Monthly Archives: September 2012

Winchester ’73

Posted on by
2

The first things I have to say about this film are that it features one of the earliest credits for Tony Curtis, and that Rock Hudson is buried in the cast, and he plays an Indian. Right, now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the film.

I like this kind of film. Now, that statement’s not much good to you without knowing what kind of film it is, but regardless of that I like it anyway. It’s the kind of film where several smaller stories are all tied together through coincidence, or an object being passed from one to another, as is the case here. There are some exceptions – I wasn’t wild about Au Hasard Balthazar or Babel – but these types of collective narratives, like Magnolia, Short Cuts, Crash and Traffic, usually appeal to me, and having a great ensemble cast never hurts either. Here, the element that ties the stories together is a rifle.

Our introduction to the eponymous weapon is through James Stewart’s Lin McAdam, a cowboy on the trail of Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally), a dangerous man with whom the two share a bitter past. When Lin rocks up in the town of Dodge City, presided over by Will Geer’s Wyatt Earp, he finds Dutch has entered into a shooting competition to win the rifle, so enters as well, mainly to stop his foe from winning the gun that won the West. After the competition, which also sees lookalikes of Davy Crockett and Colonel Sanders, so feels a bit like a western parody, the gun is passed from one person to the next, either by honest trade or dishonest force, and not always with it’s ammunition present. We follow the gun through the film until a fairly obvious and clearly signposted finale, where Lin eventually catches up to the on-the-run Dutch.

This film felt incredibly stagey and unnatural, so I rarely felt engrossed with the movie. For example, there’s an indoor scuffle early on that in which, mid-fight, someone draws the blinds to make the fight look more dramatic. Granted, this was also to try and hide the fisticuffs from those outside the window, but seeing as they were on the first storey I don’t think there was too much danger of that, and it’s clear it was done entirely to increase the dramatic tension. Also, a moment where Shelley Winters, who is great as the film’s predominant female presence, is sat tossing a coin up and down is just waiting for someone to come along and catch it mid-throw, and it just appears as if that’s the very reason shes sat there throwing it in the first place, which is just silly.

Stewart is good in the lead role, and he must have gotten on well with director Anthony Mann, as this is the first of 8 collaborations the pair shared, including The Naked Spur and The Man From Laramie, both of which also appear on the List. Some of the supporting cast are terrible though, particularly every bartender in the film, and there’s a moment where a man tries to hit on the girl whose fiance he just shot, which is bad form in my books.

If, like me, you love the sound of a bullet’s ricochet, then you’ll adore the final showdown, however I feel that there isn’t much here to hold the attention of people who don’t really like westerns. Now, I quite like them, so I thought the film was pretty good, though more could definitely have been done with the central premise, and the film peaks too early with the opening shooting competition. 

Choose film 6/10

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery

Posted on by
Reply

The second film in my travels through Steve McQueen’s career is actually his fifth movie, as I’ve yet to come in contact with a copy of Girl on the Run, Never Love a Stranger or The Blob, and is the second film in which he plays the lead (after The Blob, which I really want to see am annoyed I can’t find).

Here, McQueen plays George Fowler, a man in need of some funds to pay his way through college after being kicked out years ago. He accepts the job of driver for a bank robbery being conducted by his friend Gino (David Clarke) and two others, John and Willie (Crahan Denton and James Dukas), neither of whom trust George, as he’s lived a clean life and hasn’t even been to prison. Meanwhile, George meets up with Gino’s sister Ann (Molly McCarthy), an old flame of his, and complications arise when she works out the real reason George is in town.


Or rather, they don’t. I fully intend to spoil certain aspects of this film that I don’t recommend watching, so I’d advise the spoiler-wary to either skip to the end of the review or stop reading, but regardless you shouldn’t watch the film. You see, my first issue with the film was that halfway through the film there is a pivotal moment in the plot where, having discovered George and Gino are planning to rob a bank, Ann writes on the side of said bank that they are going to be robbed. Understandably, John and Willie are none too pleased about this and, upon discovering Ann is the culprit, kill her. Yet, after this happens, there are no further ramifications on the actual heist of the bank receiving a warning. So in effect Ann is killed for really no reason, as her actions had zero impact on anything that happened.

