After rebooting his career with two small scale earth-bound pictures, The Wrestler and Black Swan, to my surprise Aronofsky launched back into big idea cinema with the previously unfilmed biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood. It’s a strange mix of epic swagger and Hollywood heroism and the intellectual cinematic gymnastics which Aronofsky has been known for. Ultimately it’s mildly rewarding and nothing of the intense feelings of emotion he made his name for in his more successful pictures.
Steven Spielberg’s slavery drama exemplifies the late-career inconsistencies of the hitmaker. Startling moments of dramatic intensity and eye-popping depiction of the horrors of slavery are marred by heavy-handed preachiness. Thus, like many films of the post 80’s era we can admire the film but never feel fully satisfied by it in the end.
With Easter coming around, this also means the season of a historical epics – both in theatres and home video. Agony and the Ecstasy was one of the bigger films of its day, a 70mm showcase, telling the story of the Michelangelo and his tempestuous relationship with Pope Julius I who commissioned the surly artist to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As usual with this kind of the film, the superb production value carries the weight over a dull story and hammy characterizations of historical figures.
It’s impossible to watch Fast and Furious 6, now on Blu/DVD/Digital, without the tragedy of Paul Walker’s passing in mind. The experience of cinema is often enriched by the convergence of reality and drama. Such was the case of 'The Dark Knight' when seen through the lens of Heath Ledger’s performance. Here the spirit of Paul Walker shines through onto this cock-swaggering franchise, in particular this episode, highlighting the strange theme of family which unites all players at the end of this film.
This moody ghost story resounds as a rich and textured gothic haunted house film containing some of the best ghostly special effects of its time. If made in Germany, Japan or France this film could have been turned into a chilling horror masterpiece, unfortunately it’s bungled by a Hollywood aesthetic of artificial romance and comedy which dulls the effects of its progressive horror concept and as such never really rises to its better contemporaries, Rebecca or the Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
This French hit, the story of a rich paraplegic white man who forms an unlikely friendship with an unrefined black caretaker/assistant is the stuff Stanley Kramer movies, TV after school specials, a number of politically correct 80’s sitcoms or perhaps even a cinematic version of the McCartney/Stevie Wonder song, Ebony and Ivory. That said, the dated racial and class characterizations and on-the-nose sentimentality are evened out by the genuinely warm and authentic performance trump of Omar Sy.
The film’s demise among the glut of summer blockbuster fare is not surprising. The idea of a revisionist history story of Abe Lincoln’s alter ego as a Van Helsing-like vampire hunter playing against the historical story of the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves should never have been elevated above B-movie production values. Thus, the amount of money spent to make this movie (reportedly $70 million) is staggering. At best this is a Bruce Campbell movie (like Bubba Ho-Tep), an effect which raises our expectations for this idiosyncratic story of alternate history to actually penetrate the mainstream. It’s not all that bad, most of it is watchable, but at the end of the day, all people will remember of this film is its failure at the box office.
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012) dir. Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Anthony Mackie
By Alan Bacchus
There’s no doubt the mere title of this movie is intriguing, the kind of cross-pollination project screenwriters spitball and discard just for fun. Somehow this one stuck. Well, first it started with Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2010 novel, which he adapted into his own screenplay for this film. Secondly, there was the attraction of Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, who also paired on the animated film 9. Presumably on the strength of this power pair it was a good bet for 20th Century Fox, who produced and distributed it.
At its core it’s a superhero origin story, initially introducing Lincoln as a child witnessing the murder of his mother at the mouth and fangs of a particularly nasty blood-sucking vampire. Lincoln spends the rest of his life vowing revenge against this beast of a man. Eventually finding his Jedi-mentor figure in Henry Sturges (Cooper), Lincoln learns the ways of the vampire and the skills to hunt and kill these creatures, which clandestinely have permeated America and are plotting to take over the country.
And thus, while Lincoln is building his career as a lawyer, by night he’s killing vampires one by one with his expertly wielded axe until he reaches the killer of his mother. Years later, after he become President and once again faces the threat of vampires aiding the Confederate military in the Civil War, Lincoln comes out of retirement to kick some more vampire ass in the name of American freedom.
Courageously, Burton/Bekmambetov cast a new face in the role of Lincoln with Benjamin Walker, who wears the Lincoln top hat nicely and makes a good young Lincoln in the opening half of the film. Like most superhero films the origin stories are the most intriguing, and while Grahame-Smith follows the mythological template to the letter, Walker’s fresh-faced performance and Bekmambetov’s flare with the action make it all visually stimulating.
The film loses steam in the second half with the elder President Lincoln (Walker in heavy makeup) dealing with the political ramifications of Emancipation and the Civil War. The use of the historically significant ordeal of black slaves in this uniformly pulpy material is kind of off-putting. The strong feeling of guilt watching Anthony Mackie’s Will Johnson, who becomes a target for the racist Vampire Confederates, was enough to make me uncomfortable. Bekmambetov and Grahame-Smith’s message here is trite and thus too exploitative of the issue of slavery.
