Films Seen - May 2002

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

DEVILS ON THE DOORSTEP (71) (dir., Jiang Wen) Jiang Wen, Jiang Hongbo, Teruyuki Kagawa [I'd be (even) happier if I could figure out a point to this glorious entertainment - preferably a point that would explain its suppression by the Chinese authorities (not remotely anti-Party, that I could see ; maybe it's just that the wretched Chinese characters aren't especially more noble than their Japanese oppressors), but even just an ordinary dramatic point beyond 'War is a Bad Thing which destroys our Humanity'. Plenty of humanity on view, in any case, from the senile old man yelling "I'll kill you, turtle-fucker!" to the courteous professional assassin who explains his reluctance to accept a job in terms of tofu and sorghum merchants, via frequent arguments, debates and garrulous village councils where participants get sidetracked, seek refuge in irrelevant 'traditional sayings' and generally fail to come to a decision ; plot might be a slapstick DIVIDED WE FALL, trappings suggest Kusturica (marching bands, a lengthy party scene) but the overall sensibility is perhaps closest to Imamura - quirky, discursive narrative, sudden mood-swings from comedy to shocking violence, mordant view of the human condition. Vivid, full of life and generally terrific, despite a suspicion that the journey isn't really warranted by the destination. Is it heretical to suggest Jiang Wen looks a little like an Oriental Martin Lawrence?...]

BLADE II (49) (dir., Guillermo del Toro) Wesley Snipes, Ron Perlman, Kris Kristofferson, Leonor Varela, Norman Reedus [Writing this more than a week after the event - due to circumstances beyond my control, etc etc - and it's kind of staggering how little I remember ; maybe it's just that the action scenes are straightforward fight scenes, generically describable as "Blade kicks ass" without much in the way of wider resonance (cf. JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES, where the heroes' highly systemised - not to say ritualised - vampire-hunting methods tied in with the larger themes of professionalism and living life according to a code), and the film is nothing but wall-to-wall action scenes, impressive though the weaponry and FX may be. Flirts with intriguing ideas - vampires as junkies, even vampires as post-Soviets in a new 'Evil Empire' - but it's finally another in the BLACK HAWK DOWN / WE WERE SOLDIERS mould, based on the visceral notion that intense conflict is best evoked by plunging the viewer in the thick of it without respite or relief - which may be true, but also edges perilously close to videogame. Rhythm monotonous, visuals sometimes imaginative - 'razor-blade kiss' ranks high in the annals of gross-out wit, and watching bodies explode into showers of multi-coloured sparks is always cool - though nothing quite replaces the wasted-clubber decadence of Stephen Dorff in the original. Why do the Powerpuff Girls keep appearing in this movie?...]

WICKED (56) (dir., Michael Steinberg) Julia Stiles, William R. Moses, Vanessa Zima, Michael Parks, Patrick Muldoon [Reasons to watch this straight-to-video cheapie : (i) a fun Cliff Martinez score, doing buoyant Danny Elfman pastiche with a spring in its step and giving the main detective a jazzy 50s theme when he first appears like he's Johnny Staccato or something ; (ii) pouty Stiles as snub-nosed jailbait, flashing bruised little-girl eyes for lines like "Dad ... You love me, don't you?" ; (iii) occasional weirdness on the fringes, like the matronly next-door neighbour ("Amaryllis") who likes to sing late at night, accompanying herself on the piano while a thunderstorm rages outside ; (iv) Steinberg's feel for this gated community on the edge of scrubland and impudent flair for the striking (if gratuitous) image, from a mouth saying "I do" in ECU (heroine reacting in the bottom of the frame) to people reflected in other people's eyeballs, not to mention kaleidoscopic frou-frou over the opening credits. Main reason not to watch : the increasingly dopey plot, which has baby-doll saying stuff like "Don't forget your lunch" and "Where have you been, I was worried sick" to show she's Turning Into her dead mother, then going all evil-nymphet when a potential stepmom enters the picture, fantasising about killing the interloper with a dinner-table knife and doing cold-eyed sneers when nobody's looking till the mind starts to think Alicia Silverstone in THE CRUSH (a scary thought). Cops out on the Big Taboo, settling for discreet fade-to-black, but that's probably the nature of the beast in our timid movie age.]

