The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) dir. Peter Yates
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Alex Rocco.

****

Guest Review 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 – 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 that 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 such classic TV crime series 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 thirty 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.

Tyson

Tyson (2009) dir. James Toback
Documentary

***1/2

James Toback's uncomplicated documentary lasers in on the complicated life of Mike Tyson and the career of the man who once united the sport and then made a mockery of it. Tyson's uninhibited self-analysis makes for a profound and thoroughly engaging cinematic confession.

Mike Tyson’s life is a cliché, a combination of 'Rocky' and 'Raging Bull' – a street thug in his youth, smaller, but tougher than anyone else, but without a traditional family and thus scared to death of the real world. While in juvenile prison along comes a good-natured elderly white man who recognizes the raw talent of Tyson, takes him under his wing, tames the beastly ferocity of the man and turns him into a World Champion.

The man is Cus D’Amato, the boxing trainer who trained the great Floyd Patterson. Tyson’s genuine love for the man is heartbreaking. Fighting back tears Tyson can barely speak when D'Amato's name is mentioned. It was a five-year relationship which brought Tyson from prison to the doorstep of the Championship of the world. The relationship of Tyson and D’Amato has been well documented, using some of the extensive news magazine footage of D’Amato training Tyson in those early days.

Tyson’s speed, power and agility is astonishing, but we also see a pitbull of energy and rage controlled only by D’Amato and his psychological training and work ethic. And so when D’Amato died in 1985, though the best days of boxing were still ahead of Tyson, it was an inevitable downfall from grace, toward the infamy he now finds himself in.

All this makes for a fascinating first person, single subject documentary, focusing in on Tyson on Tyson. Though he's an intimating brute, now face-tattooed with a Maori tribal symbol, there's an articulate and mannered side to him. Through his lisp and heavy Brooklyn accent is a surprisingly broad vocabulary who expresses his thoughts with intelligence.

Toback manages to get deep into the psyche of Tyson bringing out some dramatic confessions from the man, and an acknowledgement of everything wrong in his life. Tyson freely admits he had sex with a prostitute prior to winning the Heavyweight crown in 1987 and fought against Trevor Burbick with nasty bout of gonorrhea. He admits to his need to sexually dominate women and his abuse of drugs, and money. Nothing is off the table. We never believe Tyson’s a liar. And so when he describes the lies he claims his ex-wife Robin Gibbons told to Barbara Walters about their abusive relationship on 20/20 we believe him. Same goes with his rape conviction, which Tyson vehemently proclaims never happened actually makes us sympathize with Tyson.

Toback shows great restraint in visualizing the film. Cinephiles might recognize the cinematographer, Larry McConkey, the great steadycam man who operated the camera on Scorsese’s 'Goodfellas' and most of the other great steadycam long takes in recent history. But McConkey rightly locks his camera down in front of Tyson, sitting calmly on his couch, and outside on his beach side patio and let Tyson's words drive the story.

“Tyson” isn’t controversial and doesn’t create conspiracy. He doesn't come across as misunderstood, or wrongly accused, he never passes on guilt, or blame others for his demise. Like Michael Jackson, he's a celerbrity whose inherent personality flaws, going all the back to childhood got embellished in the bloated excess of money and fame. Like him or loathe him, all we can ask from documentary subjects is honesty and that’s what we get from "Tyson".

"Tyson" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

It's All Gone Pete Tong

It’s All Gone Pete Tong (2004) dir. Michael Dowse
Starring: Paul Kaye, Kate Magowan, Mike Wilmot, Beatriz Batarda

****

In the 90’s there were a horde of “rave” films capitalizing on the popularity of the clubbing culture – that is youngsters who spent their nights in a drug-fueled haze of dance and electronic music. Though it missed the wave slightly, the absolute best film of the bunch of Michael Dowse’s “It’s All Gone Pete Tong”.

While Dowse’s first film 'Fubar' was realized via the mockumentary ultra-no budget approach, “Tong” is a glossy, slick 35mm beautiful film to behold shot in the Mecca of the rave scene – Ibiza. The landscape of the Spanish island is gorgeous no matter where Dowse puts his camera, and his indoor rave scenes capture the awesome beauty of a thousand revelers dancing in sync behind a myriad of coloured lights and lasers. The high-energy excitement of these scenes is as authentic as being there and Dowse bottles it all.

Paul Kaye, a British comedian, disappears into the skin of the film’s tragic and flawed hero, Frankie Wilde. Introduced via a series of interviews with real DJs and celebrities talking about the legend of the man, Frankie Wilde is one of the world's great DJs who spins his records in a giant arena-sized nightclub. He lives with his trophy wife Sonja (Kate Magowan) and their young son, who going by his skin colour, is probably not his.

Wilde has a major cocaine problem though and his drug-addicted life gets in the way of a proper domestic lifestyle. But then again, it's Ibiza and everyone is high on something. But when Wilde discovers he’s going deaf, a piece of him dies, his one true love in the world appears to be lost. But when a glimmer of hope reveals itself, Wilde seizes it and makes a comeback worthy of the legend of his name.