But the film fails because of the lazy third act, an unmemorable action scene aboard a train, full of engorged and ridiculously unrealistic green-screen action, most of which is impossible by the laws of physics. And we don’t even get to see the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth played out in the end – what a gyp!
**½
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
This soft and unambitious indie hit from this year’s Sundance Film Festival arguably overachieves from its aspirations as a low-rent love story with a sci-fi bent. Executive produced by the Duplass Bros., the story of a lowly magazine intern who falls for a batty backwoods loner who thinks he can travel in time, with mild doses of humour, science fiction and romance, fits into the organic roots of the Northwestern brand of indie cinema.
Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) dir. Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni, Mark Duplass, Jenica Bergere
By Alan Bacchus
By design, director Colin Trevorrow begins his story with a pair of extremely unlikable characterizations of his co-leads; Darius (Plaza), a magazine intern introduced doing the dreck work for a glossy Seattle magazine, an underachiever due to her extremely cynical Gen-X viewpoint on life; and Jeff (Johnson), an arrogant and monumentally annoying writer who ropes Darius into helping him write a story on a curious classified ad in a local paper. The ad states that a man is looking for a partner to travel back in time with him, with the cautionary warning, 'Must bring own weapons, safety not guaranteed’.
Venturing out of the big city, Darius, Jeff and tag-along intern IT nerd Arnau (Soni), embark on a road trip of sorts which has them bonding over their strange assignment. The trio seek out and stalk the owner of the ad who turns out to be Mark Duplass as Kenneth, a shy recluse with delusions of grandeur.
Going undercover, it’s up to Darius to cozy up to Kenneth to digest the man’s idiosyncrasies and find the information and back story through which to mock and shame this poor man publicly for the trite urban magazine.
At this point it’s a typical romcom set-up, a lie which begins the relationship then changes from observe-and-report to romantic love, at which point the lie from the beginning will bite back as true identities become revealed. Indeed Trevorrow, working from Derek Connolly’s script, moves in this direction, but it’s his evolving characterizations that break through these worn-out genre conventions.
As much as we hate the egocentric writer Jeff, there’s some talent in crafting such a despicable douchebag who self-identifies himself by his cool condo and his Cadillac Escalade. Trevorrow gradually reveals a soul beneath Jeff’s bravado. When he reconnects with a female lover from the past from whom he states he ‘once got a blow job,’ we see a fragile man deeply in love with this brief memory and the elusive figure from the past.
While Darius’s attraction to Kenneth and his savant-like afflictions are telegraphed clearly, it’s Jeff’s transition from grade-A urban asshole to a soul-bearing romantic opening his vulnerable heart to the woman he’s always loved which blindsides us. That said, there’s still an air of subdued emotion purposely avoiding melodrama in favour of cinematic disaffection. And so the tragedy of Jeff’s life is only a minor emotional blip reconciled by his encouragement and guidance of Arnau’s first foray into manhood.
A minor twist at the end pays off the time travel scenario, opening up the possibility that Kenneth wasn't a crackpot after all. While somewhat delightful and humorous Safety Not Guaranteed ends up being a satisfactory but unmemorable addition to Sundance’s alumni.
**½
Safety Not Guaranteed is available on DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.
With almost no dialogue, a wisp of a story and a vigorous repetition of images and sound Terrence Malick has entered full-on self-indulgent mode in this relative quickie from the revered enigmatic director. However beautiful and elegant the imagery is, given the issues noted above we can feel the director's hand at work creating a greater disconnect between style and substance than in any of his previous films.
To the Wonder (2012) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem
By Alan Bacchus
When we look back on Malick's career I have no doubt that To the Wonder and Tree of Life will inexorably be linked together. The small amount of time between these films makes them seem like Siamese twins. Although in each of Malick's films there's a commonality in his use of voiceover and a fetishness with respect to the relationship between his human characters and nature, his style and tone change ever so slightly with each picture. But in To the Wonder and Tree of Life his wide-angle roving camera work, as lensed by Emmanuel Lubeszki, never stops moving and subliminally links these two films. In fact, as per the final credits, Malick even uses footage shot for Tree of Life in To the Wonder.
While Tree of Life spans the life of the universe before settling into a short period in 1950s Texas, here we're in contemporary Oklahoma. Well, first we're in France to establish the frolicking love affair between Neil (Affleck) and Marina (Kurylenko), an American and a European drinking in the culture of Europe's landmarks, including the luscious mystique of Mont Saint-Michel.
Then Malick moves Marina and her daughter to Neil's home in Bertlesville, OK, the worst kind of antiseptic suburbia imaginable with huge cookie-cutter houses, big-box stores and cul de sacs barren of foliage other than then manicured lawns. Malick charts the disillusionment of Marina's and Neil's marriage starting with Marina's inability to adapt to the environment, but even deeper, her inability to connect with Neil.
With only orchestral music (some composed, but mostly classical pieces), a disconnected voiceover and scraps of dialogue from the actors, To the Wonder pushes the Terrence Malick aesthetic to the extreme. In fact, there's almost no dialogue with some from Kurylenko and Bardem and none from Affleck. In fact, Affleck seems less of a character and more of a mere presence, an anonymous male figure in Marina's life representative of the foreign land in which she lives but never really connects with.