BLOODY SUNDAY (61) (dir., Paul Greengrass) James Nesbitt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Nicholas Farrell, Gerard McSorley [Stands firm in the memory as a solid, thoroughly well-mounted reconstruction of a tragic, controversial event, done with admirable even-handedness except at the very beginning - cross-cutting between Nesbitt's Catholic MP in eloquent full flow and Pigott-Smith's dour military chief offering suppression in place of arguments ("The law is the law, and must be respected") gives the game away - and the very end, when righteous indignation spills over and U2 make their inevitable appearance on the soundtrack. Otherwise smart enough to know the real division isn't between Irish Catholics and the British government but between violence and non-violence, with partisans for each side in both camps, though watching it isn't always as satisfying as recalling it - the one-day structure means you know nothing much is going to happen till the halfway mark, and Greengrass's penchant for ending every other scene with a sharp fade to black and sudden cutting-off of sound feels like affectation. Nesbitt also seems to be trying too hard at first - 'doing' the proverbial politician, shaking hands and dandling babies - but grows into the part, and the final lament (that the Brits on Bloody Sunday gave the IRA "the biggest triumph it's ever had") is nailed beautifully ; whole film tries for gritty urgency, phones ringing constantly and everybody talking at once - and mostly succeeds, coming across like superior TV docudrama or a newspaper article written in tough, slangy prose. All it really lacks is a touch of poetry - but I guess that's a different movie.]

ATTACK OF THE CLONES (46) (dir., George Lucas) Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee [Top Ten Alternate Titles for Episode II of the STAR WARS saga goes as follows (mostly devised by assorted cyber-folk far snarkier than myself ; thanks and apologies for not giving credit - just thought it'd be fun to have them all in one place, really) :

What? Oh yeah, the movie ... Even an agnostic like myself can be stirred by that opening music and "long time ago" scroll, so I can just imagine the disappointment hardcore fans must feel with this stiff, flat, seemingly endless flick, partially redeemed only by some snazzy cityscapes and a (slightly) livelier final section. Comes in only two flavours, and they don't even mix very well - cheesy simple-mindedness that made PHANTOM MENACE so disarming and a heavy self-importance that makes everything happen very slowly and gives rise to long-winded lines like "Investigation is implied in our mandate". Plotting perfunctory, everything way too easy - tracking down Mom, finding a lost planet - love scenes leaden, Anakin absurd (though Hayden, to be fair, does seem to be acting on instructions in playing the part as a petulant 12-year-old). Neutrals advised to kill time while waiting for the thing to end by debating whether Lucas' cold, distant style counts as Auteurist Statement, given that the whole Jedi philosophy is based on keeping one's emotions at arm's length ; fans advised to mutter darkly about R2's newfound powers of flight, the cheapening of C-3PO and occasional, heretical attempts at post-modern levity (Obi-Wan to Anakin : "Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?"). I mean, you just don't joke about stuff like that ... ]

METROPOLIS (64) (dir., Rintaro) [It's all about the contrasts : implacable geometry of sleek vertiginous towers vs. goofy-looking people down below, all rounded features and Sailor Moon eyes ; garishly emphatic Day-Glo colours vs. cloudy moral ambivalence, the nominal villain being perhaps the most complex figure in the movie (teenage killer Rock, driven to destroy by a craving for love). Combination of spectacular futurism and off-the-wall humour recalls THE FIFTH ELEMENT - ditto the omnipotent super-being as cheerfully simple young woman - but no other Western or Eastern animation I know, though of course (a) I'm not too familiar with anime, and (b) it doesn't strictly speaking 'recall' anything, being an adaptation of a classic 40s manga. Slow to get going, sometimes slack but building to a brace of unforgettable sequences - the war montage plus aftermath on the steps with the snow falling, and of course the climax with its DR. STRANGELOVE-style flourish of Ray Charles amid the carnage ; bits of 20s jazz and old-movie references ("Dr. Laughton" as a futuristic Dr. Moreau) are merely a bonus. Overwhelming pessimism - marked by a mistrust of all politicians, drawn as the fat-cats of old - no doubt fits the mood of 00s Japan, but it's still intriguing that directors on opposite sides of the globe (Spielberg, of course, being the other) both chose to make films about noble robots as oppressed underclass in a hi-tech society at roughly the same time. Any sociological implications, or has everyone just been reading the same sci-fi?...]