Dowse has been quoted as saying, he wanted this film to ‘rip cinema a new asshole’ and the roll call of debaucherous characters and situations put onto the screen nearly accomplishes this feat. Paul Kaye's over-the-top bombastic performance of shouting, lewd behaviour and a lot of nasty cockney f-bombs helps to accomplish this and Canadian comic Mike Wilmot as Wilde’s manic manager is wonderful fast-talking obnoxious cliche. "Pete Tong” must also set the record for the most cocaine featured on film, making "Scarface" look tame. In fact Wilde’s nemesis is a fantasy badger which tosses buckets of cocaine on him to keep him off the wagon. There have been many cold turkey, 'kick the drug habit; scenes on film, but Wilde's battle with the blow becomes a truly horrific violent nightmare, as excessive as his habit.

“Pete Tong” is such a satisfactory experience because over the course of the 90mins the tone and mood flows from bass-pumping rave action, to drug-induced cocaine paranoia to ridiculous high energy comedy and at the end the film reveals it’s gentle bittersweet heart which trumps all the debauchery before it.

"It's All Gone Pete Tong" screens tonight as part of the Canadian Cinema in Revue screening series at Toronto's Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Ave). Writer/Director Michael Dowse be skyped in for a Q&A after the screening

The Soloist

The Soloist (2009) dir. Joe Wright
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener

**1/2

The quick destruction of this film is fascinating. Here’s the chain of events… Remember those inspiring trailers last Fall positioning this film as a mondo-Oscar contender? A classic story about the triumph of the human spirit , featuring the red hot Robert Downey Jr (his third film that year), Jamie Foxx as a schizophrenic homeless man and former Juliard cello student, directed by Joe Wright, who had two acclaimed Academy Award nominated films under his belt (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement). Suddenly and inexplicably the release got knocked back outside of the Oscar race.

Fast forward to April of this year. The once prominent "The Soloist" gets dumped in the market to critic sharks looking to pounce on and devour the already crippled film. A lowly rotten tomato meter of 54% was the final kick that broke this once mighty project.

Now it’s on DVD, and though it’s not as bad as this far fall might suggest, it’s a missed opportunity.

You know the story, Downey plays Steve Lopez an LA Times reporter looking for inspiration for his next story. He finds it in Nathaniel Ayers Jr (Jamie Foxx), a homeless man whom he meets playing a two-string violin with grace. A minor mention of Juliard, the renowned music school, prompts Steve to look into the backstory of Ayers. He discovers a sad story of schizophrenia which afflicted the poor child, once a promising talented classical musician, now one of 50,000 other scared street people in Los Angeles.

Lopez says to his girlfriend, 'he's never loved anything as much as Ayers loves music.' It is for this reason Lopez attempts to pick Ayers up and put him back on the right path. Ayers accepts the friendship but haunting memories and his schizophrenia is the barrier he needs to cross - of which only his music, his new friend and a long lost family member can help.

There’s only about 45mins of a good film in the there. Downey as usual is interesting to watch, and the set-up and careful feeling out of the friendship provides a wonderful stage for Foxx and Downey's acting skills. Like the advice Downey’s character dishes out on “Tropic Thunder”, Jamie Foxx smartly doesn’t go ‘full retard’ on Ayers. Though he’s prone to inchorent ramblings and voices in his head, the human aspects of Ayers never went away, he's capable of carrying on a conversation and despite his life on the street he's sociable and unjaded.

Wright clearly knows the antecedents of this story – “Shine”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, even a bit of “The Elephant Man”. He steers away from the melodramatic clichés of these films, but at the same time presents a dull, uninspired rendering of the film’s central conflicts. Lopez desires to help Ayers, and though he is having domestic troubles, the significance of his new friendship with his own life never connects. And so Lopez comes off as more of a plot device than a character. His voiceover which uses the real Lopez’s actual written words presents a creative alternative to expository narration, complimenting the theme of creative writing in an ever-shrinking world of traditional journalism.

Foxx as Ayers is interesting. In the present he is compelling. His said but magical eyes tell us there’s a passionate student of music hidden beneath his unruly exterior which protects him against his lifetime of psychological demons. Unfortunately Wright makes a fatal flaw of using flashbacks to show his journey from promising young kid to homeless schizo. None of it is necessary, and reduces the power of Foxx’s performance in the present.

The second hour coasts with little narrative momentum on the same conflicts, without broadening our understanding of homelessness, Nathaniel’s predicament or Lopez’s goals. Wright's inconsistent direction comprising of his usual floating camera, some authentic street wise documentary-like verite, melodramatic elegant sweeping cranes moves and a number of other visual embellishments which attempt to capture the beauty of music is representative of this mixed bag with the whole less than the sum of it's parts.

"The Soloist" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

G.I. Joe Season 1.1 (1983)
Voices By: Michael Bell, Arthur Burghardt, Chris Latta, B.J. Ward, Morgan Lofting

**

I can remember it vividly, in 1983, after the first year of the new generation of G.I. Joe toys, Hasbro introduced the animated TV show. Instead of a traditional series, for the first three years G.I. Joe was aired as one-off episodic mini-series’. For kids it was an event bigger than “Roots”, or “Lonesome Dove”, everyone's favourite sandbox toys in glorious 2D animation – Duke, Scarlett, Gung Ho, Destro, Cobra Commander and all those vehicles. In prep for the Stephen Somers version, these first three years of Joe are packaged on DVD as 'Season 1.1".

