Midnight in Paris (2011) dir. by Woody Allen Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard and Michael Sheen.
**1/2
By Blair Stewart
I had a dear old friend so hung up on the past that not one conversation went by without him whining about his disgust at being born 40 years too late. Music back then had a genuine animal strut to it; revolution applied to politics instead of a buzzword used for the latest flavours of Coke; early Godard was a genius instead of the cranky old hermit he is now. In hindsight, that friend depressed the hell out of me, and as his time-displacement dilemma is central to Midnight in Paris, I hope my old mate watches Allen's latest when it's released. But he'll likely complain about the cost of tickets nowadays.
The old spoilt trollop that is Paris is given more praise, as Woody Allen eavesdrops on neuroses along the Seine, and his camera professes love for her streets while conveniently overlooking the banlieues. On holiday with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and her ugly American in-laws, Gil (Owen Wilson), a milquetoast scriptwriter, is overcome by the nostalgia of the city's belles-lettres heyday of Stein, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
Making a midnight jaunt to avoid his fiancée’s faux-intellectual admirer (Michael Sheen), Allen nicks from his own Purple Rose of Cairo, as Gil strolls into a 1920s phantasmagorical Madame Tussaud's exhibit where he can hobnob with his dead heroes (Cole Porter, T.S. Eliot, the Surrealists) until the tourist needs to wake up to the present or before Ernie H. gets too drunk and punchy. Gil's dallying is complicated by the arrival of Picasso's fetching muse played by Marion Cotillard as a gal most folks would happily build a time-bending DeLorean for.
As is the case with his recent, too-kind travelogues of Barcelona and London, Woody Allen portrays Paris in the kindest light possible and doesn't upset his own aesthetic applecart at all – faint praise for a comedy that has a couple of smart jokes sprung from characters that, in order to get belly laughs, thankfully lack a) cheap profanity and b) sexual depravity.
Midnight in Paris is a mostly enjoyable, though slightly forgettable, work by Allen, not surprising as the last great film he's made goes back to the previous decade, 1999's Sweet and Lowdown. Back to his Bottle Rocket roots, Owen Wilson is as likable as always, Corey Stoll does Hemingway justice, and Marion Cotillard is the charming quasi-ingénue as all heck.
If anything, Midnight is worth seeing for Adrien Brody's small but fantastic turn in one of the more memorable bits of screen-thievery in recent years.
The Terminator (1984) dir. James Cameron
Starring: Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Arnold Schwarzenegger
****
By Alan Bacchus
Out of complete obscurity dramatically emerged director James Cameron, a muscular brawny director, technically ahead of the curve with an unabashed sentimental melodramatic heart. In various anecdotes Cameron has said the vision of the Terminator grew from the singular image of the robotic beast emerging from the flames of the exploded gasoline truck. The scene and the movie still gives me chills.
It’s 2029 and we see Los Angeles in a post-apocalyptic state – gigantic machinery battling raging humans on the ground with pulsating laser beams. In the present, 1984 LA, two men from that future find themselves beamed back in time - one, disheveled but cunning and resourceful, the other, a bull of a man with precisely controlled movements and unwavering focus and intensity.
Both are looking for Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in the present, a humble singl waitress. When a bunch of other Sarah Connors from the phonebook are randomly killed she finds herself mysteriously marked for death. In a dramatic confrontation in a public disco hall the two men from the future fight it out with heavy machine guns. Kyle Reese who is revealed as Sarah’s protector flees with her. As the chase rages on Conner and Reese bond over a few intimate moments, which includes some time to consummate a romance. When Reese reveals to Connor he’s been sent from the future by her own son to protect her, it becomes a fight for civilization and the future of the human race.
"The Terminator" exhibits some of the lingering early 80’s cyberpunk aesthetic. Cameron's visual style is dirty and unpolished. His cinematography bathed in shadowy nourish gloom, underlit at times and blanketed in omnipresent smoke and fog. This is a highly cynical dark look at our future, the same future Reese is trying rescue from ourselves.
Cameron does everything he can to connect his apocalyptic near future with the present. His first shot in the present is a mechanical garbage truck which, for a brief second, by the size, shape and noise, we think it's another of the metallic monstrosities of 2029. And Reese and Connor hiding out in the underground parking is shot in claustrophobic tightness reminding us of Reese’s tactics we saw in the future.
In his later years Cameron’s been known for a more elegant visual design. “Terminator” in retrospect breathes a distinctly low budget air. Cameron learned his craft working for Roger Corman’s company, so perhaps Cormon's methodologies rubbed off on him. While the work in front of the camera – special effects, car chases, gun fights – are all mondo expensive – the gently shaky camera and natural underexposed film grain retains a wonderful b-movie flavour.
Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton are marvelous as lovers in pursuit. Cameron manages to make the love affair believable despite the fantastical, extreme situation. Aiding this is Brad Fiedel’s magnificent score – a tough industrial sound, which feels like repetitious smashing metal, feeding into the unrepentant assault by the Terminator. Fiedel transitions to the film’s delicate moments smoothly. All it takes is a few simple notes before the action and love themes mesh together and become ingrained in your head.
