Match Point

Is it me or did you just feel a spot of rain?

This amazing film has been saved on my TV recording box thing for ages and I am so glad I finally watched it.  Nothing on telly tonight innit.  The title made me think it was a romantic comedy about tennis.  And it does start off with the pretty wrapping of a rom com and there are even a few gentle laughs.

But by the end things take very dark turn and, well, it's impossible to say much more without spoilers.

I think I can say that this film implicates you wonderfully - it's such a clever thing if a film-maker can turn you into a villain.  And you become evil in exactly the same way it happens in reality.  Incrementally.

I can't recall ever seeing a film which so gently and superbly implicates the viewer.  I was tingling with pleasure by the end and just so, so glad that I am a good person who would never hurt anybody.

Probably.

To find this idea of yourself challenged.  To make you think.. and I will be running this one again and again in my head for a few days, I can tell you.  I just feel a little unsure... the ground has shifted slightly from under me.  Even though - really - it's absurd.  Er... isn't it?

Woody Allen has made me not just suspend my disbelief.  He's made my disbelief go on holiday to Sardinia... or maybe Greece.

I love Woody's films, and Match Point is making me blither like no other since Midnight in Paris.  Seriously - I am blithering here and will be blithering for days.

The innocuous tennis ball at the beginning which bounces off the net and could go either way.  That slow motion tennis ball.  It metaphorically returns later on in a moment of sheer fucking genius.  Blither... blither... blither.  Woody.  You clever bastard.

Room 237

What?  You've never seen a film played backwards superimposed over it playing forwards before?  What have you been doing with your life??

Not very often you get to say 'I've never seen a film like that before' - if you watch a lot of films. Just goes to show it can still happen though because, here we go :  'I've never seen a film like that before'.

The film in question is Room 237.  It's a documentary film composed of interviews with people who have theories about deep symbolic meanings in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining. You never see the people - the visuals are made up of clips from The Shining and other films.

The theories range from the somewhat plausible to the downright bloody crazy.  The whole film is about the murder of Native Americans, it's about the holocaust, it's intended to be played backwards as well as forwards with one superimposed over the other.  Oh, and it's an apology for Kubrick's involvement in faking the footage of the moon landings.

There are tangibly strange things about the film which are pointed out - other than the background strangeness of the film itself of course - such as furniture which disappears from one frame to the other and carpets that seem to have been moved under the characters.  They look like continuity errors but that would be unlikely given Kubrick's eye for detail.

Still, there is no need to analyse the claims of the participants, or even understand them. There is something intrinsically fascinating in listening to people with wacky theories expounding them with that little secret thrill in their voice.  And it's just nerdishly satisfying to witness a work of art being deconstructed to such an extent.

The whole thing works as a celebration of this type of analysis and perhaps a satire of it.  
A collaborative satire, though.  The interviewees are never mocked, but you do feel the film-maker is more interested in the fact that they theorise like this than in the theories themselves.  
And so are we.

It made me think about religion and all those other fantasies - how a web can be weaved of such captivating intricacy, just looking at the web makes you a prisoner.

Some of my favourite ever films are documentaries - such as The King of Kong : A Fistful of Quarters and Anvil.  And this film is right up there with them.  A fantastic companion piece to the original Kubrick masterpiece - although it would no doubt work on its own.  Mind you, I'd be surprised if you didn't want to see the original to work out for yourself just what is going on with that impossible window... 

Bridesmaids

Just before.... the incident.

It's a bloody shame that so many men out there probably won't watch Bridesmaids because it's called... well... Bridesmaids.  I just don't think their tiny minds (I'm talking about the daft macho ones here) will allow them watch a film that is even named after something so girly wirly woo bags.

It's the 'Full Monty' effect - I had friends that I could never get to watch that film, even though it is really just a hilarious British comedy, just because it seemed to be about male strippers.  Yeah.  Really bad, incongruous and very funny male strippers.  Just like Bridesmaids is about really bad, incongruous and very funny bridesmaids.