Rachel McAdams, in a minor role really, enters as a former girlfriend with whom Neil has an affair while he is separated from Marina. When Marina returns to America married and with a full green card in hand life is not better but worse, a down slide into emotional hell culminating in another act of infidelity.
As an experiment in narrative story telling with Malick's unique visual sensibilities, we have to admire the artist's attempt to push the medium beyond conventionality. And certainly at less than two hours in length, despite the massive critical disparity between the two films, the experience will be more accessible to some than the lauded Tree of Life.
But at the end of the day, this experiment just doesn't sustain itself and fails to generate the emotional attachment to the character that Malick desires of his audience. Thus, the break-up between Neil and Marina fails to move us, leaving us only with a shrug of acknowledgement or admiration that Malick managed to show a film about a romance and break-up without any dialogue.
To his credit, Len Wiseman admirably creates enough of a different looking world that rarely does the Paul Verhoeven version come to mind while watching this film. He also has the basis of an unusually strong humanist theme built underneath the familiar story from the Verhoeven film. Ultimately, the picture is a merely serviceable lens-flare heavy sci-fi action film, soulless and stale, despite its strong foundation of character, theme and visual design. So what's missing between the lines? Style. A sense of cinematic authorship present in all the other notable Dick adaptations - 'Blade Runner', 'Minority Report' and the original 'Total Recall'. Even when those pictures didn't work, we admired the cinematic hand of the director.
Total Recall (2012) dir. Len Wiseman
Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy
By Alan Bacchus
Instead of a story of Earth and Mars, this film tells us about a global environmental crisis during which the world’s population has been confined to two places on Earth, Great Britain and Australia (referred to as The Colony). And instead of a 16-hour flight between countries, it’s a comparatively shorter elevator ride of sorts through the earth’s core. I have to admit that was pretty cool.
This is where Wiseman excels, creating separate but equally detailed visual worlds. The Colony is where our hero Quaid (Farrell) lives. He's a man with dreams of another life, but he's coolly steered away by his dutiful and super-hot wife, Lori (Beckinsale). Wiseman creates a neon, wet and seemingly perpetually dark world with a jigsaw puzzle of shantytowns - think Hong Kong crossed with a Brazilian Favela. There’s also the new Britain, a wealthy urban world and a jigsaw puzzle of concrete, skyscrapers and skyways.
As an assembly line factory worker building robots, we see these two worlds through Quaid’s eyes. He's a man with a failed career, continually passed over for promotions by the intellectual white collar elite, stuck in a monotonous soul-sucking job. This emotional conflict is sharply conveyed by the duality of this future world – a great thematic basis for this film.
Wiseman builds this human story into Philip K. Dick’s ultra-cool story of implanted memories and the clandestine world of espionage in which Quaid finds himself after having his brain jacked. The underrated John Cho delivers a terrific speech to Quaid as his pitch to get him to buy in, a speech which further supports the theme of duality and conveys important plotting exposition. This is a terrific scene.
From here it’s a rock ‘em sock ’em sci-fi chase picture, following the path of the Verhoeven film with enough deviations for us to forget about the original. Unfortunately, everything else here is cribbed from other people’s films. Some directors, such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, can get away with it because of the value added from their own unique artistic sensibilities. But in this case Wiseman’s film just feels like cardboard cutouts.
The world of the Colony aligns too closely to the wet Asian fusion world of Ridley Scott’s LA in Blade Runner and the concrete urban world aligns itself with Steven Spielberg’s bleak vision in Minority Report. It’s not hard to see Wiseman’s motivation here. After all, both films were based on Dick novels, thus he is paying homage to the original cinematic incarnations while trying to combine both worlds into one. But Wiseman falls under his sword and the action suffers from his overly detailed designs. Whereas Scott’s and Spielberg’s chases were carefully choreographed and precise, Wiseman’s action is chaotic and too confusing in the overly complex geographical space.
And something has to be said about the implausibility of Kate Beckinsale’s character portrayed as a relentless ass-kicking Terminator-like assassin. Sure, we can applaud the notion of female empowerment here, but Wiseman has 104-lb Beckinsale going toe-to-toe with the uber-ripped hardbody of Farrell (consciously shown shirtless in the opening). This is simply not believable, even for a mindless popcorn movie. If it was Arnold Schwarzenegger on the screen, he certainly would not stand for such gross inaccuracies.
Thinking about this film tears me apart. For each of its 120 minutes, Prometheus is fascinating with a palpable feeling of cinematic momentum, leading to where we all (kind of) know it’s going to go – connecting somehow to the revered and cherished-to-many Alien franchise. Prometheus fulfills these expectations. And yet the film is filled with glaring common sense deficiencies, shamefully inadequate characterizations and a narrative flow that was perhaps meant to be artful ambiguity but comes off as just plan chaotic and confusing.