Cameron would continue his fascination with technology both on and off screen progressing the cinematic possibilities with computer effects, underwater photography and 3-D. Enjoy.
The Terminator is now available on Blu-Ray from MGM Home Entertainment
Beverly Hills Cop (1984) dir. Martin Brest
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Steven Berkoff, Ronnie Cox, Lisa Eilbacher
***
By Alan Bacchus
A couple of months ago, I watched and reviewed 48 Hours, the original Eddie Murphy vehicle and his first feature film, which helped rocket him into stardom outside of his SNL fame. It didn't survive well, as it’s a tired, clichéd action-comedy that represents most of what was wrong with 80s cinema. Beverly Hills Cop is in a similar genre but is a far superior film, which, unlike 48 Hours, still generates laughter and arguably shows Eddie Murphy at his absolute best.
Opening up in Detroit, we first see Axel Foley fast-talking his way through an undercover cigarette smuggling deal, which ends with a raucous chase between an 18-wheeler truck and the entire Detroit Police Force with Axel being thrown around the back cab. It’s a fantastic action scene set to the fine 80s pop hit Neutron Dance by the Pointer Sisters. As is customary with the genre, Foley’s actions land him in hot water with his police chief, and he’s put on probation.
After the murder of his best friend, Foley goes against the chief’s orders and follows the investigation trail to Beverly Hills, where he is a fish out of water as a streetwise black man in the snobby, stuck-up and surreal world of California. Foley’s radical policing style runs counter to the conservative by-the-book attitude of the Beverly Hills cops, resulting in much hilarity along the way.
Using his street smarts, Murphy shines in his individual comic set pieces of disguise, using his quick wit and exploiting the LA-wanker naiveté to get cheap hotel rooms and nuzzle his way through the offices of the high-powered white collar criminals.
This film, made by Paramount, then headed by Michael Eisner, was produced by Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the master duos of 80s pop cinema. The trio of Beverly Hills Cop, Flashdance, and Top Gun make up three of the most recognizable pop culture landmarks in 80s cinema.
Martin Brest does little to get in the way of Eddie Murphy and his act. His opening chase scene still looks great compared to newer and more technologically advanced car chase scenes. But other than that, there’s surprisingly little big-scale action. The final gun battle in the mansion is from the pre-John Woo era and is thus rudimentally choreographed.
Harold Faltermeyer’s electronic score is so recognizable and surprisingly not dated. And though I’d never go out and buy or download the soundtrack, it’s actually kind of catchy. The film itself survives just as well, showing off the best of what Eddie Murphy was to comedy and movies.
Beverly Hills Cop is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
The Usual Suspects (1995) dir. Bryan Singer
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollack
****
By Alan Bacchus
I can still remember the reaction of the audience in that final moment in “The Usual Suspects”. Kevin Spacey’s overlapping voiceover revealing the identity of Keyser Soze, culminating in Spacey’s final words ‘and like that he’s gone’. The cut to black along with John Ottman’s brooding music sting sent the audience in an uproar of spontaneous applause.
Bryan’s Singer bysantine neo-noir still has the ability to send shivers down my spine in those final moments. The film launched Singer’s career, as well that of Kevin Spacey, Benicio Del Toro as well as some of his key creatives like John Ottman (editor/composer) and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel.
The film opens in the present in the Los Angeles harbour, as we witness the final moments of what appears to be a notorious and wanted criminal Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne). A cloaked gunman shoots him dead then blows up the entire ship. Customs officer Dave Kujan bent on proving that his nemesis Dean Keaton is dead interrogates the only witness, a hapless cripple named Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey).
An elaborate series of flashbacks during Kint’s interrogation unfolds revealing a deadly game of criminal vs. criminal. Five men, including Keaton and Kint, conspicuously get holed up together in a police line-up, with their association masterminded by a legendary criminal spook story named, Keyser Soze.
Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay is a pitch perfect example of noir storytelling and Singer and his collaborators drench the film with ice-cold crime slickness. The various tough guy posturing of the characters, sharp oneliners, Hungarian mob, Turkish coke, billowing smoke from dimly lit cigarettes, corrupt cops, shifty lawyers, and the perfectly manufactured myth of Keyser Soze make for a great genre film dripping with texture and intrigue.
As Singer’s second feature, he shows remarkable confidence and command of all aspects of the medium. McQuarrie’s convoluted script doesn’t exactly dot all its Is and cross its Ts. But a degree of confusion is acceptable for the genre. Classic noirs like “The Big Sleep” and “Touch of Evil” continue to confound audiences and part the mystique of the genre is the idea of ordinary men engulfed in an ever expanding and confusing world of crime.
There’s a constantly changing point of view, which Singer manages to make clear and accessible even with its numerous flashbacks, and flash forwards. McQuarrie’s dialogue crackles as sharp as any noir ever written. Even after several viewings I still marvel at the intricate dialogue. One of its most underappreciated but expert performances belongs to Giancarlo Esposito, whose lines are read with the rhythm of a machine gun. My favourite line of his: “I got a guy trying to walk out of the hospital on a fried drumstick to get away from Soze. I’ll run it up the flagpole” or “…I need to send me someone who can speak Hungarian. He’s talking like a Thai hooker.”