Secondly, in the film’s opening there is a brief intro stating that the parts of police officers have been performed by the real officers during the real life robbery upon which this story is based, however the police have yet to show up anywhere in the film even before the heist has begun, so it is obvious that something is going to go wrong, the alarm will go off and the police will arrive, else there’d have been no point to the intro. Also, it’s quite clear why the policemen have opted for careers in law enforcement rather than a more thespian path, as though only a couple get actual lines, they are all delivered rather forcefully.

Not that the rest of the cast fares much better, as even McQueen has his wooden moments, and the various conversations within the film, especially those between George and Ann, all feel stilted and awkward, even when they aren’t supposed to be. It’s no great surprise to find that McCarthy hasn’t really done much since. 

My main problem though? The story is dull. Now normally I love a good heist flick. There’s something about the meticulous planning of a con, the recruiting of the team, pulling it off, working around unforeseen obstacles and either seeing the criminals being brought to justice or fleeing with the loot that I find fascinating and immensely watchable, be it the star-studded, glossy likes of the Ocean’s trilogy or Inside Man, or something a bit more noir-y and stripped back like Rififi. Dog Day Afternoon, The Taking of Pelham 123, Out of Sight – these are all amazing films that I don’t hear talked about nearly as often as I feel that I should. And The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery is deservedly not amongst this hallowed list, because it’s just dull.

The robbery itself is completely straightforward, with no clever tricks or any kind of skill involved. The plan is simply to go in, rob the bank and leave before the cops arrive. There’s about as much of a plan as Gale and Evelle had in Raising Arizona, yet this is after a solid 75 minutes of planning shown on screen, that actually took place over at least five days during the film. And the great thing is that nothing goes wrong – the alarm is triggered, as the thieves had expected, but the cops arrived sooner than anticipated, descending into a hail of gunfire. Other than the last minute shoot-out and McQueen going insane, there’s little of any worth that I think I’ll remember. McQueen’s final scenes are worth mentioning in that they are the only time I’ve seen so far where he has played anything other than a by-the-numbers hero character. When he finds himself alone in the bank with the hostages and a gun, he breaks down and goes a bit loopy, which was interesting to watch, but was unconvincing because it’s Steve McQueen, and he just doesn’t do that.

One interesting part of the film was that it showed how a good, clean man – in this case George – can become embroiled in the seedier underbelly of a nation, and how if he’s not careful he could quite easily become stuck within it forever.

Also, when the film opens they wisely removed the ‘Great’ from the title, as neither the film nor the factual account are anything even close to resembling great. And is it too much to ask for a little note at the end saying what happened to those that survived?

So, this isn’t a great film, mainly because the story is boring – the heist doesn’t even begin until 15 minutes before the end – the acting is poor, the soundtrack has been taken from a fairground ghost train and pretty much the whole thing is in shadow and impossible to make out.

Choose life 2/10

Departures

Posted on by
2

Once again I find myself writing under the influence of various prescription narcotics as I recover from my latest malady, so please accept the usual apologies for any slurred typing or off kilter ramblings. Well, any more than usual, anyway.

Departures is a film I feel I should have heard more about. I don’t stay abreast of foreign features as much as I’d like, but I feel that whenever any that are widely deemed great come along, then the chances are that I’ve at least heard of them, yet ‘s slow, personal, moving story of an unemployed cellist discovering self confidence in the most unlikeliest of places has completely passed me by, despite winning the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2009, beating out the likes of Waltz With Bashir, The Baader Meinhof Complex and The Class, all of which I’ve heard of and two of which I’ve seen. I can’t really explain why I’ve not heard of it, though I’m certain it was never released in any cinemas near me, hardly surprising, considering how many screens were booked up for Twilight: New Moon, released one week previously.

The aforementioned cellist is Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a possible relation to Pete Postlethwaite’s character in the Usual Suspects. His Tokyo orchestra plays for more-than-half empty audiences, so the owner dissolves the group and Daigo, lacking the self confidence the seek employment elsewhere, sells his cello and moves back with his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) to the house his mother left him when she passed away. Daigo’s search for employment leads him to a vague newspaper advertisement and a nondescript building. Without even fully realising the job he has unwittingly applied for, Daigo is hired. The career path he has just found himself travelling along? Preparing the dead for their funerals.