Prometheus (2012) dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce
By Alan Bacchus
In terms of theme, style and tone, there’s very little that connects the two films, which makes this picture even more interesting. While each of the Alien films was an action/suspense film to the core with smatterings of feminism and themes of corporate malfeasance, Alien was about that reptilian creature with two jaws stalking and killing human beings. Prometheus is a story about the search for one’s creator, the existential discovery and first connection to extraterrestrial life.
The concept, build-up and overall arc and payoff of this story are epic and cinematic. Never was I bored or not on the edge of my seat anticipating where the story will lead. Yet the details of the actions, motivations and relationships between the characters were surprisingly ill-conceived, sloppily-written and downright appalling. This oscillation between fascination and frustration is difficult to reconcile.
The metaphor of creationism to our own desires to search for our makers is front and centre. There’s little subtelty in linking theme and plot here, right down to the crucifix prominently worn by Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace), the film’s heroine, as well as the prominent artificial intelligence character played by Michael Fassbender.
The aliens are not what we expect, revealed in the opening as some kind of large humanoid introduced as our own creators on Earth, and who by the end of the film, for some unknown reason, want to destroy our planet. In 2039, after Shaw and her husband/’scientist’ Charlie Halloway (Marshall-Green) discover ancient cave paintings that could only have come from aliens in space, a team is sent away on a spaceship to find answers.
Cut to the Prometheus, the name of the ship, and its motley crew of Shaw, Holloway, lazy blue-collar pilots, cynical geologists only interested in ‘the money’ and the snarly company-woman, Meredith Vickers (Theron), whose company funded the trip. Once on the Earth-like planet they find an underground layer terraformed to house some kind of devious experiments. Experiments, I think, about the creation of life, but creationism gone wrong resulting in a whole bunch of monstrous creatures looking to kill and survive – one of whom might just be the Alien we all know and love.
I can usually forgive lazy science for the sake of entertainment, but the lapses in basic common sense in this picture are inexcusable – like why the multi-billionaire (or trillionaire) Peter Weyland (played inexplicably by a young Guy Pearce in old makeup) would hire such a disorganized, grumpy group of ragtag scientists. And why they would be kept in the dark about their mission until they are in space, years into their mission. The scientific methods employed by these so-called scientists are shockingly amateurish, certainly nothing resembling the professionalism of the characters in Alien, Aliens and the other entries in the series.
The sloppiness in the editing of the picture is even more troublesome. In the final hour, when the shit hits the fan, every character inexplicably seems to be on their own, unable to communicate with anyone else. In previous films Scott, Cameron and the other directors took care to explain the geography of their surroundings, but Scott’s pacing is so off, characters appear and disappear conveniently and without explanation. Also, large chunks of information seem to be missing.
In the end, after-theatre discussions are less about connecting the dots than trying to piece together a fractured, incomplete narrative, which feels more like a collection of scenes than a uniformly constructed story.
Madonna spins the historical King Edward/Wallis Simpson yarn into a cross-generational tale of emotional regrets and steamy illicit desire. While having the misfortune of being unfairly trounced by the press last Fall, it’s not that bad. A flawed but sometimes impressive film, consistent to Madonna's entire career both in music and on film. Bold strokes of creativity, in-your-face, passionate and unapologetic for its message, which shuttles between inspiration and pretension.
W.E. (2012) dir. Madonna
Starring: Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D’Arcy, Oscar Isaacs, Richard Coyle
By Alan Bacchus
W stands for Wallis, E stands for Edward, which makes this picture about the star-crossed romance of King Edward VII and Wallis Simpson, who shocked the world in 1936 when the King was forced to abdicate the thrown because of their disapproved marriage. After The King’s Speech, W.E. makes for a decent companion piece to the more conventional and accessible Oscar winner. Madonna’s film is unique to itself, playing out two parallel storylines – one, the real life historical story of the King and his American lover, and a modern day fictionalized plot of an American woman stuck in an unhappy relationship who finds a strong attraction to a handsome and exotic museum security guard.
Though unconventional, Madonna seems to be influenced by the similarly structured Red Violin, also repeated recently with Café de Flore, films which intersect spiritually connecting human emotions and identities with smatterings of existentialism. As we see the first meetings, courtship and political shitstorm revolving the relationship between King Edward (D’Arcy) and then-married American socialite, Wallis Simpson (Riseborough), we see Wally (Abbie Cornish) in the present, a depressed New Yorker obsessing about a new Edward/Simpson exhibit at a local museum. Not only does her name resemble Simpson’s, but she’s been drawn to the story for her whole life.
Her emotionally abusive husband suddenly tells her he doesn’t want to have kids, which sends a ripple through their relationship and spins Wally's mind out of whack. A strong attraction develops with a Russian museum security guard (Oscar Isaacs), played with the type of exotic allure we expect from Madonna.
As the yarn unspools, Madonna uses artful, though not unconventional, editing techniques to weave her metaphysical connections of the stories. Numerous montage scenes overplay the drama, though in small doses Abel Korzeniowski's music is hypnotic and entrancing. Unfortunately, the pop sensibilities of Madonna don’t quite match up to the subtlety required to make a story like this work. It’s a delicate brush she needs to use, and her hand just isn’t steady enough.