Wit, intelligence and a genuine love for cinema fuels this unmistakable classic which has survived with all its grandeur intact.
The Usual Suspects is available on Blu-Ray from MGM Home Entertainment
Le Mans (1971) dir. Lee H. Katzin
Starring: Steve McQueen, Elga Anderson, Siegfried Rauch, Ronald Leigh-Hunt
**
By Alan Bacchus
It’s hard to say where this film ranks in the history of car racing movies. The fact is, no one’s really been able to crack this genre, specifically the two other films from the same era, John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix and Winning starring Paul Newman.
Le Mans is the third of this late 60s/early 70s racing trilogy of sorts. There’s a strict adherence to racing realism in this picture, purposely eschewing any semblance of a story for a distinct vérité documentary-like feel. The first 30 minutes of the film is one long preparation scene, building up to the start of the Le Mans race. There’s almost no dialogue, save for the announcer telling the crowd, and thus the audience, the rules of Le Mans. It’s actually a very clever way to dance around the necessary exposition of the film, but the drawn out excessiveness of this opening is just too much to bear.
The only story going on is told in the opening pre-credit sequence. We learn of Michael Delaney (McQueen), an American driver psychologically burdened by the death of his Italian rival, Piero Belgetti, and the mysterious attachment to Belgetti’s girlfriend. In the present, the entire film is about the race and the race only. The reverence for the psychology of the racers and creating an existential mythologization of their lifestyle is clearly brought across on screen. The racers are treated like Roman gladiators, pandered to by beautiful women and looked after by their slave-like female servants before venturing into their respective arenas of danger and death. Unfortunately, the drama of the race notwithstanding, without inter-character conflict, the movie falls flat.
There are two reasons why we should care about Le Mans. The first is Steve McQueen, the iconic actor and racing fan whose passion project this was. His crow’s feet eyes, messy blond hair, striking blue eyes and general elusiveness are Hollywood superstar-personified. Unfortunately, he can’t get by solely on his handsomeness, as Katzin’s staid tone results in lifelessness in his character. And the European actors playing his fellow drivers also suffer the same fate.
The other point of relevance is the race scenes, which are shot with porno-like allure for the vehicles. For strict authenticity, real cars and real locations were used during a real Le Mans race. The cameras rigged to the actual cars accentuate the feeling of speed these drivers experience. But John Frankenheimer also did this (and better) in Grand Prix.
Cinema nostalgics of the 60s and 70s will get a kick out of the frolicking and bouncy score, as well as the equally funky crash-camera zooms, off-kilter sharp editing and grainy film stock. But ultimately, Le Mans is for McQueen aficionados and Euro-racing gear heads.
Le Mans is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
The Frighteners (1995) dir. Peter Jackson
Starring: Michael J, Fox, Dee Wallace Stone, Trini Alvarado, Jake Busey, Chi McBride
***
By Alan Bacchus
Peter Jackson's ghost thriller/comedy about a paranormal detective that tracks down a ghostly serial killer who has continued his spree from the afterlife was a minor flop in its day. But since LOTR, The Frighteners has gotten a worthy second look.
The film got an early HD-DVD release from Universal a few years ago in the form of a director’s cut, which adds another 12 minutes to the film. The DVD also comes with a full-length comprehensive documentary cut by Jackson himself, which he original shot specifically for its LaserDisc release in 1996. The Frighteners must have bad luck because it helped kill off two obsolete formats.
Michael J. Fox plays Frank Bannister, an ethically-challenged detective with a unique ability to see and communicate with the paranormal. To make money he employs the help of a couple of his ghost buddies – Cyrus (Chi McBride) and Stuart (Jim Fyfe) – to haunt people’s houses and con them into retaining his services. Bannister's immorality stems from the traumatic murder of his wife, which he witnessed and which gave him the power he possesses today.
But a new ghost has arrived in town and starts killing people in the same manner in which Frank’s wife was killed – marked with a number etched into the victim’s forehead. Frank is accused of the murders through his association as a ghost-hunter. With the help of Lucy Lynskey (Trina Alvarado), a widower whose husband was one of the numeric victims, Frank tracks down the murderer and comes face-to-face with the demon from his past.
The film is an ambitious effort because it plays on many different tones and genres. The opening establishing scenes are played as pure comedy. The central relationship is Frank and his ghost pals. Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe, John Astin and R. Lee Ermey provide caricatured characters that easily bring you into the story. Jackson and his spouse/co-writer Fran Walsh gradually pump in the fear in the second act and intrigue us with some unexpected plot twists. The lengthy final act wears out its welcome and goes over-the-top with a drawn out cat-and-mouse confrontation/gunfight.
Apart from the bloated finale, the film unfolds and reveals itself with great intrigue. Jackson skillfully retains the light comic tone for as long as he can. Eventually, he has to let go and get down to the business of solving his morbid tale. His introduction of the quirky FBI detective is a welcomed addition to the second act, but then in the finale he needlessly turns him into an ugly neo-Nazi. This misstep still doesn't work.
Michael J. Fox holds the film together well even though he is played against type. He’s a broken man without the fast-talking repartee we are used to in his more famous roles. His dramatic arc brings him from apathy to despair and back up to redemption at the end.