ABERDEEN (37) (dir., Hans Petter Moland) Stellan Skarsgard, Lena Headey, Ian Hart, Charlotte Rampling [Sometimes I think I watch too many movies. People obviously spent time thinking up a pair of strong characters here, then got a pair of fine, talented actors to play them - but all I could do was drum my fingers impatiently, feeling one step ahead and grousing over Moland's trite, predictable choices. Opening shot - little daughter rushing to greet her father in idealised suburban vista w / Kodachrome colours and gentle Chet Baker on the soundtrack - obviously a picture-perfect moment-out-of-Time meant to contrast with present-day squalor (will we come back to it at appropriately poignant narrative juncture? but of course). Shambling drunken Dad first seen in a bar, subsequently urinates against the wall ; yuppie-bitch heroine first heard ordering a one-night stand out of bed (cold!), subsequently gets nasty with the car-hire girl, telling her she wants a "flashy" car (materialistic!) ; she and Dad go on the road together, he gets more responsible, she becomes more human, etc etc (flat tyre then brings friendly trucker Hart into the picture). So laborious I soon gave up trying to suspend disbelief, started playing Spot-the-Device instead : "You're banned from all flights with this airline!" yells uptight airline clerk, having refused to let drunken Dad on board the plane ("Of course!" thinks Jaded Viewer ; "Otherwise people would be asking, 'why do they go on the road - why not just take the next plane after he sobers up?'.") ; didn't necessarily predict the snobby family repelled by Dad's antics ("Keep your disgusting fingers to yourself!"), or the gang of hoodlums offering Redemptive Humiliation, or the bag of coke acting as Unlikely Plot Device, but I knew them when I saw them. Phony, self-conscious and generally a drag ; viewers on the 100-films-or-less annual program may be more forgiving, however.]

THE SCORPION KING (53) (dir., Chuck Russell) The Rock, Kelly Hu, Steven Brand, Grant Heslov, Michael Clarke Duncan [Can I get a subtext? No easy task, but perhaps the fact that the good guys are all 'persons of colour' - the hero himself racially disparaged, part of a tribe of outsiders shunned as murderous cut-throats - fighting a repressive Establishment run by a white man with fascist tendencies? (No Brendan Frasers or jolly English sidekicks in this MUMMY RETURNS prequel.) Otherwise hokum, brutal though not especially graphic - give or take a disembodied head or two - rather flatly paced but still enjoyable ; the kind of film where a villain keeps scorpions and tiger cubs as pets, a heroine is discovered in her bath then flails at the hero with her fists ("How dare you touch me?") as he carries her away, and the hero gets buried up to his neck in sand then left in the desert to be eaten alive by red fire-ants - though also the kind of film where he gets out of tight spots by brute force rather than guile, imaginative elements (the scorpion blood business ; the sorceress's psychic gifts) tend to remain undeveloped, and - unlike the old sword-and-sandal pics being aped - narrative fair-play often gets lost in the rush. How does he escape those red fire-ants? (Heslov's comic sidekick pulls some trick, but it's less than clear.) Why isn't he killed when the prophecy comes true at the end? "I make my own destiny," growls The Rock - a.k.a. The New Arnie - which is all very well but a bit too convenient for lazy film-makers banking on badass attitude and befuddled audiences to sprint past payoff / resolution / etc. Thought I'd like it more, to be honest - bit of a plod, never made my spirits soar (needed a couple of monsters, maybe) ; hard to hate nonetheless, and it's good to see Heslov in the limelight - I've been noticing this guy ever since TRUE LIES. Best moment : The Rock bites a red fire-ant that's crawling on his face, then spits it out with a satisfying ptooey.]