As an American ex-pat under the critical eye of the discriminating British press and public, Madonna is perhaps the right person to tell this story. But ironically her bombast persona and overly-publicized career and private life have made everyone hypercritical of new ventures such as this one, which unjustly helped cause the demise of this picture.
**½
W/E is available on Blu-ray and DVD from EOne Home Entertainment in Canada.
War Horse (2011) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson,
**½
By Alan Bacchus
There's a great deal going on in War Horse, but enjoyment of the film essentially comes down to how much you can stomach the Spielberg brand of syrupy schmaltz, where metaphors are loud and clear, no emotions are left unexpressed and almost nothing is between the lines.
If this was a year in which modern films paid homage to the past (i.e., The Artist and Hugo), War Horse would also fit in with this company, harkening back to not only the "mature" Steven Spielberg of the late '80s (The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Always), but the dreamy cinema of John Ford. Ford has creeped into almost all of Spielberg's films in some form of another, but at times, War Horse is, shamelessly, The Quiet Man revisited.
Certainly the opening act does, which feels like a film within a film - the story of the birth of the warhorse Joey and how he came into the company of the Narracott family, specifically smitten young son Albert (Jeremy Irvine), with whom he develops a unique bond. This all takes place in the rolling green hills of Devonshire, beneath impossibly beautiful cloudscapes, shot with the same kind of compositional perfection that made Ford famous. The overly tender sweetness of Albert's unspoken love for the horse, which seems to hypnotize both he and his father (Peter Mullan), is devoid of any kind of reality. For good and bad, it's the stuff of old world Hollywood dream factory filmmaking.
Spielberg settles down for much more accessible second and third acts, where the horse is brought into the cavalry to fight in WWI. This is where Spielberg never misses a beat – choreographing and directing phenomenal action scenes with breathtaking scope and intensity, a talent still unrivalled by even the hottest young directors. The story cleverly follows Joey's Odyssey-like journey from owner to owner, each of whom exhibits their unconditional attachment to the horse. Twists occur that allow us to see both sides of the battle and show the confounding tragic irony of the war as a conflict of cockeyed gentlemen fought by innocent and naive kids with nothing at stake except their lives.
Despite the mushiness, Spielberg does engineer a satisfying and cathartic reunification at the end, a moment drawn out to excess, but a scene in keeping with the storybook tone of the rest of the film, and thus earned dutifully by Spielberg.
The Magnificent Seven (1961) dir. John Sturges
Starring: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn, Horst Buchholz, Brad Dexter, Charles Bronson
**½
By Alan Bacchus
I won’t even compare The Magnificent Seven to the Seven Samurai, the legendary Akira Kurosawa epic that inspired this remake. The fact is, despite the difference in quality, Kurosawa’s film was ripe for adaptation. The Western frontier setting closely resembles feudal Japan, and the bushido code of honour serves as the unwritten form of law that governs the motivations of the heroes of the western genre. Though immensely popular and successful, John Sturges’ film is so remarkably straightforward and uncomplicated, and thus merely watchable, compared to other more revered American westerns of its era.
The poor Mexicans in this film are victimized with maximum sympathy, and the American heroes are characterized as honourable knights riding in to save the day. In the opening scene a Mexican village is raided by malicious bandits led by a particularly nasty looking Eli Wallach. It’s an annual ritual for these poor people, and now for three of the humble residents it’s time to fight back. But gosh darn-it if they don’t know what to do. And so, they take advice from their respected elder, who tells them they need guns!
After travelling to the local town, they discover there are men to hire who do this kind of work, two of whom are Chris (Brynner) and Vin (McQueen). These characters are introduced boldly confronting some racist gunslingers protesting the burial of an Indian in their graveyard. After their courageous confrontation, the three Mexicans quickly sign up Chris and Vin, who then go about finding four other worthy hands to complete their team. The others include the knife throwing expert, Britt (James Coburn), the gentlemanly northerner, Lee (Robert Vaughn), Chris’s old buddy, Harry (Brad Dexter), and Irish-Mexican strongman Bernardo O’Reilly (Charles Bronson). The seventh member, as in Kurosawa’s film, is the wannabe slinger, Chico (Horst Buchholz), who tags along and proves himself worthy and courageous despite the doubts of the others. While staying in the Mexican village the heroes ingratiate themselves with the local women, who of course see the men as heroic saviours and subservient to their desires.
Several steely-eyed, tense confrontations provide some decent action scenes, but everything is played so on-the-nose with absolutely no subtext or shades of grey in between. This is typical of most of John Sturges’ late career work as an action director who became an expert at big action films with large casts (e.g., The Great Escape).
The Magnificent Seven delivers on what it aspires to be, an uncomplicated showcase for its ensemble of actors for the brain-dead populace. It’s a popcorn movie – a low-risk exercise in studio filmmaking. But sometimes we all need some meat and potatoes to fill us up, and The Magnificent Seven just barely satisfies this appetite. Elmer Bernstein’s rousing score and the strong actors filling those seven Magnificent roles makes it all watchable. But that’s all this film is – watchable.