Fox had already been diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the time, though he had not gone public with his condition. Love or hate the film (most people are in one of these two camps), it's perhaps most significant for being Michael J. Fox's last leading role on the big screen.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) dir. Peter Yates
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Alex Rocco.
****
By Greg Klymkiw
The fate of Eddie Coyle, the title character of this grim Peter Yates-directed crime drama, is imbued with such a profound and palpable inevitability that some might wonder what the point of it all is. For those who hang in, the point becomes abundantly clear and is rendered all the more powerfully since The Friends of Eddie Coyle is so sensationally acted, written and directed that it truly doesn’t take long to realize you’re experiencing a classic of the crime genre.
Right from Eddie Coyle’s first appearance – heavy-lidded, baggy-eyed, paunchy, world-weary and shuffling with the gait of a once physically powerful man now consigned to the throbbing aches of late middle-age – we pretty much know he’s doomed. Late at night and under the cold glare of fluorescent lights in a cafeteria-styled diner, Eddie places a slice of rubbery pie and a cup of coffee onto his tray and joins the table of a greasy, long-haired, bug-eyed young thug. Wolfing his pie down between slurps of watery coffee, Eddie’s manner is been-there-done-that, as he negotiates with the thug to purchase a battery of powerful and highly illegal handguns. The thug’s clearly an upstart, oozing bravado and peppering it with promises he has no experience to keep. Eddie sets the thug straight by casually explaining how he got the nickname “Knuckles”. Holding his battered fists in front of the thug, Coyle explains how he has twice the number of knuckles most people have – derived from having his hands crushed as punishment for believing a promise from someone he shouldn’t have believed at all.
But Eddie’s not bitter. It’s business, he explains. It’s The Life – a life he chose in the only world he ever felt comfortable in. But now, Eddie needs a big score and he needs favours. If he can’t get them, he’s headed straight for hard time. His wife will have to collect welfare, and his kids will face the cruel taunts of their classmates for having a no-account dad. More than a miracle, what Eddie really needs are friends, but it’s obvious he has none – at least none he can count on.
Robert Mitchum, one of the screen’s greatest actors, plays Eddie Coyle. Playing everything from cops to cowboys to soldiers and everything in between (including his stunning turns as the evil Max Cady in Cape Fear and the utterly malevolent lay preacher Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter), Eddie Coyle is a role that not only fits Mitchum like a well-worn baseball glove but also is, I think, his best role. He delivers us a man who is a hardened criminal – a marked, desperate man who knows what he needs to survive, even if it means succumbing to the lowest rung of his kind and turning stool pigeon to cops who seem, frankly, no better than the criminals they seek to incarcerate.
As a director, Peter Yates was certainly no stranger to the crime genre when he made The Friends of Eddie Coyle. He’d already directed the Donald Westlake heist picture The Hot Rock, the gritty British-produced Robbery (a realist, almost semi-documentary-styled dramatization of 1963’s notorious “great train robbery” starring Stanley Baker), numerous episodes of classic TV crime series such as Danger Man and (one of my personal favourites) The Saint and last, but certainly not least, Bullitt, the slam-bang Steve McQueen detective thriller that set the bar for all cinematic car chases that would follow. There was always, however, another side to Yates who gave us the gentle comedy of Breaking Away and the tragic gay love story The Dresser. It is finally this combination of the macho stylist and the gentle humanist that made Yates a natural to direct The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
It is these seemingly dichotomous qualities that make the picture so great. Bullitt, for example, showcased McQueen’s baby blues, Jacqueline Bisset’s feminine perfection and a car chase that has seldom been matched. But most importantly, it was the ultimate location picture that stunningly extolled the virtues of the city of San Francisco. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is set in Boston, and the last time I checked, it was and is a city of great beauty. You’d never know it from The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Yates seems to almost go out of his way to show us a Boston that nobody, save perhaps for Eddie Coyle and other underworld denizens of that ilk, would bother to live in. In seedy cafes, dank bars, endlessly indistinguishable parking lots, near-tenement slums, lifeless suburbs, cold, almost Kafkaesque inner city cement financial districts and other equally unflattering locales, Yates and gritty, versatile cinematographer Victor (Dog Day Afternoon, The Gambler, etc.) Kemper train their lens on the non-descript and do so with harsh light or no light and lots of grain.
Paul Monash’s excellent script beautifully distills George V. Higgins' novel of the same name. Higgins, a former prosecuting attorney turned crime writer, always displayed a knack for dialogue that crackled with life and constructed narratives that defied typical crime story structures.
Like the character of Eddie Coyle, the movie seems to have utter contempt for the nasty, brutal crimes committed as a result of Coyle’s efforts. Coyle is peripherally involved as a supplier to the criminals, but Yates and his writers lavish considerable attention and detail upon the various bank robberies that take place – none of which ever directly involve the title character.