I AM SAM (13) (dir., Jessie Nelson) Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern, Dianne Wiest [Pure crap - and I use the adjective advisedly. This is not like in STEPMOM, where you think you're going to see a complex dramatic situation but end up getting served a pile of sentimental slop (though it's no surprise to discover Ms. Nelson was also the brains behind that little opus) ; this is unbelievable pretty much from the word go, and makes no attempt to disguise its blatant unreality or primitive technique - special mention going to the birthday-party scene, where our hero's world collapses in the space of about 2 minutes through a series of absurd contrivances, though I also smiled when he instantly gains access to the office of the high-powered lawyer ("some confusion with the temp," shrugs the secretary by way of explanation). Whether deliberately or through sheer incompetence, it's the cinematic equivalent of those faux-naif paintings that look as if they were drawn by a child - or a retard, fitting in nicely with the film's theme. There is a certain purity about it, but that would only be enough if there were no such thing as mentally retarded people in the real world ; as it is, it only makes the message all the more noxious and offensive, and you get a really crude, badly-made film into the bargain. Hard to enumerate all the ways it made me want to throw things at the screen - makes me tired just to think about it, esp. at a seemingly endless two-hours-plus - but certainly only a moron would believe you can raise a child on love alone (doesn't seem to have crossed anyone's mind the kid wouldn't have made it to her first birthday if not for the neighbours) ; and only a sophist would suggest a retarded person can be just as good a parent as anyone else because "all parents feel retarded sometimes" (it's an insult both to parents and real-life handicapped people struggling with their disabilities - part of the whole PC hypocrisy that they're merely "special" and "differently abled") ; and only a liar would call a massive gratuitous plug for the world's favourite coffee chain anything other than bad faith, and only a devious, manipulative film-maker would make the kid so implausibly self-possessed, and the State lawyer so heartless and belligerent, and the other retards so cuddly and comical ("Can you grasp the concept of manipulating the truth?" says Pfeiffer, without apparent irony). Penn's still a great actor - so's Dianne Wiest - but this brain-dead farrago is beneath him ; Ms. Nelson discovers jump-cuts in a big way, which is nice, and should probably broaden her horizons by watching THE IDIOTS - which might also challenge her simplistic notions on the mentally challenged. "Mother's Nature Son" plays over the end credits, which is typical (Beatles songs are a major motif) ; guess "Fool on the Hill" might not have been PC...]

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (52) (dir., Kevin Reynolds) Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, Richard Harris, James Frain, Michael Wincott [Biggest obstacle to enjoying this oft-told tale has always been (for me) Edmond Dantes himself - "a righteous little ponce," says someone, not inaccurately - and this stiffly handsome version is heavy going while our hero is suffering nobly, only really picking up in the second hour when he turns into the titular Count, smouldering balefully and obsessed with revenge (the film, to its credit, seems to feel likewise, trudging through the first half as a necessary evil). Significant Detail is perhaps the tiny moment near the end when Pearce (as supercilious villain Fernand Mondego) learns that his son isn't really his, fathered by another just before his marriage, and nods meaningfully saying "Premature..." (as in 'That's why you told me the baby was premature') - a clunky moment that many if not most films wouldn't have bothered with, evidence both of a rather earthbound sensibility, crossing 't's and dotting 'i's even if it means the film never soars, but also of a conscientious director determined to play fair with the audience. Trendy irony isn't indulged, beyond a couple of rather incongruous laugh-lines, the tale told straight with its air of religiosity - God-fearing Dantes losing and regaining his faith, finally realising vengeance is His alone - unsurprisingly intact ; not a film I'd see again but it works within its narrow limits, helped by majestic landscapes and sumptuous set-pieces (and the kind of villains who say "Excuse me" with a stiff little bow before going off to murder and betray). Needed more Michael Wincott, but then so do all movies.]