The Magnificent Seven is available on Blu-ray from MGM Home Entertainment.
9½ Weeks (1984) dir. Adrian Lyne
Starring: Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke
**½
By Alan Bacchus
The career of Adrian Lyne fascinates me. He's a man of immense cinematic talent, who has made some of recent cinema’s most recognizable films. Whether it’s boiling Michael Douglas’s cat or having a barrel of water dumped over Jennifer Beals, Lyne has a knack for iconic imagery. And in 30+ years, despite many hits, he’s made only 8 feature films.
Lyne, of course, was part of the new wave of British commercial directors of the '70s, which included Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Alan Parker, celebrated for their stylish lighting and moody atmospheric visuals. Lyne’s visual style is unmistakable and remarkably consistent over all his films. Looking back on his work, he’s also a filmmaker who has improved and matured considerably since his first two successes, Flashdance and the topic of this piece, 9½ Weeks.
As a curious seven-year-old, this film's reputation preceded itself. I never saw it as a child, only heard about the rumours of salacious sex scenes, nudity, etc. That said, I’m not surprised to be disappointed that the film is significantly less salacious than expected. There’s actually very little nudity and the sex scenes are so stylized and melodramatic it’s almost laughable. There’s also very little holding this film together other than the softcore pornographic plotting of a hip New York art gallery administrator (Basinger) who shacks up with an aloof Wall Street banker (Rourke) for nine-and-a-half weeks. I imagine it was pitched as Last Tango in Paris for the '80s, right down to the use of the city as a character and a sexy food sequence. But sadly, it’s merely a handsome piece of fluff, interesting to view only in the context of Lyne's career and its place in the creation of '80s pop culture.
The food sequence is probably the most recognizable scene, wherein Mickey Rourke feeds syrupy liquids to Kim Basinger, not so subtly mimicking the excretion of our sexual bodily fluids. It's the stuff out of The Red Shoe Diaries. This is no coincidence, mind you, as the film was written and produced by that czar of soft core filmmaking, Zalman King.
The entire film would be as completely laughable as The Red Shoe Diaries if it wasn't so well directed by Lyne. The fact is, 9½ Weeks exemplifies the 1980's visual aesthetic as well as anything filmed in that era. Mickey Rourke's awesome stand-up hair is rivaled only by Val Kilmer's Ice Man cut in Top Gun, and Kim Basinger's messy blonde locks are also seductive as hell. Lyne’s visual hallmarks are front and centre. His colour schemes consist of bone white tones representing the polished but soulless lifestyle of Mickey Rourke's character. The intense backlighting gives his characters a beautiful halo-like glow, and the use of long lenses creates dense and rich visual compositions.
The other grossly exaggerated scene is Basinger's backlit strip tease sequence, a ridiculously long music video sequence to the music of Joe Cocker. Instead of being teased I just couldn’t help but think where the hell that enormous backlight in the apartment was coming from. Nearly as ridiculous is the chase scene with a couple of frat boy homophobes resulting in a hand-to-hand fight scene in front of a backlit wind turbine in a rainstorm.
Adrian Lyne would go on to make much better films, including Fatal Attraction, Jacob’s Ladder and Unfaithful. These were all successful films, and yet he hasn’t made one since 2002’s Unfaithful. Maybe he’s hard to work with, or maybe he’s just picky and respects his own legacy as a commercial auteur and provocateur. Either way, there's some admiration in having a near pristine filmography of quality films (even including 9½ Weeks).
9½ Weeks is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.
Pretty Woman (1990) dir. Garry Marshall Starring: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Hector Elizondo, Jason Alexander
**½
By Alan Bacchus
Has there ever been a more glamourized movie about prostitution? Garry Marshall's rom com classic about a hooker with a heart of gold who falls in love with a luxorious millionaire birthed the enormous career of Julia Roberts and perfectly represents her working class spriteliness.
Pretty Woman was made in 1990 and reflects the tale end of the finance-sharking 1980s. It’s really just another retelling of the classic rags-to-riches story. Whether it’s Cinderella, Pygmalian, My Fair Lady and even The Elephant Man, it’s a universal story that seems adaptable in almost any medium - poor lower-class woman is plucked from obscurity and thrown into upper-class society. That’s what happens to Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), a Los Angeles hooker with integrity who’s broke and risking eviction. Like a knight in shining armour, corporate raider millionaire Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) drives down Hollywood Blvd. looking for directions. He picks up Vivian and instantly takes a liking to her. But he's not hot for sex. For some reason he wants to bring her back to his hotel and chat. He’s so smitten with the Julia Roberts spunkiness, he pays her to be his companion for the week.
While Vivian is flush with the royal treatment, new outfits, trips to the country club and the opera, her innate goodwill causes Edward to change his ruthless business ways for the better.
Stucky, Edward’s lawyer, is dramatized with maximum sliminess. There’s no disguising him as the antagonist. Jason Alexander’s short, bald, desperate persona is a perfect physical fit. And subtle visual cues, such as his allergies to the outdoors and sunlight at the polo match, as well as his emasculating miniature pool table in his office, further castrate his character.