And though our “hero” never gets so much as a moment to brandish a weapon, (which is, in and of itself highly unconventional), we are flung back to the reality and inevitability of Coyle’s eventual demise. Yates never lets us forget just how doomed poor Eddie is. Nowhere is this more haunting and downright moving than the heart-achingly tragic sequence where Coyle’s “friend”, the two-timing killer Dillon (Peter Boyle), takes him to a Boston Bruins hockey game, plies him with endless pints of beer and engages in pleasantries, all the while knowing that at the end of the evening, he has been entrusted with the mission to blow Eddie Coyle’s brains out.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw The Friends of Eddie Coyle as a kid with my ex-cop dad. It was a movie that stayed with me and haunted me for the 30 or so years since first seeing it.
What I don’t think I’ll ever forget was my dad’s response at the end of the movie. “That’s the way it is, kid, that’s just the way it is,” he said to me, with more than a little sadness in his voice, and with many long years under his belt dealing with guys just like Eddie Coyle.
Seeing the movie now, those words still hold true. Only now, I’m able to see Eddie himself, lumbering through the inevitability of his doom – those same words emblazoned, no doubt, on his brain.
That’s just the way it is.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle is available on the Criterion Home Video label.
Frankenstein (1994) dir., Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Robert de Niro, Tom Hulce, John Cleese
**
By Alan Bacchus
Kenneth Branagh’s take on ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ is a big ol cinematic mess and an eyesore on Branagh's filmography. By 1994, Branagh was still a hot young director who energized Shakespeare with the vibrant and violent dramatization of Henry V, which reminded many critics of Orson Welles' strong treatment of Shakespeare in his youth.
And however grandiloquent Branagh’s nourish murder mystery ‘Dead Again’ was, it proved his worth beyond the Bard and as a slick visual stylist. Combine these pictures and Mary Shelley’s seminal novel of gothic horror and the ingredients would seem a natural fit.
Having Francis Coppola’s name attached as Executive Producer automatically links the film up with his larger-than-life operatic ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’. While Stoker’s theatrical and technical bravura worked on its own level of retro cinema revival, Branagh’s feels egotistical, bombastic and over-the-top.
Using the author’s name in the title announces that this is not a Boris Karloff version of the story we're used to – instead, a reverent dramatization of the original novel. Dr. Frankenstein, as played by Branagh, is introduced as a troubled youth traumatized by seeing his mother die during an especially bloody and graphic childbirth. In his adulthood he becomes obsessed with overcoming death and recreating life. When his mentor Professor Waldman passes on, Frankenstein steals his research and vows to complete his work on creating life.
Cue the fantastically choreographed “live live!” scene. Using stolen body parts, amniotic fluid from another woman’s water breakage, some electric eels and Gilliam-esque-designed laboratory Frankenstein gives life to his constructed monster (Robert De Niro). Eventually the momster discovers he’s been built as an experiment, gets angry, runs away and vows revenge against his maker. His ultimatum to his father – make him a bride or he’ll kill as many people as possible. Unfortunately when Frankenstein’s own wife is murdered by the monster she becomes the body whom Frankenstein will give away to appease the beast.
With maximum budgetary tools at his disposal Branagh’s like kid in a candy store screaming frantically on a sugar high with no Ritalin in sight. Even Branagh’s best films (Henry V, Hamlet) he often trips over his own inability to censor his enthusiasm for sake of drama. As much as his performance as Hamlet was deft and quiet he would often burst out with over-the-top audacious shouting. Frankenstein exaggerates all of these tendencies to the effect of screaming at the top of his lungs for 2 hours straight.
Every shot seems to begin and end with sweeping crane movements and in between dazzling us with spinning gimbaled acrobatic camera moves. Even Branagh’s physique is pumped up. Remember the innocent baby fat he hadn’t lost in Henry V? Now he’s rough and buff, with rock hard abs and pulsating veins – a new body he never seems comfortable in.
The casting of Robert De Niro is a bold bit of anti-casting which, unfortunately is mostly distracting. De Niro’s hideous make-up covers up most of his expressive facial features, and his big drape of a coat reduces the effect of his unique physicality. Saying that, the film works best in the second act detour when the monster flees his laboratory into the rural townships and befriends the local victimized family. De Niro’s tender side triumphs providing the film’s true emotional core.
Branagh’s career didn’t seem to be phased by the film’s failure. He produced his best film a couple years later – the even more ambitious four-hour full text version of Hamlet (in 70mm). Even afterward he’s continued to make his own personal films under the radar of most of top tier Hollywood. With his new gig as helmer of the new Marvel 'Thor' film, I’m curious and enthused to see what he’s learned since the days of 'Frankenstein'.
By 1981, Brian De Palma was well into his ’Hitchcock period’, a string of films in the late 70s going back to 1973’s Sisters, but really starting with 1976’s Obsession, followed by Carrie that same year and then The Fury (1978) and Dressed to Kill (1980), which mashed together Alfred Hitchcock‘s most famous suspense set pieces with a tone of sleazy exploitation and dreamy cinematic bravura. The success of Carrie notwithstanding, Blow Out was arguably De Palma's most accomplished of these films.
Blow Out (1981) dir. Brian de Palma
Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, John Lithgow
By Alan Bacchus
Not all Blu-rays produce the same high quality. You know that type of pristine high-def imagery that makes a movie you’ve seen a dozen times seem as fresh as seeing it for the first time on the big screen. Not all HD conversions go to the original negative or have the painstaking effort and money to digitally remove scratches and imperfections. Not all BD releases time the movie again so the colours are as originally intended by the cinematographer and director. Criterion does this, and who knows how Brian de Palma’s 1981 thriller classic Blow Out would have looked under just another no frills studio effort.