Now to me, this job doesn’t sound quite as disgusting as is made out in the film, as similarly to Daigo I’ve never seen a corpse or even a coffin. Yet Daigo’s initial reaction is shame and repulsion – he tells his wife that his job is doing ‘ceremonies’ which, although technically correct, is probably not what she was thinking. His first encounter with a member of the deceased results in a trip to the baths probably longer than advised (though in all fairness the corpse in question had been left to fester for two weeks, and there were maggots crawling around on the nearby plates of food), and when the people around him begin to realise the nature of his profession, he is soon told to get a ‘proper’ job, or be shamed forever. I don’t think it’s racist to say that this may have something to do with the greater focus on dignity and shame in the Japanese culture, in fact I consider it an admirable quality, and one that we could indeed use more of in the West, but I find the extreme nature of the reactions Daigo’s career choice receives to be more exaggerated than I was expecting.

The film is beautifully shot, and though I’ve only seen one of his films. I can see a clear influence from Yasujiro Ozu, especially in the limited camera movements, with most of the scenes imbued with a quiet stillness, shot with the same level of calmness and precision with which Daigo attends to his clients. Although music played a large part in the film, I cannot for the life of me remember it having a great effect upon me, which I find especially surprising considering the amount of praise other reviews have lauded upon that aspect. From what I can remember, the occasional cello performances were beautiful, but I’m afraid my personal knowledge of classical music is far from extensive, so the overall effect was a little lost on me. It did add to the serene nature of the film though.

I’ve been known to at times criticise a film for being too slow, but here I felt the more lethargic pace was very fitting, and I rarely felt the need to glance at my watch even at 130 minutes long. However, there are only so many scenes of someone breaking into tears at a funeral that I can take, and seeing as the film takes place at a lot of different ceremonies, this took up a larger portion of the film than was strictly necessary. 

Plot-wise, there were a couple of elements that I was certain were going to result in an annoying third-act twist, but I’m grateful this wasn’t the case, and the story played out entirely straight, yet wasn’t necessarily predictable. There was a great deal more comedy than expected – Daigo’s first ceremony, and the role he plays on his first day of the job in a marketing video – which definitely helped to alleviate what would have otherwise been a very sombre affair.

Though initially I had put off watching this film, for fear of an overly morbid subject matter, I was left not necessarily bounding with joy, but satisfied, and content.

Choose film 8/10

Napoleon Dynamite

Posted on by
6

I watched and reviewed this film – begrudgingly – for the recent So You Think You Can Review tournament, the only downside to the competition. Here is my less-than-praising review of the film.

It’s been a long time since I saw this film upon its initial release back in 2004, and I swear the film has changed an awful lot in those brief 8 years, as the last time I watched it I’m sure it was a comedy. In fact, what we have here is a character study of a mentally ill teenager from a broken home, who has grown up the best he could in a world that clearly has no place for him, and that he seems to want to be no part of.
Continue reading →

Yojimbo

Posted on by
2

Another film I reviewed for the recent So You Think You Can Review tournament over at the Lamb that’s also on the List.

Akira Kurosawa has never denied the fact that he was heavily influenced by the western genre, citing John Ford, amongst others, as something of an idol. It’s fitting then that at least two of the Japanese director’s most prominent works, this and Seven Samurai, would go on to be remade, unofficially yet almost shot-for-shot in Yojimbo’s case, as two of the definitive classics of the western genre. Though I’ve seen Seven Samurai once before, and The Magnificent Seven and Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy a fistful of times each, this was my first viewing of Kurosawa’s classic. Yojimbo sees a lone, nameless samurai wander into a town divided by two warring gangs. Seeing an opportunity to rectify the situation, and possibly pocket a little something along the way, the ronin stays in town and pits the two rival factions against one another.