Pretty Woman is almost as famous for its continuity errors. In fact, I had to study the errors as an exercise at film school, specifically the infamous breakfast scene, which is rife with mistakes. But the fact that this film can get away with these errors is a testament to its immersive storytelling.
In perhaps the grossest example of double-dipping, director Garry Marshall would essentially remake his own film with 2001’s The Princess Diaries, cast Hector Elizondo in the same role and even reuse some of the same dialogue.
Pretty Woman still holds up as a minor classic in the genre. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts best all of the syrupy romantic clichés – many of which were popularized by this film.
Pretty Woman is available on Blu-ray from Walt Disney Home Entertainment.
Rampart (2011) dir. Oen Moverman
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Robin Wright, Ice Cube, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver
**½
By Alan Bacchus
Dave Brown is a despicable human being, an old-school LAPD cop – the Rodney King-beating/Mark Fuhrman type known for outrageous racism, heinous corruption and all around overly aggressive, inhumane policing tactics. Under the hardboiled pen of James (LA Confidential) Ellroy and Oren (The Messenger) Moverman's concerted directorial style, Rampart becomes a character study of an anti-hero to the extreme.
While it's an admirable second film after Moverman's acclaimed and slightly precious The Messenger, it has the misfortune of being closely linked in theme and tone to Bad Lieutenant, albeit a much softer version than both Abel Ferrara's and Werner Herzog's insane films.
It's 1999 and Dave Brown is introduced as a shithead LAPD cop who's constantly being reprimanded for his bad behaviour. He's a member of the controversial 'Rampart' division known for its questionable policing tactics, and specifically for Brown, an incident involving the cold blooded killing of a serial date rapist. This is the last time we'll ever think of Brown as a heroic vigilante.
After a car accident Brown goes bonkers and beats the driver to near-death, an incident caught on camera and thus made public. As he tries to negotiate his way around that shit storm, he somehow charms and beds a hot lawyer (Robin Wright). Covert advice from a retired cop and former colleague of Brown's father results in more bad decisions, as Brown descends into hell, a snowball effect of violence and corruption he just can't get out of.
While intended not to fit into traditional forms of narrative drama, the film seems to neither commit fully to an Abel Ferrara-style Alice in Wonderland journey for his character nor the intricate noirish-style plotting we know from Ellroy's LA Confidential. These two movies fight each other, resulting in a mostly confused state for the viewer.
We're supposed to notice Woody Harrelson as a monstrous anti-hero, but everyone seems to be trying so hard to get him an Oscar nomination. We never sympathize with his character even though he seems to find continued support from his friends and family.
What never fits into the puzzle is that Dave is a charming pick-up artist who can bed women at will. He is seen picking up numerous beautiful ladies, including Robin Wright, yet he has no charm or grace – only red flags taped all over his body that say STAY AWAY!
The subplotting of Dave's two children born from two sisters (Heche and Nixon) and yet still living in the same house is an outlier that could have been its own movie. But here it’s just more unnecessary complication to confuse us.
And the film just ends as if they ran out of story to tell, or that there wasn't one in the first place. This is the kind of picture we may come to appreciate years down the road if Moverman turns into someone like a Martin Scorsese, when we can appreciate its place in some kind of iconic career filmography. But for now it's just an unfocused pale version of Bad Lieutenant.
Rampart opens this Friday in Canada from eOne Films.
The House I Live In (2012) dir. Eugene Jarecki
Documentary
**½
By Alan Bacchus
It's been over 40 years since the term 'War on Drugs' was coined by Richard Nixon, and the fight has still not been won. Very little has changed, and according to Eugene Jarecki and the participants in his film it's even worse now than it was then. Considering Jarecki's success with political films, such as Why We Fight and Reagan, one would think he would be capable of handling such a broad topic. Unfortunately, like the authorities who can't seem to make any headway in their struggle, such is the result of this film. With the greatest of intentions, Jarecki's film is just too broad and unfocused to make its point dramatically.
To tackle the War on Drugs, Jarecki starts off with one of the best personalities to share his experiences, David Simon, the former investigative journalist and creator of The Wire, the last word on crime on television. He provides the most articulate insights, specifically related to the police’s culpability and their internal incentive policies toward arrest stats.
Jarecki also finds some very poignant reflections from his former nanny, a black woman whose family succumbed to the damaging effects of drugs after Jarecki’s family moved away from the city. Jarecki also puts his camera in cop cars that patrol America's streets, the courtrooms that lay down the sentences and the jails that keep drug dealers locked up for life.
Including the policing incentives and the corporate prison industry, Jarecki's thesis hits a number of culprits, but none more damning than the judicial system, including the minimum sentences and the shameful bias against crack cocaine used by the urban poor vs. powdered cocaine used primarily by the middle- and upper-classes. As such, Jarecki claims the drug war is a class and race war in disguise, consciously targeting the poorest Americans.
In the final act Jarecki overextends himself by making specific comparisons to the Holocaust and its five stages of genocide – identification, ostracism, confiscation, concentration and annihilation. While the topic and themes are of grave importance, Jarecki's ambitiousness is his undoing, as he tries to cover all the bases without the sufficient connections to make a precise, powerful and effective statement.