I don't think that there is 'male' humour and 'female' humour - I really don't.  And I think I'm in a good position to judge as I have been both male and female before now, and that means being let in to the single sex groupings for both gangs.  The girl's night out AND the boy's night out.  And let me tell you - boys and girls laugh at the same stuff.

Someone shitting themselves is funny in any gender.  And of course, in Bridesmaids, in a pivotal scene, the hilarious horror is ramped up by the girls being in a posh bridal shop trying on posh dresses when they all suffer the effects of food poisoning.  Someone shitting themselves while wearing a posh expensive dress is very funny in ANY gender.

I suppose there could be a counter argument that Bridesmaids laughs at women in order to get men to like the film.  So it says 'hey boys - us girls are stupid aren't we?'.  I don't buy it - the women in this film are monstrous, daft, vain, crazy and funny.  But that's because they're people - not because they're women.

It is a fab, fun film and, on a more girly note, I would marry Chris O'Donnell in a shot - and you're all welcome to be my bridesmaids...

The Green Mile

Someone give Simon Cowell this mouses' number

I have to say, I think Stephen King is an ideas man, primarily.  I don't think he is a great writer. But then I expect great writing to take me deeper into a character's psychology than a film can ever do.  That's what I need books for - and I don't get it from Mr King.  I get a story.  I'm not even a tremendous fan of 'stories' in novels.  It sounds bizarre - but I rather believe that the greatest novel there could ever be, the platonic idea of a great novel, would be one which is riveting, but in which absolutely nothing happens.

Having said that, I do think Stephen King is a genius.  One of the great geniuses of the modern world, of the cinematic era we might say.  And I think that because of the ideas the ideas man has.  Sublime, amazing, fascinating, enrapturing ideas.

The combination of King and director Frank Darabont gave rise to something miraculously wonderful in The Shawshank Redemption, so it's appropriate that this thematic 'sequel'  puts its miracles front and centre.  One of the reasons the miraculous element of the plot works so well is that it's kept quiet for the first hour of the film.  It's an audacious move - I don't know if it comes from the novel itself, but it's very clever how John Coffey is pretty much an incidental character for the first third of the film.

When his power to heal becomes evident, the film changes gear - and that's a risky strategy because it could fall flat.  It could 'jar'.  But it doesn't - and plot strands laid down early, like the talented mouse, pay off satisfyingly later on, so the whole thing builds.

I almost can't think of another three hour film which gobbles up the time so quickly - it's a time machine of a movie - tightly plotted with great economy.  It makes a good argument for longer films actually - what is the hurry these days?  Most films clock in at 90 minutes.  For goodness sake, make them longer and allow them to develop (although you might want to bring back the intermission for the sake of our bladders).

But then again - some two hour films feel their running time.  Not every film can walk a Green Mile so quickly.  

Not a dry eye on the sofa by the end - if this film doesn't make you cry then try The Railway Children.  If you're still not crying by the end of that - check for a pulse, or at least check for tear ducts.

There is a miracle in this film alright - and it's not Coffey's power to heal.  In real life that kind of thing doesn't happen.  The miracle of The Green Mile is to convince us that it can.  It's the miracle of a wonderful story - well told.


  

An American Werewolf in London

Ahh - that's my childhood broken.  Thanks AAWIL...

A real rite of passage this one - if your childhood traversed the 80s as mine did; seeing in the decade at the tender age of six and waving it goodbye at the age of 16 with an upper lip full of fluff and a head full of nightmares.

AAWIL was basically handed round and did its duty terrifying the crap out of every child with a video player and non-vigilant parents.  On the front cover, a picture of Rick Baker's famously magnificent werewolf in mid-transformation make up, the title in earnest times new roman and that all important '18' certificate.  Pictures speak louder than words, and ripped plastic video covers speak volumes.

The bit that worried me the most was when David dreams of running through the woods... he comes across a hospital bed... in the bed... himself... he looks again... he's got yellow eyes and animal fangs and he makes a terrible cat like snarling noise and... I've had an accident.