Thankfully, the marvellous imagery of Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC is lovingly preserved and enhanced by the new Criterion Collection edition on Blu-ray. There’s a shot in the middle of the film of John Lithgow seen from behind standing on the top level of a mall looking down at his intended victim (Nancy Allen) descending an escalator. The shot looks so fucking good I got that same ‘feeling’ when I first bought my HD TV and saw high-definition images for the first time.
This shot is superlative, and the rest of the movie meets this standard. A film like this needs to be in this top shape to truly appreciate it, and few directors have relied on visuals as much as De Palma.
In terms of cinematic set pieces, personally I think Dressed to Kill trumps them all, but Blow Out feels like his most complete and resonant of these films – a film that caught the 70s paranoia genre a tad late but fits in well with the untrustworthiness felt by the general populace after the Watergate cover-up.
Here, John Travolta, playing Jack Terry, a sound man for a lame b-movie production house, who, while recording effects for his latest b-horror film, accidently records a car accident of a prominent political candidate. After he saves a naïve young gal, Sally (Nancy Allen), who is not the senator’s wife, the seeds of a conspiracy start spinning in his brain. But what’s really eating Jack is the sound of a gunshot just before the crash. When a newspaper prints the frame-by-frame still photos of the accident caught by a photographer, Jack gets the idea to sync up the images with his sound reel to prove the existence of a murder and a cover-up.
This leads us to the film’s key set piece, a scene cut using mostly close-ups of Jack going through the steps to sync the picture and sounds of the accident. It’s not a murder scene and De Palma uses almost no sound, certainly no music – just the sound of the syncing device doing the work. It’s riveting stuff and one of the high-water marks of De Palma’s career.
It fits into one of the recurring themes in his career – the self-reflexive nature of the filmmaking process and the self-awareness in most of these thrillers. In a film like Obsession, the audience is aware they are watching a very specific homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In Body Double, there’s a movie within a movie, which references a particular scene in Dressed to Kill, which in and of itself steals a number of scenes from Hitchcock, including Vertigo and Psycho. But crafting a suspense scene out of the technical craft of filmmaking adds another level of cinematic enjoyment to Blow Out.
As usual, the film is also spotty with its performances. Nancy Allen’s cartoonish characterization of the dollish Sally, who, after being saved by Travolta, becomes the target of the diabolical Lithgow, is a 180 degree turn from Travolta's surprisingly sympathetic heroic portrayal of Jack. It’s better than Cliff Robertson’s performance in Obsession, which makes it probably the best performance ever directed by De Palma.
But to give Nancy Allen some credit, she was De Palma’s wife at the time and was shamelessly given a shallow and vacant character to try and bring to life, not that dissimilar from her role in Dressed to Kill. On the BD special features, a new interview reveals her reservations about the role and her struggle to find her character’s motivation. That said, despite the over-the-top airhead depiction, Allen is naturally sincere and honest, and even though her acting chops are suspect, she’s still lovely to look at.
And one of the reasons Blow Out resonates emotionally more than any of De Palma’s other films is because of Allen’s on-screen chemistry with Travolta. The slo-mo chase finale beneath the 4th of July fireworks, which is superbly choreographed and executed, is deeply tragic. And months after the violent confrontation, De Palma finishes the film with a touching denouement showing Travolta at his most tender and heartwarming – a great actor in his prime.
****
Blow Out is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Archipelago (2010) dir. Joanna Hogg
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Lydia Leonard and Amy Lloyd
**1/2
By Blair Stewart
Featuring a family that's adrift from each other while periodically acting windy and volcanic, Joanna Hogg's Archipelago in hushed tones drags up memories of that most peculiar endurance test over minefields and barbed fences – a family holiday in tight quarters.
On the English Isles of Scilly, the stiff-lipped trio of adult son Edward (Tom Hiddleston), daughter Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and mother Patricia (Katy Fahy) reunite to see Edward before he's off to Africa for missionary work. The exterior surroundings of weathered, broken trees hemming in the unstable nuclear family are far more hospitable than the interior of their summer house; not for the first time, father has gone AWOL and Patricia is on the phone in the other room talking about it. While his mother's banshee caterwauling seeps through the walls, Ed has sunk into a post-everything ennui with AIDS work as a balm for his stunted growth. And in the next room over, Cynthia's depression has settled into misanthropy. They're joined within the stuffy chamber of mutual acrimony by Rose, the sensible cook (Amy Lloyd) who will no doubt have an anecdote to tell at her own family gathering, and Patricia's painting teacher (Christopher Baker), who toddles about to offer gentle wisdom on dull ears.
The environment of the kitchen becomes damp with Ed's awkwardness when he develops a half-hearted shine to Rose, but just as well, as he could be passing the time until the poisonous fumes clear upstairs (which is unlikely to happen). If the mood was any more unpleasant, the rental car stuffed with my bickering relatives from a traumatic childhood road trip to Disneyworld would arrive - pass me the comic books and kiddie asthma inhaler from the glove compartment please.