War Horse (2011) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Niels Arestrup
**½
By Alan Bacchus
This film certainly lived up to the expectations as an often stunning action/war film with some phenomenal production values recreating WWI warfare and lively horse action. But it also features heavy doses of syrupy Spielberg sentimentality that, in his later years, he keeps grabbing for and just never seems to reach. As with most of his post-1982 work, War Horse is admirable in some moments but not a complete winner.
John Ford's influence on this film is even more front and centre than in Spielberg’s other works. The opening act featuring the birth of the animal and his rearing as a plow horse on a quaint English farm feels like Ford nostalgia from The Quiet Man or How Green Was My Valley. Even the unique cinematography tries to capture the saturated look of early Technicolor. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. The inconsistent lighting and background cloud cover seems to have been over-corrected, and on a few shots I even noticed the actors standing in front of green screen-generated cloudscapes. These opening scenes on the homestead set up the bond between man and horse, specifically Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a teenager who's smitten with the young stead, and the titular horse, named Joey by his master. The plotting of Albert's father (Mullan), who is penniless and desperately needs Joey to plow the field, is the schmaltzy, syrupy stuff mentioned before. Peter Mullan and Emily Watson, normally endearing personalities on screen, are rendered dull in the case of Mullan and overly deified in the case of Ms. Watson.
The film hits its gears in the second act when Joey is brought into WWI to fight in the British cavalry in a series of spectacular action scenes. Twists occur over the course of the journey, which allow us to see both sides of the battle and show the confounding tragic irony of the war as a conflict of wonky gentlemen fought by innocent and naive kids with nothing at stake except their lives.
The worst moments in the film are with the normally wonderful Niels Arestrup. Playing a Frenchman who speaks English, he comes into possession of the horse with his granddaughter. These scenes stop the film dead, but luckily the horse eventually moves on to new owners for the film’s rousing finale.
It's not news that Spielberg has lost his edge, and here, like in most of his films, the quieter moments are marked by a tin ear for dialogue. This is unlike some of his films, such as Close Encounters, ET, Jaws and The Sugarland Express, in which the actors spoke in natural rhythms no matter how outrageous the situation, and the humour contained a whimsical joie-de-vivre. Here, every gag is hit home with a sledgehammer of subtlety and stung by John Williams' forgettable music contributions. I know there's some loyalty here, but the aged John Williams and his turn-key orchestral arrangements have been so lacklustre over the past 15 years, I firmly believe he's pulling Steven down.
Despite rolling my eyes at the gushing sentimentality, Spielberg does engineer a satisfying and cathartic reunification at the end. It’s a moment drawn out to excess, but the scene is in keeping with the storybook tone of the rest of the film – a scene Spielberg earns dutifully. War Horse is no masterpiece, but at times it’s rousing, cinematic entertainment.
1941 (1979) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Bobby Di Cicco, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Treat Williams, Toshiro Mifune, Nancy Allen,
**½
By Alan Bacchus
No one talks much about this picture these days, as it has been mostly forgotten by those who are old enough to have seen it when it was first released, and it's barely been seen by younger people. That said, with Steven Spielberg at the helm in the prime of his career - sandwiched between Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark - we can't dismiss this film entirely. It's a loud, grating and obnoxious film to be sure, but there's still some memorable moments and sequences to marvel at, as well as an unforgettable rousing score by John Williams.
Penned by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (Back to the Future), Spielberg takes inspiration from the true story of a false alarm of a Japanese attack on Los Angeles, which put the city on high alert for one terrifying night in 1941. In an attempt to move away from the dreamy, epic sci-fi existentialism of Close Encounters, 1941 became an over-produced slapstick comedy of epic proportions.
The converging stories involving the varied cast include Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee as Japanese and Nazi sub captains encroaching Los Angeles by sea, Tim Matheson as a failed pilot trying to bed Nancy Allen aboard a B17 bomber, Bobby Di Cicco trying to avoid a fight with the bully figure of Treat Williams, Ned Beatty as a civilian who has been entrusted with guarding a massive artillery gun on his front lawn and John Belushi as a trigger-happy pilot running amuck through everything.
Some of the more astounding set pieces include the destruction of L.A. Harbor, finishing with the awesome site of a Ferris wheel rolling off the pier. There's also a brilliantly choreographed airplane dog fight low over the streets of Hollywood, and one of Spielberg's best ever sequences in the USO dance sequence featuring Bobby Di Cicco dancing his way around Treat Williams for the love of his girl.
Between these sequences is a whole lot of screaming, explosions and massive destruction. Most of the fine cast is wasted with Spielberg's exaggerations. Other fine actors showing up with unheralded roles include Slim Pickens, Murray Hamilton and Lionel Stander.
Spielberg himself has acknowledged this as a massive failure but also as a learning ground for his more controlled, efficient and economical productions from Raiders on. Take everything with a grain of salt in this one, but cherish this for Spielberg’s confident hubris and impressive production values, however grotesque they may be.