PANIC ROOM (49) (dir., David Fincher) Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, Jared Leto, Kristen Stewart [Hard to know what to say about this one : much of it is clearly well-done, but trying to find anything of substance is clearly futile (though here's a couple of valiant attempts), and it's probably the first Fincher movie that could've been made just as well by a dozen other directors. All the Master of Murky really brings is his trademark visual sense, bathing the house in dim grey-blue light even before things go haywire ("Mom, it's too dark," gripes the kid presciently), plus a bunch of computer-aided trickery - camera swooping through railings on a staircase or the spout of a coffee-pot - that doesn't really add a great deal ; meanwhile Jodie wears a frown of grim concentration, like a woman with a bunch of keys trying to fit the right one in her front door, Yoakam and Leto do the Stormare-Buscemi act out of FARGO and Forest Whitaker unaccountably goes on a heist wearing a uniform with his character's name on the shirt-pocket. Nothing's far-fetched exactly, except perhaps the scene with the cops - certainly speaks volumes for public mistrust of the police (or just Fincher's anti-authoritarian streak) that we're meant to find reliance on the cops a less attractive option for the heroine than reliance on her crippled ex-husband and her own dubious prowess with a sledgehammer - nothing's terribly exciting either, with these thin characters and undernourished narrative ; holds the attention on a mechanical level, but there's never much at stake and Fincher never captures the idea of a privileged space being invaded, as Haneke did through contrast and composition in FUNNY GAMES (this may be the only kind of story where a dysfunctional family is in fact less interesting than an idealised one, which is one reason why the original CAPE FEAR works so much better than the remake). Cardboard characters in mildly diverting cat-and-mouse game, hyperactive camera in attendance ; nice to see our heroine's claustrophobia not becoming a plot point, but you kind of wonder why it's there in the first place (beyond allowing Fincher to flaunt the potential clichés he's too smart to go for). "An Indelible Picture" promise the opening credits. Well, no...]

DELBARAN (62) (dir., Abolfazl Jalili) Kaeem Alizadeh, Hosein Hashamian, Ramatoallah Ebrahimi [Feeling a bit Iran-ed out at the moment, but this is very nicely done, and at least Jalili has the grace to announce "I dedicate this film to all the children of war" at the end of the movie rather than the beginning. War (in Afghanistan) does indeed rumble in the background, adding a reference-point to what otherwise functions as Beckettian comedy-of-stasis (and inspiring example of one-location, zero-budget film-making), but the film's true value lies in its images, and the way it builds rhythm and tension through strategic repetition (Tsai Ming-Liang works very similarly, though this is rural desolation as opposed to urban disaffection). Takes great pleasure in the texture of things - water gushing from a pipe, soil heaving as it's being bulldozed - yet you always feel Jalili's detachment (like Kiarostami in Koker, he's a city-educated type among the bumpkins), both in the contrapuntal use of foreign music - even a burst of country-and-Western - and (especially) in the way he keeps coming back to people running and vehicles breaking down, bringing out the vastness of the landscape and the difficulty of making any progress, literal as well as metaphorical. Rhythm is established as static-camera dialogue scenes swallowed up by the physical effort around them - changing tyres, lifting rocks, uprooting brush - setting up an absurdist world of stoical people locked in Sisyphean tasks, everything forever just beyond them (tie rope to overturned truck, pull and heave in furious tug-of-war ; rope snaps, everyone falls over, start again with no change of expression ; tie rope to overturned truck...). In this context, small kindnesses are magnified and the impatient, borderline-obnoxious kid hero gets the poignant urgency of youth trying to break free - while the constant breakdowns and devastated images (favourite shot : a village sits in the hollow between two mountains, looking exactly like a pile of rubble that's just rolled down the mountainside) get an unmistakable touch of gallows humour. Beautifully made, but it does outstay its welcome - films where nothing happens should be either very short or very long in my opinion. 96 minutes just feels wrong.]