A window briefly illuminated with sunlight until the clouds obscure the dark rooms once more, the emotions of Archipelago flutter about without culmination. Patricia and her brood have been stuck in repressive silence for ages, and we're just witnessing the present lousy vacation until future lousy weddings/funerals/reunions. Hogg's interest isn't in mainstream emancipation of the soul but the aesthetics of simmering resentment in off-kilter surroundings, with close-ups avoided for locked-in middle-distance framing heavy on indoor shadows, somewhere between Haneke's interiors and an upper-class fishbowl. The acting, some of which is performed by non-professionals, is uncomfortably good, with Tom Hiddleston's Edward a fine specimen in impotence and Leonard's Cynthia a powder keg bitch. It also helps that the siblings are the strongest written characters in the film.
Archipelago isn't for all tastes despite the intelligence of its construction. Outside of the craggy, inspired setting on the island, the story seems better suited to the stage, where an audience can sweat it out in the same room as the miserables. Otherwise, the work is lacking essential drama. We have walked into the middle of a protracted dispute of mutterings in long-shot, and I was in need of some shouting and a revealing close-up.
Archipelago is a skillfully made film of detail, but one that underwhelmed in ambition.
Sweetie (1989) dir. Jane Campion
Starring: Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, Dorothy Barry
***
By Alan Bacchus
Sweetie is the house guest from hell, the firebrand bi-polar sister of Kay (herself a stressed out basket case) who shows up unwanted at the door of Kay and her boyfriend thus disrupting her attempt at a regular life of independence from her thoroughly messed up family.
Director Jane Campion replaces a precise, forward-moving narrative, a plot which can't be summarized sufficiently in a neat paragraph, with a meandering series of set pieces that sketch out the portrait of Kay and Sweetie’s kooky family. In between the odd comic framing and wackiness, there’s a danger brewing in Sweetie, a violent streak that we sense will erupt in an impending tragedy.
While not the lead, Sweetie earns the status of title character for Lemon’s commanding performance as a bottle full of energy. Her chubby body type and rock and roll attitude and attire threatened to overwhelm everything else. But Campion is smart to bring Sweetie in at the beginning of the second act, concentrating on establishing Kay’s own set of peculiar idiosyncrasies and inhibitions.
This is Jane Campion’s acclaimed first film, a most idiosyncratic effort, quirky but inspired and the sign of a director with a unique voice. It’s a decent start to her career, though the reliance on the show-offy wide angle lenses would later be discarded as a visual tool. Her subsequent films are certainly more rich, textured and emotionally engaging than the off-centre framing and perspective-shifting compositions.
The film’s closest cousin is clearly Holy Smoke, the 1999 Kate Winslet/Harvey Keitel film, which told the story of a cult de-programmer who combats the sexual persuasions of Kate Winslet. We can see striking similarities in the characterizations of the affable family members in both films, as well as the skewed sense of Aussie wit, a funny bone that is conspicuously missing from most of Campion’s other films. Like Holy Smoke, when the action switches from the city to the outback, things get even weirder. We don’t see anything comparable to a crying Harvey Keitel wandering the desert in lipstick and a dress, but Kay’s boyfriend Louis, her off-the-wall father and her mentally-challenged brother are weird enough, not excluding that David Lynch-worthy cowboy dance sequence.
Other connections to Campion’s other work are clearly her female hero Kay and the emotionally damaged Sweetie. Of course, there’s some sex, not the salacious graphic variety of The Piano, but it’s a strong theme that drives much of the conflict.
This viewing comes courtesy of The Criterion Collection Blu-ray, which features two of Campion’s acclaimed short films from the early 80s and other fine goodies, new and old.
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) dir. Robert Hamer
Starring: Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson
***½
By Alan Bacchus
The battle between classes has been the source of conflict for so many great British stories (both literature and film). And in terms of comedy, has class warfare ever been made into a blacker or more sublime comedy than this?
Louis Mazzini (Price) is the runt of the noble D’Ascoyne family, a man whose mother married ‘beneath her’ and was thus shunned and excised from the family and their fortune. After the shameful treatment of her mother upon her untimely death, Mazzini makes it his life’s ambition to kill everyone in the snobbish family and assert his right and title within the family.
It’s a heinous plot of eight first degree murders plotted for years, but when told with such gentlemanly class and articulation, the acts seems like jolly good fun instead of horrific violence. We get to see each act of murder, conceived in the most creative ways by Mazzini to look like accidents. Since this whole farce is told to us through voiceover on the day before Mazzini is due to be executed for murder, we know it ends badly for the man. But the fun here is the journey of sweet revenge, which is served extra cold by director Robert Hamer.
It’s easy to see why Louis hates the family so maliciously. The smug gentlemanly spitefulness of the twit-ish D’Ascoyne family is laid on so thick, we just want to smack the many faces of Alec Guinness with a spanner or throw him under a lorry.
Guinness, who famously played eights members of the D’Ascoyne family in heavy but unobtrusive makeup, is deservedly lauded. This performance came long before Peter Sellers did the trick three times in Dr. Strangelove and most certainly before Eddie Murphy did it in Coming to America and the Klumps movies. Dennis Price is much lesser known than Guinness, but his overly gentlemanly and polite persona perfectly disarms us to the grisly acts of murder he commits.