The solitary sword swinger is Toshiro Mifune, with whom Kurosawa had a similar relationship as Ford did with John Wayne, working together on 16 pictures in total. Upon his arrival into the one-road town, the samurai – who later calls himself Kuwabatake Sanjiro (meaning Mulberry Thirty), though he freely admits this is a sudonym – hires himself out to both gang lords. Neither the henpecked, frustrated Seibei nor his foe and former right hand man Ushi-tora outright trust this professional blade-for-hire, yet his opponent accepting the fighter’s offer would guarantee their victory. When everything seems to be going according to Sanjiro’s plans, with the two tribes threatening to wipe one another out, complications arise with the arrival of Ushi-tora’s brother Unosuke, brandishing a pistol.
The gun clearly poses quite a threat to our heroic samurai, as now the skill has been removed from the kill. Previously, Sanjiro had no great challenge within the town – other than maybe the lumbering giant with the comically oversized mallet – but now Unosuke, despite his arrogance, ridiculous posturing and insistence on carrying the gun inside his kimono – looking like he’s wearing a sling and hiding a pot belly – has taken the upper hand. No longer is the killer simply the smarter, faster, more skilled competitor; now it is the man with his finger on the trigger.
Throughout the film, Sanjiro’s motives are never clarified. Is he out for payment? Justice? Peace? Or is he simply seeking entertainment, something he clearly achieves as the two clans fight for his allegiance and to pay for his sake. His allegiance changes as often as the direction of the wind, and one of the most memorable scenes occurs as Sanjiro opts out of a confrontation he himself instigated, yet had no intention of taking part in. Instead, he heads atop a vantage point to watch as the two gangs reluctantly face off against one another, faux-lunging and backing away until only a few feet apart. Were it not for the arrival of a town inspector checking up on them, it’s likely this stalemate could have lasted forever.
Inspired by two of Dashiell Hammett’s film noirs, Red Harvest and The Glass Key, the film has a far greater comedic tone than I was expecting. Be it the odd-couple relationship between the tavern keeper and the persistently noisy coffin maker next door (the only townsperson making a profit from the constant fighting), the boorish stupidity of Ushi-tora’s other brother Inokichi as he struggles to work out that four dead enemies is better than two dead allies, or the belittling wife of his rival, there is much here to gain amusement from. Even serious moments, such as Sanjiro overhearing a plot to double cross and murder him, are juxtaposed by the man waggling both tongue and eyebrow at the young harem girls eavesdropping with him.
The film’s western influence isn’t merely seen in its lone ‘gun’-man story. From wide shots with a character stood alone in the distance, to high noon showdowns with gangs positioned at either end of a one-road town, it seems every shot, character and plot point is a loving homage to the director’s favourite genre. The wind even rustles leaves around in place of rolling tumbleweeds. Exposition is handled swiftly and elegantly via the tavern keeper who takes the samurai in and feeds him, regardless of his lack of funds. Sliding screen panels transform what would otherwise be a static, uneventful dialogue scene into an almost comic-book like affair, with each window shifting aside to reveal the disparate groups at either end of the town. The sliding panel is a recurring theme throughout the film, with many shots taking place inside buildings looking out, and later using the more traditional screen-wipe edit.
If I had to pick some minor flaws with the film, I’d mention that the all-too-brief combat scenes don’t quite live up to their pulse-quickening build ups, and that some of the more minor characters come off as little more than caricatures, instead of fully rounded individuals, but this is nit-picking more than anything else. I’d also heard that there were some intense and gory bursts of violence, and although there are certainly small explosions of slice’n’dice fury, fortunately they weren’t as gruesome as I was led to believe – and of course my expectations are no fault of the film’s.
For the most part the acting is stellar, particularly from Mifune, who plays the wandering samurai with a confident swagger, a sly smirk and an imposing stance. Every inch the typical lone ‘gunslinger’, Mifune is incomparable as the professional killer, his only master the fate that led him to the village; via the direction a falling stick pointed towards. Like a coiled spring, he is able to dish out far more than you might expect, and though it is clearly signposted by the rousing score and natural progression of the scenes, his swordsmanship often comes as much of a shock to us as those on the more uncomfortable end of his blade. Upon first entering the town, the man is greeted by a small dog scampering past, clutching a severed human hand in its mouth. At a sight like this, any other man would have had the sense to turn tail and flee, but Sanjiro – with a look of hilarious incredulity creeping across his face – nonetheless ventures on, possibly in search of the one-armed man this appendage-gnawing mutt has left behind.
The final showdown – because it’s a western, so there has to be a final showdown – has a setup shot of such simple elegance it’d be beautiful, were it not for the haggard, near-dead old man trussed up and dangling at the front of the frame. The ability to pan the camera around the decrepit victim, always keeping him in frame whilst progressing the scene, is a masterful stroke, assisted by Mifune’s Sanjiro stalking ever-closer towards the finale – a ten against one fight to the death – as a tornado of dust swirls up around him. What follows, alas, fails to match that establishing shot for artistry and effect, and also features an almost ridiculously drawn out death, but is nonetheless riveting and satisfying.
Whilst it’s not quite as good as Kurosawa’s other great remade eastern-western, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo is at least shorter, making it the perfect choice for a samurai fix if you’ve got two hours rather than three and a half.
Choose film 8/10