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (73) (dir., Michael Winterbottom) Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, John Simm, Keith Allen ["This is a film about the music," claims our host, impresario Tony Wilson - which it obviously isn't, being a film about Wilson himself, and isn't on a deeper level either, being a film about a time when the music ceased to matter, centre of power gravitating from the bands to the DJs with the birth of rave culture (thus from the tortured-artist brooding of Ian Curtis to the undisciplined shenanigans of Shaun Ryder and the Happy Mondays). Winterbottom knows all this and keeps the line anyway, whether to show Wilson's self-delusion or (more likely) because Wilson knows exactly what's going on, his brazen cheek matching the director's : music is - perversely - way in the background here, cocking a snook at nostalgic fans looking for familiar highs and suggesting, in the figure of our smart-aleck anti-hero, that this most detached of directors (a "cold-ass dude", quoth former 'Net critic Skander Halim, punning on his name) may finally have found his alter ego - a restless cynic and passionless rebel, far too clever for what he does and far too clever not to realise it, carrying the film yet standing outside it, commenting on the action ("Obviously it's symbolic, it works on two levels"). May well stand as the archetypal Winterbottom movie, suddenly explaining the oddly tentative quality of the previous work (how could Tony Wilson have connected with the messy melancholy of JUDE or THE CLAIM?) - and may also stand, probably with TRAINSPOTTING, as the archetypal British movie of this late 90s / early 00s renaissance, hugely energetic, wilfully post-modern and painfully self-aware, placing everything in amused quotation marks (sharpest irony of the new, 'liberated' Britain is perhaps that its non-judgmental, party-all-the-time attitude ends up negating emotional involvement just as efficiently as the stiff-upper-lip reserve of the old Britain). As a record of the Manchester music scene, both worthless and exactly right, scorning the music to reflect what the music stood for - a social metamorphosis from post-industrial depression (factories closing, unions revolting) to Thatcherite renewal for better and worse, a move into solepsism, manic freedom and reality meltdown (favourite Shaun Ryder story, as recounted by the NME : getting arrested for drugs, he turns down the offer of an advocate - "I don't need a fucking poncey drink!"). Wilson quotes Boetius, but the motto could as well be Winterbottom's : "Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope". Slippery, shifty and downright hilarious ; utterly brilliant, utterly frigid.]

ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS (55) (dir., Lone Scherfig) Anders W. Berthelsen, Anette Stovelbaek, Peter Gantzler, Lars Kaalund [Moved to furtive tears, rather against my better judgment : there's just something touching about lonely people fumbling towards love, though Scherfig seems to write characters in only two registers, pathetically vulnerable and unreasonably belligerent (Kaalund as the least accommodating restaurateur since Basil Fawlty - even if he does look like Morten Whatsisname from A-Ha). Straightforwardly humanist in the Lukas Moodysson manner - Scandinavian trend here, perhaps? - turning consciously away from doctrine and dogma (the priest's assertion that "God is an abstraction") to find God in compassion and friendship and love, "in the arm you slip around the waist of your beloved" ; characters all tormented by secrets - sexual hang-ups, skeletons in closets - the idea being perhaps to contrast Nordic reserve with (stereo)typical Italian openness (significantly, the Italian character is both the most religious and the most relaxed in her religion), but the whole thing has a tinge of Harlequin-romance self-pity, exposed rather than camouflaged by the visual edginess. Central plot twist seems a bit implausible, given how close together everyone seems to be living (wouldn't one of the sisters have been informed long ago by a well-meaning neighbour?), though not half as implausible as the Dogme 95 certificate at the beginning : ferocious honesty of THE IDIOTS this is not. Isn't that piano music in the final scene a breach of the rules? I think we should be told...]