Kids got everything they desired from the series – an extravagant assault of cartoon military violence, told with Indiana Jones-like globetrotting and James Bond-worthy world domination plotting. The writers take influence from this serialized-cliffhanger school of storytelling using episode titles like “Slaves of the Cobra Master’, and ‘Duel in the Devil’s Cauldreon’. The DVD preserves all the commercial bumpers which leave kids under bated breath as, say, when Snake Eyes gets engulfed in radioactive gas, or Duke's confrontation with a hypnotized beast is left in a cliffhanger. With the eyes an adult and former Joe fan though, the series is an elaborate advertisement shamelessly placing its product for kids to add to their Christmas lists.

There's very little for mature adults to latch onto here. Themes and social commentary are shallow if non-existent and characters are base clichés discernible only by the actors' voices. The chief baddie Cobra Commander is nothing more than a bombastic screaming idiot with a Nero-like compulsion for inane destructive behaviour. The key good guys, Duke, Scarlett, Gung Ho etc, exist solely to be heroes of the world. Destro’s stormy banter with Cobra Commander provides the only character throughline to follow. The animators have some fun drawing the female characters though, ie. visualizing the Baroness as a schoolteacher/S&M fetish, squeezing her curvy buxom figure into sexy black latex.

Former fans looking for that nostalgic kick will find the series surprisingly violent. In the first two miniseries Cobra Commander's penchant for gladiatorial torture of Joe prisoners is actually kinda disturbing, and rarely does 90 seconds go by without a massively creative action sequence. On this level, the amount of action and violence they could get away with is actually kind of impressive. The cartoon half-heartedly attempts to absolve their irresponsibility for the violence by using lasers instead of bullets and parachuting injured pilots from shot-down airplane and helicopters, and of course, no one EVER dies, get shot or even injured in the G.I. Joe world.

The DVD package is colourful and attractive. Ron Friedman the chief writer of the three mini-series is interviewed and takes himself and his work very seriously. The fourth disc contains some great nostalgic timewarping with some classic commercials, those awful ‘knowing is half the battle’ PSAs and a printable script PDF. Yo Joe!

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Cold Souls

Cold Souls (2009) dir. Sophie Barthes
Starring: Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Emily Watson

Guest review by Reece Crothers

**1/2

"Cold Souls" suffers from the inevitable comparisons it will draw to the far-superior "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind." It so closely resembles the films of the Charlie Kaufman universe in both tone and subject matter that it might have been called "Being Paul Giamatti", although writer/director Sophie Barthes' work never reaches the apex of wit or imagination that is on display in Kaufman's collaborations with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondy. We may be wading through the same thematic waters here, but our tour guide has fewer insights.

It's a very pretty film. Cinematographer and producer Andrij Parekh shares Barthes' "a film by" credit, and the muted colour and dreamy, floating camera work are exquisite, but the narrative plays it safe, skirting the more challenging elements of its great premise. Echoing (or ripping off) Malkovich's brilliant casting of celebrity-as-self, Barthes tells the tale of "Paul Giamatti", a famous American actor struggling through rehearsals for a new stage performance of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya until he stumbles across a New Yorker article on Soul Storage, which promises "relief from the burden of the soul". Believing he has found the solution to his professional crisis, Giamatti visits the lab and is convinced by David Strathairn as Dr. Flintstein, seemingly channeling Tom Wilkinson's performance from Eternal Sunshine. The actor undergoes the soul extraction procedure and his "essence", the film points out repeatedly, looks remarkably like a chick pea. Given the choice of selecting a replacement, Giamatti opts to go soulless, which has some comic consequences. After a very funny sequence where he performs "Vanya" with a cheerful enthusiasm hilariously innapropriate for Chekhov, baffling his director and fellow actors, he is unable to make love to his wife (Emily Watson, criminally underused)and so he returns to the lab to get his soul back, only to discover it has been lost in storage. Flinstein assures the distraught thespian that the missing soul has most likely been sent to the New Jersey warehouse by mistake. Actually it has already been smuggled out of the country and peddled on the black-market by Nina, a mysterious "soul mule".

It is worth noting that "Paul Giammati" is not Paul Giammati's greatest role. As a leading man, he peaked with "Sideways" and "American Splendor", and has been trading on the good-will those pictures generated with audiences ever since. Consider his cringe-worthy work in "Cinderella Man" or "Lady In The Water" as evidence of his decline. This may be among the best of the dopey, maladroit, misfits he has brought to the screen, but it is nothing you haven't already seen him do, and making the actor the hero instead of giving him a character to play is the fatal design flaw of the narrative. If you have ever seen Robert De Niro give an interview, you will know it's not exactly "Raging Bull". Giamatti might have made a great "Kaufman" if Nicholas Cage hadn't already nailed the part in "Adaptation", but his "Giamatti", another beehive of neuroses, gets old pretty quick.

The film sparks to life however whenever it shifts focus to Russian actress Dina Korzun as "Nina", the reluctant trafficker who has smuggled Giamatti's soul into Russia, where it has now been sold to a TV soap actress who really would have preferred Al Pacino's soul. Korzun has one of the great poker-faces to grace the screen in some time and her blank stare manages to simultaneously convey both a mechanical detachment and a deep, melancholic longing. Denied a romantic leading man here, I couldn't help but wonder how she might fare opposite someone like George Clooney or Clive Owen. I hope we see more of her in American movies.