Top 5… Boating Disaster Movies

Posted on by
4
I’m off on a cruise tomorrow – only a short one, a family trip to celebrate my Dad’s retirement earlier this year – but as I am something of a level 5 pessimist/worst case scenario anticipator, all I can think about is all the films I’ve seen where unexpecting people come a cropper aboard some vessel or another. So what better way to rationalise my fears than by making a list of the five best films involving boating disasters of some kind or other.
5. The Perfect Storm
Go back and watch this film, and you’ll be shocked at how starry the cast has become. Alongside George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg as the New England fisherman captain and his friend caught in the mother of all storms, there’s John C. Reilly, William Fichtner and John Hawkes amongst the crew, and Karen Allen, Diane Lane, Bob Gunton, Christopher McDonald, Michael Ironside and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio waiting back home, fearfully watching the news reports and expecting the worst. Though the once-stellar special effects may now look a little dated, just watch Die Another Day directly afterwards to remind yourself of just how bad those waves could have been.
Continue reading →

Mother and Son

Posted on by
Reply

This is another of those films that I knew absolutely nothing about before watching – even the language or year it was made (Russian, 1997). Sometimes, this strategy works – see Silver Lode – but other times, like now for example, I wind up confused and ill at ease with my surroundings. I think this is the kind of film you need to be in a specific mood for watching, where you’re more open and receptive to what is a deeply emotional and solemn journey taken by two people who barely speak to one another because there’s just nothing to say, and when they do it doesn’t always make a lot of sense. Not, as was the case with me, fitting it in early on a Saturday morning before heading out for a picnic and a day of shopping.


Mother and Son, somewhat bluntly, is about a mother and, you guessed it, her son (Gudrun Geyer and Aleksei Ananishnov). She is evidently not well, and he spends his days looking after her in a secluded, ramshackle cottage. They are the only two people who appear on the screen throughout the film (other than a distant hiker walking up a hill at one point that I’m fairly sure was missed in the edit), and it is clear that they are the only person in each others life. The story doesn’t have much of a plot, although there is an ending, it simply details  the son caring for, and carrying around, his mother, and the hardships they go through. She is unable to walk, with even being carried for a short period wearing her out enough to fall asleep on a park bench. The most energetic action available to her is straining to raise a handle to tousle her son’s hair whilst he reads postcards to her.

The cinematography choices in the film are bold, in that the picture is often skewed, stretched and distorted, which often makes the backgrounds difficult to establish. A storm that builds whilst the mother’s condition worsens is clearly a smudge on the camera lens, and the soundtrack is predominantly howling winds and inaudible whispers, with the occasional quiet hymn or subtle orchestra to fill the void. On several occasions I though the DVD had stopped, as the actors will freeze in place, not making a sound for what seems like hours (but is probably only a few seconds). One such example is the aforementioned park nap, when the son heads back to the house to retrieve the postcards, the camera remains with the mother, in real time, whilst she lays there sleeping, for a good few minutes. It felt very much like an experimental student film where they hadn’t quite worked out how to use the camera or edit properly, let alone use a script.