Oh - and the bit when he wakes up from a dream in which grotesque creatures are killing his family - but he hasn't actually woken up and one of them leaps through the window and stabs his nurse, and shag buddy, Alex (portrayed with lashings of charm and vulnerable sex appeal by former Railway Child Jenny Agutter).

It really was unbelievably scary and transgressive back then, but now we see it again, and again, and again - and oh my God we realise just how much fun it all is.

Because AAWIL is basically a riot.  This film is fun on a bun.  And, despite the American director, it's very much British fun... like Carry on Howling.  Or maybe it's because of John Landis being a yank that the the whole thing feels like a love letter to seedy, rainy old England. A slightly unreal, foreign view of the place - even in those grim days - but we're definitely in English England here, not in Hollywood England.

The policemen, the taxi drivers, the business type who gets his face ripped off on the underground, the porno film with constant interruptions from tradesmen and wrong number phone calls... why not discover England... and eat it?

I seem to have waffled on a bit.  You need to know stuff like this :  the music is composed entirely of songs about 'the moon', Rik Mayall is very briefly in it, the werewolf transformation is still jaw droppingly awesome and it's very, very funny.

Thems the facts but I'm not in the realm of facts with this film.  I am just moonstruck... sick with love, delirious and ravenous, hungry like the wolf.  Yum fucking yum.  

2001 : A Space Odyssey

I can't wait for the year 2001 when we have all this cool space stuff.

Not everyone on this planet can have seen 2001 (let us dispense with the difficult to spell bit after the colon, for ease).  And of the unknown constituency of those who haven't seen it let's be quite clear, so they know what they're letting themselves in for should they decide to press 'play'... it's not for everyone.

But if you love film, well you've probably seen it - and most of Kubrik's other films already.  I am of the opinion that Stanley was one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century so, basically, he already owns a sizeable chunk of my brain. 

So, let's make no mistake about it - 2001 is SLOW.  Personally, I think the slowness is a welcome break from the frenetic pace of modern films, and indeed modern life.  He lets the narrative breathe.  And, just as you might be on the edge of boredom, something happens.  The story moves forward.

And that's an important point - because there really is a cracking good sci-fi story in here - and a driving narrative.  It just plays out... slowly.  That's all.

And the slowness isn't just about being arty and atmospheric.  It builds up the tension - particularly when combined with the repetitive noises which underscore the film.  In several scenes during the film's main section (which involves a mission to Jupiter to discover the source of some extra-terrestrial mysteriousness) there are frankly irritating sounds tootling away - beeps, dings, alarms...  over and over until you think you might go bonkers.

For example, a long spacewalk scene is entirely underscored by the astronaut's breathing and a hissing sound which simply does not abate.  And I love it.  I love the daring of it - I don't always want to feel comfortable and to know what's going on.  

Alfred Hitchcock said that when an audience is asking questions they aren't emoting.  Which is fair enough - but 2001 isn't necessarily a film to emote to.  Although I do find the slow drawl of the computer HAL9000, as he is being tinkered with and losing his memory, really quite sad. Incidentally, if you find yourself thinking - as HAL changes from servant to murderer, that the whole thing seems like a way of filling out the protracted running time and isn't central to the plot - apparently it is : the reason he goes bonkers is the contradiction in his programming - he knows the reason for the Jupiter mission and the astronauts don't.  It's not made clear.

Kubrik intended you to fill in the answers for yourself and make your own 2001.  And this may well 'alienate' (no pun intended) some viewers - particularly when it comes to the film's rather woolly conclusion.  

If you can sit back, breathe deeply, just watch the visuals unfold...  (the still impressive visuals - Kubrik insisted there would be no blue screen and it was a good decision - it would have jarred immediately whereas, as it stands, 2001 still looks amazing)..  if you can let yourself go under... let yourself be hypnotised...   if you can stand half an hour about a bunch of monkeys...  you will love it.

And if you can stand those things - well you probably love it already.   