In the end, the film is less about the metaphysical and existential dilemmas inherent in its set up and more of a "golden fleece" tale of a man literally searching for his soul, a plot that works better as metaphor. Remember Robin William's turn in "What Dreams May Come"? Probably not. You're better off renting Malkovich on DVD. Make it a double bill with Eternal Sunshine.

Heaven & Earth

Heaven & Earth (1993) dir. Oliver Stone
Starring: Hiep Thi Le, Tommy Lee Jones, Joan Chen, Haing S. Ngor

**

Oliver Stone's “Heaven & Earth,” a film made at the creative height of his career, is one of those admirable grand failures. Every great filmmaker has one or two of these in their filmography. Like David Lean’s “Ryan Daughter” or Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” after the acclaim and success of 'JFK" Stone seemed to have been given carte blanche and a big fat cheque to make this intensely personal film, which unfortunately suffers the fate of drowning under it’s own bloated excess.

After numerous films about the Vietnam War there had never a film dramatized from the point of view of it's own people. So with "Heaven & Earth", the premise was a decent starting place. Hiep Thi Le plays Le Ly, a young Vietnamese girl who narrates the story of her tumultuous life. She starts off an innocent rice farmer idolizing her mother and her peaceful way of life. We get to see the pre-colonized lifestyle of the Vietnamese people, who lead simple lives, connected to nature and family. But of course we watch as the French take over the country, and then the Communist Viet Cong and then the ugly Americans.

Along the way Le Ly gets corrupted by these aliens in her society. She’s sold into a job housekeeping the estate of a rich businessman, whom she’s eventually raped by and thus impregnated. After shaming her family she takes to the streets, becoming a hustler and parttime street prostitute. Eventually the heroic and love-smitten figure of US soldier Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones) appears, sweeping her off her feet . He brings her back to the US and into another alien and ironically even more corrupting environment. Unfortunately Butler turns out to be sadistic psychopath who turns devilish very fast, becomes abusive, beating her, and threatening to kill her. But Le Ly is a survivor, overcomes the culture shock and makes good on the American dream, achieving wealth and success, but her life can only be fulfilled completely when she returns home to reconcile with her mother.

“Heaven and Earth” is only interesting for Oliver Stone buffs who want to follow the path of his career. The visual style fits in well with the language he established with his post Wall Street films – 'The Doors', 'Born on the Fourth of July' and 'JFK'. Robert Richardson’s photography is top notch, beautifying everything he shoots. His photography of the Vietnamese landscape, with carefully chosen compositions' heighten the colour green, providing an ironic counterpoint of the beauty of the land with the horrors of war.

Unfortunately everything else in the film stinks. Stone’s decision to have all his Vietnamese actors speak English exclusively is a fundamental fault. Sure, he was going for a mass audience, thus removing the need for subtitles, but his integrity for the culture of the country is lost and the acting abilities of the actors with the foreign language do not hold.

Stone races through the events of Le Ly's life with such speed it feels like one disastrous confrontation and event after another. And so when she starts to achieve her success as an American, the irony of this hits a hammer even blunter even by Stone’s own standards.

Though Stone's reach was much larger than his grasp, it's a risky venture which great filmmakers need to take , a mistake which cinema history quickly forgave. "Heaven & Earth" was certainly not a career-breaker as Stone would go on make "Natural Born Killers" later that year, and "Nixon" two years later.

This Is Spinal Tap

This is Spinal Tap (1984) dir. Rob Reiner
Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer

****

I doubt the four creators of Spinal Tap (Reiner, Guest, McKean, Shearer) would have predicted the staying power of this little movie. Yet, 25 years later, the comedic force of Tap continues unabated. Evidence of the breadth of comedic material available from this concept includes, numerous reunifications tours, music albums which were released years after the film, occasional cameo appearances at rock festivals, award shows etc.

“This is Spinal Tap” was remarkable for its ability to laser in on a very specific subject – the career trajectory of many 60's/70's bands as well as the documentary form itself, and specifically, the 'rock documentary'. Stylistically the film uses Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” as their template. Perhaps even positing, in an extreme situation, what could have happened to Zeppelin if they had stuck around through the 80’s – a washed-up sad parody of themselves, unable to see the forest for the trees.

Though Reiner serves as director, the films made by Guest later in the 90’s suggest the comic and visual style in “Spinal Tap” is more collaborative than what his credit would suggest. You know the story… with an invisible improvised/naturalistic style Guest, McKean and Shearer inhabit the skins of Nigel Tufnel (lead guitarist), David St. Hubbins (lead singer) and Derek Smalls (bassist), the washed-up 70’s hard rock band Spinal Tap. Using the language of a traditional documentary – stock footage, interviews and fly-on-the-wall cinema verite, we watch as the band lose their dignity as they attempt to release their latest album on a record label that no longer wants them to an audience that is virtually non-existant.

In a series of wonderfully deadpan comic situations we watch the naïve and portentous bandmates fail miserably at everything they do - from their disastrous album signing, to their Stonehenge stage production snafu to their much-argued album cover which ends up being ‘all black’. As things go downhill, the strain and pressure of their increasing self-awareness causes the band to split up thus threatening to erase their 30 year friendship.