A couple of moments lost me completely in terms of making sense. At one point, the mother’s pain becomes too much for her and she feebly repeats “Get me out” to her son, who replies with the mantra “Yourself” over and over again, until she finally announces “You got me out.” Later, when the mother is particularly depressed, the son simply tells her “Don’t die then. Who’s making you die?” Her reply? A passionate “You! You!” This made me think that, seeing as the son is the predominant instigator in all the travelling that occurs in the movie (“Well, let’s go” he says at least twice), that perhaps he was trying to aid his mother in her shuffle from the mortal coil, so he could be free of the burden and move on with his life, though I fear this gives a deeper insight into my own relationship than perhaps I intended.

 The reversal of the parent/child characters and relationship was an interesting dynamic, up to the point where when he prepared a drink for her I was expecting him to test the liquid’s temperature on his forearm before giving it to her. The notion that the son will have to go through all the hardship the mother has, as we discover late into the film (I don’t mind giving spoilers for films where nothing much really happens) leads me to believe that whatever it is that ails her is most likely to be genetic, but that perhaps the son will have no-one to care for him as he does for his mother.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that director Aleksandr Sokurov was not aiming to make a film that could be described as entertaining, but those are the kinds of films I prefer watching, so I can’t really recommend watching this film. Even at a scant 68 minutes long I found myself willing the mother to pass away – peacefully, of course, I don’t want any further suffering – and if possible could she find a way to take her son with her? 

Choose life 3/10

Raising Arizona

Posted on by
2

It’s hard to imagine a sharper left turn taken by a director than from the Coen brother’s debut, Blood Simple, to their sophomore picture, Raising Arizona. Where Blood Simple was dark and mostly serious, Arizona is the closest a film has ever come to capturing a Tex Avery cartoon in live action – with the possible exception of some parts of The Mask.

in the role that possibly best combines his often underrated acting ability, comedic potential and trademark brand of insanity, Nicolas Cage gives one of my favourite performances of his as H. I. McDunnough (‘Hi’ for short), a serial petty convict whose ineptitude at evading the law is only matched by his love for police photographer Ed (Holly Hunter). On at least the third time Hi is released from the prison where Ed works he proposes, and the two settle down for a life of happiness in a trailer park in Arizona. But all is not well in the McDunnough household. When Ed discovers she is unable to have children she falls apart, not helped by Hi’s criminal background leaving them unsuitable for adoption, so the only logical solution is, of course, to kidnap one of a famous batch of quintuplets born to a local unpainted furniture magnet, Nathan Arizona. To add to Hi’s woes, two of his former cellmates, Gale and Evelle Snoats (John Goodman and William Forsythe) escape from prison and attempt to crash on the couple’s sofa, Hi’s boss at the metalworks attempts to entice him into swinging, and there’s Leonard Smalls (Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb), a bounty hunter from Hell, on the path of the stolen baby.

This is a film with no intentions of meandering along at a gentle pace. The opening ten minutes or so, setting up the couple’s initial meetings, Hi’s triple incarcerations, their engagement and marriage, runs along at such a breakneck pace you’re liable to get whiplash once the credits roll and a more sedate step is taken. The change in speed is almost jarring, but is helped along with ample amounts of comedy and terrific, perfectly pitched performances, especially from Cage. His Hi, sporting a now standard ridiculous feathered hairdo, is a manic, OTT oddball with more Hawaiian shirts than sense. Hunter’s performance is good, but Ed doesn’t really get to do an awful lot other than reprimand Hi at every turn.


If the characters feel like exaggerated caricatures, then this is exactly the point. This film doesn’t take place in any kind of recognisable reality as much as it does in the heightened, prison-crazed mind of the lead. At times though I felt it went a little too far. The two escaped convicts are maybe a little too stupid – though often to hilarious results, as in their ill-planned bank robbery – and their incessant screaming throughout the entire film became beyond grating. No-one can yell like John Goodman. Leonard Smalls, on the other hand, wasn’t enough of a badass. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I always felt that he was a guy pretending, Cobb never inhabited the role quite as fully as I’d have liked, so his presence was very much under felt. It’s a shame, as the Coens can do great work with the right actors in the antagonist roles – check out Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, or Paul Newman’s Sidney J. Mussburger in The Hudsucker Proxy. Smalls should have been larger than life, and could have been the best part of the film, but remains sadly forgettable. Which in itself is impressive seeing as he is a guy who will happily grenade a fluffy bunny just for being alive.