If anything, the film suffers on the over reliance of Mazzini’s narration. There’s probably more words from the narrator than any other character in the movie. Practically everything in Mazzini’s mind is told to us from his confession in the present. But considering the complex and ambitious plotting, as well as the time period spanning several years and encompassing several characters whom we meet only for brief seconds, there’s really no other way to pass along such information without filling the dialogue with dull exposition. It's also comedy, so we don't mind forgiving this crutch.
In the end, Mazzini succumbs to his own sword. In his desire to be included in nobility and assume his birthright, he comes to embody the same bloodsucking entitlement he condemned in his victims. The irony and drollness of these affairs is the stuff of classic British class-comedies – the same kind of humour Alfred Hitchcock honed for decades in his blackest comedies.
The Bengali Detective (2011) dir. Philip Cox
Documentary
***
By Alan Bacchus
Rajesh Ji is like a growing number of regular citizens in Kolkata, India, plying his trade as a private detective, which due to an ineffectual police force, has seen a boom. Our first impression is that Rajesh, a bumbling, slightly chubby family man, has no business serving the law, except for the fact that he's a fearless adventurer with delusions of grandeur and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. He makes a fascinating first-person case study, which in the most entertaining and easy-going manner, enlightens us to the state of policing, pop culture and private enterprise capitalism in modern India.
Philip Cox follows Rajesh through three key cases: a grisly homicide involving three seemingly innocent youths caught in a complex web of familial betrayal; the infiltration of a counterfeit shampoo branding operation; and a salacious and sexy case of adultery. When he's not in the field or managing a staff of investigators, he's angling to become the leader of the next great dance crew, moonlighting as the captain of a troupe in search of reality TV stardom. Yes, this is a real world documentary.
Rajesh is portrayed with the affable intensity of The Office's Michael Scott and the naive charm of Inspector Clouseau. Add in the strong sense of showmanship and false bravado, like the goofs in This Is Spinal Tap, or the zany terrorists in Chris Morris's Four Lions, and the effect is oddly humorous and tragic in equal measure.
I suspect there may have been some fudging of details or recreations of certain sequences, but the film is as much about the construction of its titular character as it is about Rajesh's investigations. The theme of celebrity runs strong throughout. We all know the idolatry of cinema and celebrity in Indian popular culture, and Rajesh and his colleagues' awareness of the camera actually aids in the overall kookiness of this picture.
Cox captures a unique tone, moving naturally from the unintentional hilarity of Rajesh's demeanour and the emotionally complex, downright tragic nature of his clients. Though Fox Searchlight has apparently been developing a dramatic version of this story, this is truth far stranger than fiction, which is the film's main attraction, and thus any dramatic version would lose all this wonderful irony.
The Chocolate Farmer (2011) dir. Rohan Fernando
Documentary
***
By Alan Bacchus
Raising a half-dozen kids and making a living off the land in the ways of one's Mayan ancestors while trying to stay afloat in a modern, globalized world is difficult for a humble cacao bean farmer. Eladio Pop is one such man, a Belizean cacao farmer who farms those little beans and trades them on the market for a pittance compared to his industrial competitors. But making money is secondary to Eladio. As an aboriginal Mayan, he takes pride in doing it in the ways of his parents, his grandparents and the generations before them. Rohan Fernando's NFB doc shows a year in the life of this man, his farm, his family and their nearly outmoded way of life.
Rohan's camera captures the lush, unspoiled beauty of the Central American rainforest with the natural ease of Werner Herzog or even Terrence Malick. The pace is slow but elegant, contributing to a transcendental appreciation of the "New World," as Columbus would have seen it. (Well, actually, Belize was colonized by the British, so everyone mostly speaks Caribbean-accented English.)
The details of Eladio's daily activities are fascinating. With only a machete, he's able to cultivate his land, create pathways through the dense rainforest, cut down his cacao fruits and extract the mouth-watering goodness inside. Life is bliss when we see him sip sugar cane from vines and swim freely in the warm freshwater rivers. But life is also very hard for Eladio.
He's full of contradictions and for good and bad, director Rohan is clear not to pass judgment on his main character; we're never quite sure what to think of him. On the one hand, we admire the indigenous pride in his independence and his resolute determination not to lose his heritage. On the other, his stubbornness to accept the changing world order, specifically shutting down the dreams of his children to go to school, educate themselves and self-determine their fates in the world, feels irresponsible and short-sighted.
Fernando's unobtrusive, observational, even "polite" style makes this contradiction a little murky. These internal and external conflicts are never fully capitalized upon for cinematic effect. Fernando is too enamoured with Eladio to take him to task on the affect of his stubbornness on his family. Perhaps the Pops are content with their lives and everything's hunky-dory, but by the reactions of his children, there's a deep sense of discomfort, which Fernando never quite pulls out of them.
As a visual essay, or omniscient slice of life, which the old NFB used to do very well, The Chocolate Farmer succeeds, but as a dramatic, moving, emotionally insightful feature film competitive with the more successful theatrical documentaries of today, it unfortunately never reaches that level.
This review was previously published on Exclaim.ca