The backstory created for the band, told to us in interviews filled with wonderful comic subtext, references the minute details of rock lore such as the Beatles' beginnings in the ‘skiffle’ movement, Led Zeppelin’s first incarnation as a pre-psychedelic folk band the New Yardbirds, and the devolving artistic creativity of many other bands toward hideous sexism and role-playing heavy metal. Rob Reiner (aka Marti DiBergi) as documentarian does not come out unscathed either. His pretentious and stagey first person introduction to camera is hilarious, poking fun at manufactured television documentary specials. DiBergi's naval hat, his ‘director’s beard’ and his unncessary reaction shots during the interviews suggest the powerful but pompous ego stroke of Hollywood filmmakers.

“Spinal Tap” wasn’t the first mock documentary – Albert Brooks and Woody Allen laid some of that groundwork prior to ‘Tap’ – but the film sustains (like Nigel’s Les Paul guitar) because of its wonderful attention to character. It’s very clever. As we marvel in the deadpan absurdities of the behaviour of these idiotic characters, without realizing it, Reiner’s crafting a surprisingly emotional and profound study of friendship. More than just a story of has-been rockers, by the time Nigel and David reconnect their band "This is Spinal Tap” reveals itself as a story of lifelong friendship which breaks apart and then is mended with forgiveness.

Spinal Tap's continued cultural relevance is remarkable - starting as a TV sketch in 1979, expanded into a full feature in 1984, which then grew into it's own alternate world of characters and new stories which evolved over the next 25 years. As evidence of the comic legs of the concept, the Blu-Ray and DVD even features a full length, in-character audio commentary of the band commenting on their film, which is just as funny as the actual movie.

"This is Spinal Tap" is available on Blu-Ray from MGM Home Entertainment

Starman

Starman (1984) dir. John Carpenter
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith

**1/2

“Starman” starts with a decent enough premise, what would happen if an alien species actually intercepted the famed 1977 interstellar probe Voyager II and accepted our invitation of greetings and visited earth. This is the explanation we get in the opening moments of John Carpenter’s 'Starman'. In 1984 it was a distinct change of pace from the master of terror, but which ultimately became an obvious wide-eyed extraterrestrial Steven Spielberg knock-off.

Karen Allen is Jenny Hayden, a grieving widow, who clings to her nostalgic 8mm home movies of husband for solace. On her lowest point, an extraterrestrial who has responded to the signal of greetings from Voyager II, lands on earth and in Jenny’s backyard. The shapeshifting being sees the imagery of Jenny’s husband and takes his image (the eye-pleaser figure of Jeff Bridges) in order to ingratiate himself to her.

After the shock of seeing her husband in flesh and blood again, Jenny helps the Starman travel the country to his rendez-vous point in Arizona. Of course the SETI team and its government and military operatives, portrayed shamelessly as naïve ignoramuses who desire to capture and study the being, are on their tail. Along the way, Jenny and the Starman connect emotionally, a relationship which allows Jenny to move past her grief fulfil a new life which the knowledge she gains from her alien visitor.

Under lesser hands, the film could have been much worse. With Michael Douglas at the helm (billed as Executive Producer), who, up until then was more successful as a producer than actor, his influence can be seen in the hiring of Jack Nietzche as the film’s composer. Of course, Carpenter has almost always composed his own scores but the additional of Nietzche adds a necessary sentimental touch to compliment the romantic leanings in the film. Like his sympathetic tone from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Nietzche only needs a few synthesized notes to find his theme – and in the tradition of 80's music scoring it's is repeated over and over again – to fine effect.

Nietzche’s music allows Carpenter elevate his otherworldly elements into the realm of Spielbergian magic. The obviously influence of Mr. Spielberg is so painfully obvious though, and under the name of the great John Carpenter, it feels like a painful sellout from a master in his own right. In the film’s heightened moments of wonder Carpenter even steals a few of the master’s trademark shots: dollying close-ups into awestruck reaction shots, with full-on windmachine and backlighting for added dreamy effect. In my own hopeful mind I try to think of these moments as Carpenter’s hand being guided by Douglas and the studio towards the mainstream, towards a paycheque which would allow him to go on a make dismissed mid-career classics like “Big Trouble in Little China”, “Prince of Darkness” and “They Live.”

Even with all the Spielbergian hokum, Carpenter manages to get some honest performances from the leads. Karen Allen shines, even when the film is overwhelmed with it’s awestruckness her unglamourous working class beauty and accessibility grounds the film, keeping it within reach of realism. Jeff Bridges hams it up as the Starman – but a role which garnered him an Oscar Nomination. It’s a no brainer-role, with Bridges doing robotic fish-out-of-water schtick. But it’s Jeff Bridges, and he’s always interesting.

“Starman’s” emotional core, the miraculous opportunity for a broken down woman to rekindle a romantic relationship with her dead lover thus allowing her to cathartically move on in life, becomes the real magic in the film – the ability of a simple relationship when dramatized well can blind us to the periphery of hokum which surrounds it.

“Starman” is available on Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

About Last Night

About Last Night (1986) dir. Edward Zwick
Starring: Demi Moore, Robe Lowe, James Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins

*

Guest Review By Greg Klymkiw

“About Last Night” is atrocious. In spite of this, it provides a few delights. First and foremost, the film offers ample exposure to Demi Moore’s naked body, which is quite splendid to gaze upon with its lithe, youthful, and pre-boob-job-pre-child-bearing-milk-sack-udder-creation-perfection. One also gets to eyeball a nude Rob Lowe and marvel at his perfect bum that is, not surprisingly, much nicer than Miss Moore’s and designed to both worship and penetrate. Finally, we are occasionally treated to shots, unexceptional though they are in both composition and lighting, of the great city of Chicago, which, even when poorly photographed, makes us long to make a pilgrimage to the Windy City and stay forever.

Aside from the abovementioned, about the only reason to see “About Last Night” is to study exactly HOW it could have been a good movie, to longingly contemplate the original source material that is David Mamet’s play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” and imagine a world where something resembling a good movie director, as opposed to the no-talent hack that is Edward Zwick, took Mamet’s words and displayed them cinematically, yet reverentially upon the screen. Zwick reduces Mamet’s glorious, strangely universal and viciously funny play to a simple boy-meets-girl-gets-girl-loses-girl-and-gets-girl-back scenario aimed squarely at that empty generation that embraced the Brat Pack of “St. Elmo’s Fire” as romanticized cinematic reflections of themselves. Mamet’s play yielded a dramatic examination of relationships between young and women in a pre-Generation-X world that somehow predicted the Gen-X experience and furthermore proposed the notion that we can apply as many labels as we’d like to various eras, but that ultimately, the differences between men and women do not really change with time. Mamet’s play is universal. Zwick’s film is dated. One is alive. The other is dead.

This is no surprise with Zwick at the helm. In spite of the fact that he was able to pinch out a loaf of decent celluloid with “Glory”, one could argue that only a complete bonehead would have failed with such stirring subject matter as a Civil War picture focusing on Black soldiers.

Alas, Zwick’s other “accomplishments” are not as stellar as the aforementioned war epic. His big screen efforts are mostly humourless, clunky, turgid costume dramas like “Legends of the Fall”, “The Last Samurai” and the recent entry in the Holocaust sweepstakes, “Defiance” or worse, his dumb socially conscious action pictures like “Courage Under Fire”, “The Siege” and the execrable “Blood Diamond” which prove that even a no-talent can get pictures repeatedly green-lit based solely on subject matter that must appeal to left-leaning studio heads.

Zwick’s primary small-screen accomplishment was the creation of the popular, but annoyingly dated “dramedy” that stills sends shivers down my spine when I think about it, the reprehensibly twee “thirtysomething”.

What this all adds up to is a severe watering-down of Mamet’s delicious savagery. Not only that, it’s incompetent to boot. Zwick takes the opening of the play, a magnificently nasty bit of dialogue between the brutish Bernie (James Belushi) and the slightly more sensitive Danny (Rob Lowe) wherein the former recounts a Penthouse-Forum-styled tale of his sexual exploits. Even now, the language has the power to provoke and entertain. The way Zwick presents the scene is jumpy, confused and frankly, a just plain crude barrage of “guy talk”. Zwick idiotically presents the continuous conversation over a series of different locations. His intent was to obviously “open up” the dialogue – to render it “cinematic” as opposed to leaving it visually intact and (oooohhhhh, dirty word…) “theatrical”. What this does, however, is confuse the focus and detract from the story and conversation’s natural rhythm. Instead of moving the action forward through dialogue which, in and of itself is already action-oriented, Zwick sledgehammers us with unnecessary location changes and, of course, completely unnecessary cuts. All this contributes to destroying Mamet’s great dialogue and curiously, make the characters seem one-dimensional instead of extremely layered.

Uselessly “opening up” theatrical scenes in a movie are the hallmark, knee-jerk touch of true hacks. Rather than trusting the original author’s intent, a buckshot approach to visually presenting the material is used. “Opening up” is extremely unimaginative. In the flawed, but eminently watchable adaptation of Peter Schaffer’s “Equus”, Sidney Lumet allowed Richard Burton to sit at a desk uttering purple verbal ruminations directly into the lens. This was nothing if not “cinematic”. When Mike Nichol’s adapted Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” he wisely kept most of the action centered on George and Martha’s den of verbal savagery and the only opening up that falls on its face are the few scenes outside of their physical domain – most notably the action in the car and the roadside bar. And of course, one cannot forget James Foley’s simple, effective and extremely subtle opening up of Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”.

Nothing so subtle exists in the world of Mr. Zwick. From the abovementioned opening sequence and onwards, the picture simply gets worse. In addition to spotty performances (especially and surprisingly from a forced, bombastic Belushi and the always sickening Elizabeth Perkins), we’re hogtied to a soundtrack score bearing some of the more grotesque 80s pop tunes.

Interestingly, the play’s original title, “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” was dropped when it was discovered that many venues refused to carry advertising with a title like that. So from that point on, it became known as “About Last Night”.

This must continue to be a blessing for Mamet.

“About Last Night” is available on Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Fifty Dead Men Walking

Fifty Dead Men Walking (2009) dir. Kari Skogland
Starring: Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley, Kevin Zegers

***

A true story of an IRA informant who battles his inner conflict between conscience and country makes for a decent and mildly absorbing character-based spy games thriller.

Jim Sturgess, plays Martin, a low level street hustler in Belfast who witnesses both sides of horror in the brutal terrorism activities in Northern Ireland in the 80's. When he witnesses the brother of his girlfriend get shot up by his own IRA compatriots he decides to take a stand against the organization's violent tactics. When he’s recruited into the IRA as a driver, the British government seize on the opportunity to make him an informant of the British.

And so, Martin enters the dangerous world of double-agent espionage. But Martin is also a family man with a wife and child whom he must protect against the reprocussions of his actions. He is also forced to put his trust in his British agent, Fergus (Ben Kingsley) who sticks his own neck out to ensure Martin's identity is protected. When Martin finds himself an expendible asset, he suddenly becomes a target.

Writer/Director Kari Skogland is clear to tell us who the characters are with on screen text credits, and healthy doses of television stock footage. It all seems more an expression of cinematic tone than necessary information. The plot and character struggles are quite simple enough to follow even when I could only understand half the dialogue.

The Irish accents are laid on thick – perhaps overcompensated by the lead non-Irish actors. Kevin Zegers, a Canadian, is believable as Martin's best pal whom he has to betray in favour of his personal scruples. It’s a underwritten role which Zegers makes the best with his strong screen presence.

Jim Sturgess, whom I always thought was too pretty for a leading man, scuffs himself up inhabiting the skin of the rough and rumble Irish lad admirably. Skogland at times over directs him at the beginning, concertly trying to convince us that Martin is a hot headed spark plug, with some forced confrontations and overly aggressive behaviour. Skogland's self-conscious handheld action camerawork feels more than a stylistic crutch than a natural transition from her locked down dialogue scenes.

For better or worse, the film stands on the side of the British policing activities depicting the Irish fighters as ruthless evil-doers. It’s a new point of view to take, considering cinema has usually dramatized the IRA as courageous freedom fighters.

Ben Kingsley is the key to the film – like Zegers, his role is underwritten, but made it’s best with Kingsley reading his lines, as usual, with utmost conviction and belieabilty. If only he was sporting the atrocious hair piece.

Informant movies make for great drama – playing both sides of war produces wonderful inner conflict and set piece of suspense and tension. “Fifty Dead Men Walking” doesn’t aspire to be “The Departed”, but a streamlined single character version anchored by relatable real life political situations. Enjoy.

“Fifty Dead Men Walking” opens in theatres in Canada this weekend and in the U.S. later in Aug

Anti-Christ

Antichrist (2009) dir. Lars Von Trier
Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe

***1/2

By Blair Stewart

Note from the Editor: Antichrist doesn't open in North America until the October, but for international readers who have seen it, or want to see it, here's some thoughts. My own review will be forthcoming once it's available over here:

I would like to remove the Lars Von Trier part from "Antichrist", to separate not the filmmaker from the act, but the filmmaker's act. While reading the negative reviews from Cannes my sense of the outrage caused by the film wasn't all due to its ferocious violence, but to the troublesome man behind the curtain. Lars has pissed off many people since he arrived in film, myself included with his claim that he half-assed the creation of this film due to depression. Then again Ridley Scott and Kubrick could be bastards as well and they made "Alien" and "The Shining" after all. A good horror film is still a good horror film, that fact is unshakeable.

In crisp black-and-white He (Willem Dafoe) and She(Charlotte Gainsbourg) fornicate in slow-motion as their baby in sharp detail climbs out the window and falls to its death in the snow. She suffers a breakdown as a result, and He as a psychotherapist packs her out of hospital to their Eden, a cabin in the woods, to recover. His idea is She needs to get off medication immediately and face her fears of the woods which will help the recovery process somehow. Once She's out of the mental ward He grills her with 'therapeutic' questions, mental torture before the physical torture is broached between them. The sex that takes place here is very graphic, the violence that will occur more so. As human nature succumbs to base desires in the woods so too does Nature itself with the couple under seige from acorns and anthropomorphic wood creatures. "Antichrist" builds this tension with the presence of the overbearing forest as a bogeyman, as "The Blair Witch Project" also showed the woods is a void to get lost in.

Both Gainsbourg and Dafoe's performances veer into madness, and they do it exceptionately well. Wiliem Dafoe's career has been on auto-pilot for a bit before this, while demure Gainsbourg who won best actress at Cannes eventually becomes
a terrifying, crackling figure. Behind the camera Anthony Dod Mantle does his finest work in evoking the budding terror of their surroundings with a rippling kaleidoscopic lens effect causing the background to breathe.

As the director, Lars is indeed one of the best in the world regardless of his likelihood as an insufferable one. The one person most due for praise afterwards might be Lars's wife. Von Trier cut his teeth in horror with "The Kingdom" in the early 90's and it appears there were certain images he had stocked away since then to unleash on the screen. After the minor "Manderlay" and "The Boss of It All", Lars has unleashed a petrol bomb in my opinion, an 'art-film fart bomb' in others. The epilogue of "Antichrist" is a beautiful sequence, and a deeply unsettling one even for jaded cinema goers, it achieves what it sets out to do.

What remains after "Antichrist" is lingering questions. Is it misogynistic? Yes, and once again Von Trier puts his actress(and womanhood)through the ringer, but in hindsight He(Dafoe) becomes much more unsypathetic with the repression of Himself.
A wonky reveal about the dead child late in the film puts some of Her behaviour into question, but the anarchy distracted from this plot point for some viewers. Should the NC-17 version have been banned from screens in Europe?

No, because it shares an equal pessimism with Goya's "Black Paintings" and Francis Bacon's work and I don't think those canvases should be taken down either. If "Ichi the Killer" and "Irreversible" previously passed through the gates with less fanfare, the barbarians have already invaded. Should you see it? If you like thought-provoking horror, or wanted to experience the worst first-date movie since "Blue Velvet", then yes, go right ahead. Enjoy?

Classe Tous Risques

Classe Tous Risques (1960) dir. Claude Sauntet
Starring: Lino Ventura, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michael Ardan, Simone France

***1/2

In the 1960’s, the French, in addition to the New Wave, produced a wealth of influential crime films - flicks which were both influenced by the classic Hollywood gangster genre and which would go on to influence filmmakers of today. One of the best is Claude Sauntet's 'Consider All Risks', a film which doesn't much glorify gangsters as empathize and humanize them outside of the traditional genre stereotypes.

Sauntet drops us right into the action as we meet Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) and family, his wife Therese and his two young sons, and his compatriot in crime Raymond. They are all on the run from the authorities in Italy for a series of heists. It's a breakneck chase with the cops around Rome, on foot, on car, on boat, Abel and Raymond using their professional attitude and expertise and their ruthless willingness to kill to evade their pursuers. But when Raymond and his wife get shot and killed in a gunfight, Davos finds him alone with his kids.

Davos connects with his syndicate in Paris, a brotherhood which provides him with security, a home base and some semblance of trustworthy familial companionship. But when a total stranger is sent Davos' trusted friend Vintran, he suspects he may be cut off from the clan. Surprisingly a friendship develops with Davos' new driver, Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man who seems to have the same loyal integrity and code of honor as he. And so when Davos gets to Paris, he finds himself on the run from his own brotherhood, with only his new friend to trust.

I suspect Risques was a major influence on Michael Mann’s 'Heat' - the modern model of character-based crime films. By telling crime from the point of view of the criminals, we sympathize with them and their acts. In Risques, when Abel shoots and kills two innocent patrol cops, we don’t think twice about the heinousness of that crime, instead we’re immediately concerned about Abel’s partner and his wife.

Like Mann Sauntet is careful to show the effect of the women and their relationships on the lives of these men. In other gangster pictures women are objects for the taking, either prostitutes or disposable accessories expendable when the heat is turned on. The relationship of Stark and his girlfriend is given attention and allowed to blossom, and the effect of Therese's death on Davos haunts him throughout the film. Davos' two young children adds even more complications to the traditional gangster hedonism - he recognizes his duty to his children but also knows that without a mother figure in their lives, they could end up like him.

Like 'Heat' the men are torn between the need for comfort and security and their chosen profession. This is why Abel’s family of gangsters is so important to him – a safe coterie of trusted compatriots who stick together for the good of them all. And so when this circle breaks down, Abel’s is forced to scramble and re-evaluate the effect of his lifestyle on his life and his children. Stark and Abel’s relationship plays into this gangster code. Stark has no need to help to Abel, yet he’s sworn into the gangster code, and is compelled to help. Abel recognizing this loyalty and develops a unique and sincere friendship.

All the while, Sauntet executes his lighting fast narrative with stone cold efficiency. Abel is as professionally ruthless as he needs to be, and the cops and robbers who chase each other are equally adept. The first half establishes Abel's character exclusively in action, a series of suspenseful confrontations, near misses and chases choreographed with headlong cinematic momentum. The chases continues in the second as well, but Sauntet allows us and his characters to take a breather to contemplate the situation. A chess and mindgame ensues which tests Abel's loyalty and commitment to escaping his life of crime.

"Classe Tous Risque'" makes for a marvelous history lesson of the roots of modern crime films, in relation to it's modern masters.

Park Chan-Wook's THIRST Contest!!

Hey Park Chan-Wook Fans!

The Korean master's latest film THIRST opens in limited release Friday July 31. Watch the Red Band trailer HERE

Care of Focus Features DFD has procured a director-autographed poster and the official movie soundtrack.

So here's the contest:

Please send me your top 3 picks for this weekend's box office. Send me the films and their figures. The person who has the top three correct in the right order and the lowest cumulative differential in box office figures wins.

Email your entry to dailyfilmdose@hotmail.com

Good luck!

Acclaimed director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy; I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK) returns with his highly anticipated vampire film Thirst, an official selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Everyone's favorite actor Song Kang Ho plays a respected priest who turns into a vampire after a medical experiment gone wrong. His newfound thirst for blood and deadly attraction for his best friend's wife, played by Kim Ok-bin (Dasepo Naughty Girls), drives him down a road of lust and depravity.

For the Thirst soundtrack, Park Chan Wook teams up again with music director Jo Young-wook, who also provided the music for I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Old Boy, and JSA. The film's score draws from Bach's Cantata BWV 82a Ich Habe Genug and Jo Young Wook's original compositions, with an emphasis strings and woodwinds. Songs by 1930s and 40s trot legends Nam In Soo and Lee Nan Young are included on the soundtrack.