PS :  Look - the astronauts use I-Pads!  How prescient was that.  Although they weren't around in 2001...

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo

Trainspotting

That poster.

Ahhh - revisiting an old classic.  £2.99 in HMV actually - you cannae go wrong.

Napoleon, I believe, said that if you want to understand a man you should consider what the world was like when he was 22.  Same goes for women too, of course, and I was 22 when Trainspotting came oot... er I mean out.  Although I was a man then.  Anyway, that's complicated - the fact is that this film basically represents the distilled essence of 90s zeitgeist.

It was a great time for films, music, everything.  But then, I was that age. 

Stacked up, cracked up 22, pyscho for sex and glue, shaking our bits to the hits...

Now I am 39 and Trainspotting has aged pretty darn well I must say.  And, yes, I have too... though I say so myself...  but then I never did drugs anything other than vicariously.

All these years later, the stars of the film have pretty much all gone on to have amazing careers and become the new establishment.  Not surprising - they were the faces of the revolution, or at least the most recent revolution.  This way of telling stories was very new to us at the time - although the dancing, playful, surreal narrative was nothing new really.  Even contemporaneously, Trainspotting could be seen as a companion piece to the Tarantino movies - in terms of confidence and panache. 

And the imagery, music and style of Trainspotting had no less of an impact than the pulp fictions of a certain ex-video store employee.

That whole thing of characters doing something, then being held in freeze frame while their name appears on the screen.  That's everywhere now.  And Ewan Macgregor's winkie - that's all over the cinema screen these days.  Trainspotting is where it all started. 

Of the fine performances, surely Robert Carlyle as the psychopathic Begbie must be singled out.  Without a great physical presence, he manages to fill the screen as a roaring, ultra-violent ogre.  One of the most terrifying characters in cinema.  When the 'friends' all sit around drinking after their drug deal, and Begbie makes a few jokes and smiles - Jesus, the relief of tension...  it's palpable.  Then, of course, he glesses some cunt.

The whole thing has a beautifully cheap, gritty, grimy, documentary, TV type feel.  In fact the freeze frames and voice overs remind me, for some reason, of an 80s documentary about the consequences of nuclear war, which would be the forerunner of Threads.  Don't go changing, Trainspotting, don't go and get remade and jazzed up - we love you just the way you are.

I read the book recently - always the wrong way round to see a film, then read the book.  Your visualisation is scuppered.  But I did really enjoy the book, which is written in dialect and requires some decoding by the uninitiated - rather like A Clockwork Orange.  Anyway, I now know something about Trainspotting that I didn't know before - it is a good, faithful adaptation of the book - if necessarily truncated.

But then Irvine Welsh was obviously closely involved - and in fact makes a Hitchcockian cameo appearance as Renton's dealer. 

Nothing more to say really - if you haven't ever seen this film, where were you?  Go to HMV tomorrow - it's only £2.99.








 

World War Z

An impressive amount of extras were required.  Oh, unless they used some kind of computer trickery - those film boffins.

Having read the reviews of WWZ, I am surprised nobody mentioned the film it most closely resembles.  Pretty obvious really.  That film is Aliens.

I think the comparison works well, because WWZ is certainly not a 'horror' film.  But, like James Cameron's 1980s gore fest, it does have strong horror elements.  Make no mistake though, we are in action thriller territory here.

The reviewers are also singing from the same hymn sheet about the film's third act which, they sing in close harmony, is rather too quiet and low budget compared to the sweeping hordes, plane crashes and city wide destructions which make up the first two thirds of the film.

Not fair really - if there had been more bangs and bucks thrown at the third act they might just as easily have said the whole thing was a one note move with no changes of pace.  It doesn't help that the whole thing was a bit of a bodge job script wise, and we all know that, so these criticisms are invited.

I liked the WHOLE film though, as you can probably tell.  It really is great Saturday night popcorn munching entertainment with a few slightly more intelligent points to be made about humans and viruses and mother nature (she's a bitch, apparently).

I was on the edge of my sofa, although maybe I was just trying to hear.  It's quite hard to pick out the dialogue in these films with all the explosions and running about - but then I am a bit mutton.

The zombies (the fast kind) are scary with memorable transformations (also deadly fast, with arched backs and violent twerking) and interesting mannerisms like chattering their teeth together when they smell flesh in the air.  Because of the terrifyingly short time it takes to 'turn', the speed with which the epidemic rages through the cities is really effective and frightening - and it's part of the ubiquitous zombie apocalypse we rarely see.  Basically, it's the expensive bit.

This concept is most effectively put to use when Brad Pitt gets some blood in his mouth and immediately runs to the edge of a building and counts, ready to throw himself off if, after ten seconds, his family start to look appetising.  It's a great scene.

So, I liked it.  It's not the like the book though - I am a fan of that and the zombies, and the story telling pace, is much slower and ultimately more effective.  One of the best innovations of the book is the uninfected humans who go bonkers and pretend to be zombies.  Might have been nice to see that in the film, but there probably wasn't time what with all the explosions and that.

Apparently human flesh tastes like chicken.  And this film was finger lickin' good. 

Sorry about that.  That really was horrific.

Velvet Goldmine

Maxwell Demon aka Brian Slade.  He's tried of wasting gas living above the planet, apparently.

You've got to love a film that starts with Oscar Wilde as a baby being left on a doorstep by aliens.

I mean, if we're going to rate films that's got to be worth a couple of stars right from the get-go.

Velvet Goldmine is a film that starts in just such a way.  In fact, the first twenty minutes or so is really just a delirious dream of music, disconnected scenes, strange images.  A twenty minute window to ask yourself 'what is this crap?' and walk out of the cinema.

Or you can stay and be corrupted.

What you will see, if you do stay, is a fictionalised account of David Bowie's 70's and 80's career featuring other figures from the period in what we might call a 'film a clef'.  Todd Haynes, the director, pulled off the same trick with 'Im Not There' - his non-biography of not Bob Dylan.

How you feel about Velvet Goldmine may depend on how much you can buy into this concept. It can be disconcerting to see Brian Slade (Bowie) singing songs by Roxy Music and Cockney Rebel, songs which are framed as 'by him' in the film - but you know they're not... er... so disbelief has to be suspended.  But so what - this is, essentially, a musical after all.

If you love the music of this period then you are likely to love this film.  And if you grew up sexually and genderly confused, as I did, than you are basically a platform shoe-in.  But there's much more to it than tunes, references and fellow feeling.

The performances make it.  Ewan Mcgregor as Curt Wild (Iggy) is dangerous, sexy, debauched.  I mean, he gets his cock out.  He literally does.  Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Brian Slade is beautiful, assured, tearful, pouting.  A diva.

Eddie Izzard is wonderful as the Epstein like manager, Toni Collette takes the Angie Bowie type role of Brian's wife and collaborator in sin - she does the cod English accent, the tantrums, the glamour, including the faded glamour...

And Christian Bale depicts with painful accuracy the teenage fan - skinny and fawning and so, so embarrassed.  You remember that blushing, cringing agony you felt every second through years 13 to 19?  It hurts to watch.  Then we see him later on as an investigative journo trying to find out what happened to Brian Slade after his faked death...   but that's to drag (no pun intended)  the whole thing  down into such mundane matters as plot.

The plot is, probably, silly.  I am too much in love to know.  The whole film may be rejected by macho lads like the ones we see depicted in a record shop...  'Brian Slade?  He's a poof that one'. My own macho chums certainly didn't take a shine to it.  They saw the bisexuality of the glam rock scene as a sideshow.  That's the thing with glam - you can see whatever you want in glittery reflected backgrounds.

It will be anathema to some - and a work of genius to others.  What more could we ask from any work of art?  

Nothing - except to get a peek at Ewan's winkie - and we've even been given that.

Behind the Candelabra

awww...

When I was a pup I used to enjoy looking through my Dad's records.  For those of you who are under 35 :  a 'record' was a black vinyl disc that played music, kind of like a big CD you had to turn over halfway through.  Among such luminaries as Des O'Connor and David Whitfield there was a Liberace record. 

On the cover of this record the lovely big old poof himself was sitting at a big gold piano in a gold room, on a gold stool surrounded by other gold stuff.  Now I actually used to like listening to the track 'Boogie Woogie' on this record, on which Lee (to his friends) played a, well, boogie woogie tune and encouraged the audience to shout 'hey!'.

So, it was with an air of familiarity that I watched Lee's introduction to the film 'Behind the Candelabra' - in which Michael Douglas as the piano tinkling 'fruit flavoured' (Lee sued someone for calling him that) superstar performed that particular number.  I'm pretty sure he was the kind of guy who would call songs 'numbers'.

Scott Thorson (played by Matt Damon) enters a Las Vegas club and approaches his table... and there is Liberace in the background, out of focus, doing his thing... before coming very much into focus... and then going very much out of focus again as plastic surgical procedures take effect.

Basically this is a film about their relationship - and it is portrayed very touchingly, with all the familiar aspects of long term relationships which some of us will recognise - gay or straight.  It's just two people who love each other and get on each other's nerves - but one of them happens to be hugely famous.

And it's a lot more than that.  Michael Douglas is amazing and shows Liberace's ego, his vanity, his love and ultimately his humanity.  Taking him out of the lights and showing us his bald head, wrinkles (till he has them yanked over the back of his bald head) and surprising sexual appetite doesn't do the man a disservice at all.  I am kind of a Liberace fan now.

It's a really special little film - oddly domestic and intimate.  And, really, really funny.

- 'This isn't exactly the life I had planned for myself.  I wanted to be a veterinarian.'
- 'You wanna help the animals?  Go pick up the dogshit.'

And Rob Lowe as Lee's plastic faced plastic surgeon just has to be seen to believed.  That is, if you can open your eyes at all.  Or close them...

Kill Bill (vols 1 & 2)

HI-FUCKING-YAH!
 

Even though Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction defined my Nineties, I'd somehow managed to never see Kill Bill.  Having recorded it on my tellybox I still managed to not watch it for months on end - till the other day when there was literally nothing else to watch and I simply couldn't put it off any longer.

The reason for this procrastination is not clear to me.  I love Tarantino's oeuvre, but don't particularly want to watch his films.  I am currently not particularly wanting to watch the Django one, and I've not seen Jackie Brown yet.  But every film I've seen that he's directed, written, been in or walked past in the video shop - I have loved.  Inglorious... True Romance ... etc...

Who understands the complex beast that is human motivation?  Not I, dear reader, not I.

Anyway, enough of this horsepoop - the fact is I loved Kill Bill (volumes 1 and...yada yada) so much I am actually a little bit embarrassed about it. 

The violence is balletic, beautiful, satisfying and hilarious.  Daryl Hannah whistles the theme from Twisted Nerve and it's all, like, reference-y.  The Bride works as a character - I cared about her and liked her, she was magically realistic.  David Carradine as Bill is deadly charming and seductive.  

You come away with scenes though don't you - when you watch a film?   They're like dreams.  The scene that's really sticking with me was when The Bride is buried alive.  That's it.  Surely she can't get out of that.  She's been buried alive - and Quentin made damned sure we saw the substantial nails hammered down into the lid - great big brass ones with chips of wood flying...

Then we go back to her training  (the Yoda training schtick) - masterfully done with a cruel teacher kicking her arse to an unbearably funky seventies kung-fu groove. And, oh, part of her training involves touching a piece of wood with her fingertips, then learning to punch a hole in the wood with that hand without drawing it back. 

The set up is all there.  Quent just has to wait before paying it off.  As long as he likes, we'll all be waiting.  A delicious dance of anticipation.  Of course, he's the ultimate film fan director - and everything he does he does because it's what the movie lover loves.

Yes, I loved it.  I can't wait to see which Tarantino film I won't watch next.