The fight scenes are tremendously enjoyable, and really cement home the cartoonish nature of the film. Most of the characters involved would have received serious, possibly fatal injuries several times throughout the film – particularly Hi – yet they mostly just walk it off with little more than a plaster stuck to their face. And the film’s solitary death scene is so ridiculously over the top and insane that it is very much a moment of explosive comedy, regardless of whether you can see it coming or not.

I think that one of the overall messages from the film is that Hi and Ed, though they seem incredibly unsuitable to take on the task, are possibly the best parents of all the film’s characters. Of the various people who assume the role of the kidnapped baby’s guardian throughout the story, Hi and Ed are the only ones to not immediately name the baby after themselves. Granted, they name him after each  other instead, but at least they’re thinking about someone else, not just themselves.

Whilst this is in no way one of the best Coen brothers film, it is still hugely entertaining and definitely worth a watch, if only to see some classic comic Cage before he went off the rails.

Choose film 8/10

Vagabond

Posted on by
2

A farmer finds a woman frozen to death in a ditch one morning, her face blue and her body curled up and contorted, and appearing to the police as if she has been swimming in a vat of wine. Nobody knows where she came from, but the narrator of this film, director Agnes Varda, provides a series of mock-interviews and flashbacks through which the last few months of the girl’s life are shown, primarily through the eyes of the many and various people she encountered along the way.


This is not my kind of film. I haven’t seen a lot of French new wave, but what I have I’ve not been much of a fan of. There’s always too much gratuitous nudity and too little plot, and they without fail all suffer from a severe case of style over substance. Varda, a new wave graduate, ticks off this checklist with flair and aplomb in this rather tedious and pointless affair.

The girl’s name is Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire), a woman who chose to throw away her life amidst civilisation because she was tired of being bossed around at work, and instead wanders the land in search of the next packet of cigarettes. Mona is deeply unlikable and does herself no favours in terms of looking for help. She has no qualms whatsoever about leeching off the kindness of strangers, be it for housing, care or sustenance, and I’m fairly sure the phrase “Thank you” has never once departed from her lips. Uncouth and unclean, with an odour you can almost smell through the DVD, it is a wonder anyone has ever stopped to help. At one point, a man spontaneously buys her a sandwich when she looks longingly at his, after which she never even looks at the guy again, let alone talks to or thanks. 

This film succeeded in making me increasingly annoyed at this person who, even when offered the chance to start a new life for herself, retaining her freedom and living out one of her dreams, she still shows no signs of wanting to and is inevitably kicked out and sent on her way. By the end, I wasn’t exactly happy about the direction she was taking, but I didn’t mind too much either. There are some people the world is probably better without.

I approved of the fact that everyone who Mona encountered saw her differently. She is described as a hippy, a dreamer, a dropout, a cautionary tale, a drinking buddy and an object of desire – though how anyone finds her attractive is beyond me, I’m nothing but repulsed by every inch of her. One girl, Yolande, a caretaker for an elderly woman, only briefly catches a glimpse of Mona as she lays in the arms of a random boy – who is the kind of insufferable twit who wears a locked padlock as a necklace, to which he has purposefully thrown away the key to. Yolande sees this vision of undying love and seems to base the rest of her life on it, as she re-evaluates her own romance-free relationship with her partner, completely oblivious of the fact that not two days later Mona has left her man and headed on her way, never to see him again. Apparently she only liked him for his weed.

As you’ve probably ascertained, this is a film I’m unlikely to ever re-visit. It’s meandering, directionless style and horrendously unlikable lead are enough to put anyone off, and the random nature of it’s subplots – at one point using a spontaneous electrocution to move the ‘plot’ along – is occasionally jarring but always tedious.

Choose life 3/10