Peeping Tom

Posted on January 29, 2012 by jaycluitt

After making this film, director Michael Powell, here working without regular co-director Emeric Pressburger, had to move to Australia, for no-one else would employ him. This is a somewhat extreme reaction, especially by today’s standards, as through the eyes of a 21^st century film viewer there is nothing here to shock or frighten anyone, but back then the tale of a socially awkward young man filming women’s last moments as he kills them with a specially designed camera with a blade attached probably pushed boundaries beyond what the public was used to, though it was released the same year as Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Like his lead Mark, Powell focuses more on the reactions of the characters than on what they are experiencing, and the film is at times cold and passionless, yet Mark (Karlheinz Bohm) is a chilling, disturbing protagonist; an influence to fan Scorsese’s Travis Bickle, as well as Sex, Lies & