can catch your breath, the film explodes into its incredibly entertaining opening credits. The camera follows a lit fuse as it burns along the wire, actors’ names and production credits flying past the screen as it does, with – get this – brief shots of scenes from later in the film, like a car falling into a river, or Ethan Hunt attached to the side of the world’s largest building. Who does that anymore!?

Brad Bird.

His previous directing credits are Ratatouille, The Incredibles and The Iron Giant – all animated films. Ghost Protocol is his first live action piece, but some parts play like more adult scenes from The Incredibles. The opening credits sequence is the best example, it sharing the similarly sincere, yet tongue-in-cheek homage to the overblown opening titles of James Bond. Michael Giacchino’s (posing a Lost-reunion of sorts with Josh Holloway [Sawyer] who has a cameo near the beginning) brassy score furthers the bond. The Mission: Impossible franchise grounds itself in the absurd, which is probably the best environment to make one’s transition from animation to live-action.

The other great gift Bird brings is spatial continuity. Each action sequence is masterfully crafted, keeping a kinetic pace while remaining comprehensible. Even in an epic sand storm in Dubai, where the camera can see barely a foot before it, the action still makes more internal sense than any in Transformers, The Dark Knight or the Bourne films – and what better quality to judge an action film on than its action? Surely not narrative.

Looking for plot originality in action films where the world is at stake can often feel redundant. Ghost Protocol follows Ethan Hunt and his team’s pursuit of Cobalt, an ex-nuclear strategist who will soon have the launch codes for Russia’s arsenal. He wants to blow up the world (don’t they all?)

But the narrative is more of a necessity rather than a centrepiece. Instead, Hunt and his team’s characters are given more space to interact and develop. After the exhilarating opening jailbreak, Ethan accepts his next mission, due to start in four hours. “Ha, I thought you said ‘The Kremlin,’” remarks Benji. “Ha, I said ‘I thought you said The Kremlin,’” he repeats. Ethan remains silent, his mind whirring away of how best to break into the Russian fortress. In four hours.

Thankfully, the film prioritises these action scenes over a potential romantic subplot between Hunt and Jane (Paula Patton), the only woman on the team. A lesser film would have fudged one in, because, you know, how could they possibly create suspense without the hero’s love interest being in danger. Sometimes the world truly is enough. Instead, the emotional poignancy is allowed to foster amongst the team.

And this is done during the action sequences rather than the brief fillers between them. Ghost Protocol has four major sequences like this; the opening prison escape; the subsequent infiltration of the Kremlin; an incredible sequence in Dubai, mainly in (off) the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest manmade structure; and finally in India, from where Cobalt plans to access a defunct Soviet military satellite. Each scene splits the team into their parallel tasks. The concluding sequence in India, for instance, has Benji and Brandt (Jeremy Renner) attempting to hack the satellite, whilst Jane seduces its playboy owner. The film cross cuts between the simultaneous espionage missions, increasing the tension and intrigue.

The gadgets they use to do so might be far-fetched, but Bird takes great care in explaining how they work, and they don’t suffer from the same Sonic-Screwdriver syndrome (lazy plot device that allows person-in-danger to escape or fix most perilous situations) as Mission: Impossible’s previous instalment. A single shot of Benji showing how a pair of adhesive gloves work – “Blue is glue.” “And red?” “Dead.” – is invaluable in making the mind accept such unbelievable gadgets. Again, Bird’s visual approach to storytelling translates perfectly to the Mission: Impossible ethos.

But best of all, the gadgets frequently fail or fall short. The team are constantly forced to retreat to their instincts or ingenuity. The fire hose isn’t long enough to stretch from the 110th floor to the 99th of the world’s tallest building. Ethan has to improvise. It makes their feats both more compelling and impressive.

Funny and with four great action sequences, Ghost Protocol is a very good movie. It’s a sexy one too. It has sexy people in. Well, bar Pegg. Not that he isn’t sexy, more that he becomes strangely asexual in action films of this ilk. Ironic, considering he wrote a three-and-a-half thousand word essay on how C3PO was an emasculated homosexual. “Because he’s very camp, but he was safe because he didn’t have a willy.”

Jack Warner used to judge how successful a film would be by how many times he visited the toilet during its screening. This led to his proclamation that Bonnie and Clyde was a “three pee picture”.

My bladder is made of steelier stuff (unless full of liquor), so I judge a film’s absorption by how many times I shift in my seat – crossing legs, folding one underneath the other, leaning on the armrest, etc. This is more for movies rather than films. I doubt Abbas Kiarostami (most pretentious name in my head at the time of writing) wants you to be comfortable while watching his work.

As Ghost Protocol ended, I found myself in the exact same position as when I started. The only difference was that my chest, lap and immediate surrounding area was covered in the free-popcorn pieces that had missed my mouth and made me late in the first place. I had forgotten I was late. I had forgotten I was even eating popcorn. And that’s why Ghost Protocol is the best action film of the year.

RATING ***

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #85 - The Artist (2011)

The Artist, 2011.

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius.
Starring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Anne Miller, Missi Pyle, Malcolm McDowell and Uggie.


SYNOPSIS:

George Valentin, a star of the silent era, faces the dawn of sound cinema.


Silent films are easy enough to watch at home. Chaplin has recently had another box set released for Christmas and the Laurel and Hardy collection permanently lingers around the gift idea sections of HMV. Their quality gets them through the distractions of home viewing, but it’s nothing like experiencing silence in the cinema.

Such opportunities are rare. Not counting University screenings, I’ve only ever seen two in a theatre – a Chaplin short film marathon a couple of Christmases ago at the BFI, and Keaton’s The General at the Prince Charles a few months back. The novelty is so overwhelming that, after a while, you forget it’s a novelty; you forget what you’re watching is a silent film. It’s simply a film, like any other.

The Artist is a loving tribute to the era, to Fritz Lang, King Vidor and Eric von Stroheim, silence, black and white and 1:33 aspect ratios. “You’d be crazy to make a black and white, silent film,” Michel Hazanavicius, the director, recalled what everyone told him before production began, in the question and answer session following the screening. “They’re right,” he said immediately after, a cheekily boyish grin breaking across his face.

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a Douglas Fairbanks-esque star of the 1920s. His films all appear to follow the same narrative, where his trusty, sidekick dog, Uggy, eventually saves the day. The Artist opens on one such film, on a scene where a pair of unnamed captors are torturing George. Uggy, as always, is busy orchestrating an escape plan. Eventually, we’re given a shot of the cinema watching George’s film at its premiere, a mirror of our audience seated in reality. They’re shown in rapturous applause at its conclusion, yet still muted in the film’s silence. Your imagination leaps to fill the void, colouring the quiet and making the clapping louder and richer than any sound recordist could ever hope.

George is married, but also starting to fall for Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a young film extra. Their lives continue to entwine throughout the film. Miller cares very deeply about George, but his self-centredness blinds him to her help. Peppy Miller, George Valentin – the names, like the film entire, are so innocent you cannot help but concede to their charm.

The sequence where George realises his feelings towards Peppy is enchanting. Shooting a scene for his latest film, ‘A German Affair’, George plays a spy and must walk across a dance floor, comically acting discreet. Peppy is one of the extras with whom he briefly dances. They become caught in each other’s stare, momentarily forgetting all those – the cast, the crew – around them. They laugh upon realising that the take is ruined, so the shot burns out and they go again, each time falling in love a little more.

The sequence appears as though they are outtakes from ‘A German Affair’, all in silence with the mechanics of film (the flare at the end of each shot) laid bare. The Artist is as much a tribute to a cinematic format, as well as a period and genre.

“It’s the future,” reads the black and white placard of Al Zimmer’s (John Goodman), the studio’s head producer, declaration on sound cinema. George howls at the idea. It’s a gimmick, it’ll never catch on, reads his expression as he swaggers confidently from the theatre in which Zimmer had shown him an example. There’s no future in that.

Well, not for him anyway.

But there is for Peppy. By this point, she’s worked her way up the bill to carrying films on her own. George wants nothing to do with sound cinema and leaves Zimmer. Peppy is brought in to fill his place.

George invests all his money into a film of his own making – a silent one, entitled 'Tears of Love', to compete against the beckoning noise. It’s a tragic masterpiece where the hero dies at the end, but audiences have flocked to the theatre next door, watching Peppy’s first sound film. Along with the stock market crash, George is financially ruined.

It sounds sombre, but your laughs will be amongst the most sincere you’ve ever enjoyed in a cinema. The comedy is completely visual. Sideways glances to each other, slight movements of the hand, cheesy facial expressions – the timing is impeccable, as is the composition within the frame. All the limitations – the absence of both sound and colour – both refine and free The Artist.

Effectively, the entire film is structured around a single gag – why won’t George Valentin speak? He has lost his job, his wife, his wealth, yet still he refuses to embrace sound. There’s a wonderful innocence to a narrative being so tongue-in-cheek and simple, and fully deserves the Oscar buzz it is currently receiving.

Although technically a French film, The Artist is not nominated within the Foreign Language category. It’s one of the perks of silent cinema – movies of that era could be exhibited around the world with little regard of the native tongue. A Swedish film could be understood equally in both America and Spain. The coming of sound toppled this like the Tower of Babel.

If it wins, it’ll be the first silent movie in 80 years to do so. That’s quite something. In your face, 3D.

RATING ****

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

365 Days, 100 Films #84 - Death Wish (1974)

Death Wish, 1974.

Directed by Michael Winner.
Starring Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia, Steven Keats and William Redfield.


SYNOPSIS:

Paul Kersey wages a one-man war against crime in New York City after the murder of his wife.


After enduring Movember, you appreciate a man with a good moustache. Charles Bronson has a great moustache.

He plays Paul Kersey, an architect and ‘bleeding-heart liberal’ in New York, i.e. the guy you would least expect to pick up a gun and start killing criminals. And be really good at it.

While at work one day, his apartment is brutally invaded by three punks, one being a young Jeff Goldblum. His daughter is sexually assaulted and his wife later dies in hospital from her injuries. Goldblum home invasions were rife in the 70s. Bloody Jeff Goldblum.

New York appears a little darker after that day, like Gotham without the architecture. It has the same chill, the same rampant, unstoppable crime, the same ever-falling snow. The police are pragmatic. They don’t offer hope. It’s a cold whore of a city.

It’s a sentiment anyone who has ever been robbed in the street or had their home burgled will share – everything looks a little suspicious in the months immediately after. Your faith in humanity takes a considerable knock. And that’s just for a Playstation 2 and an old VCR. Imagine how Kersey must feel.

His boss sends him on a business vacation to Tucson, Arizona. It’s real nice out there. Kersey becomes friends with the company’s client, Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin), and the two visit a reconstructed Ol’ West town. A few actors stage a mock gunfight for the tourists with a group of bandits against the lone sheriff. Justice was done with bullets in those days.

Half inspired by the tourist attraction, Kersey becomes a vigilante. He’s always had the skill of a killer (his father was a hunter), but never the heart. Until his wife murdered and his daughter raped, that is.

Walking through New York’s darkened streets, Kersey sees the face of his wife’s murderer, his daughter’s rapist in every street crawler, drug dealer or mugger’s face. The crime of the city is so extensive that it has produced its own antibody in Kersey. He’s a Batman who kills.

Kersey’s justice is a tad heavy handed – perhaps petty thieves should be given a trial rather than shot dead – but the city’s crime rate has dropped significantly since he’s taken the law into his own hands. The vigilante question adorns billboards and the front covers of magazines; he’s the main topic of conversation at middle-class parties; old women beating muggers away with their bags claim him as their inspiration. Kersey’s alter ego is now a symbol against lawlessness, despite being a murderer himself. The architect has constructed an effective crime deterrent, but missed the structural flaw in its foundations.

Nevertheless, Death Wish is an immensely enjoyable film. Half ridiculous, maybe, but the revenge motive is played perfectly throughout. Despite killing a whole load of people who don’t deserve to die, you never stop rooting for him. In fact, it’s a rather nice, passive aggressive way of releasing any anger you might have towards any shifty looking people in your town centre.

All you have to do is get past the shudder upon seeing the movie’s opening credit: A MICHAEL WINNER FILM.

RATING ***

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films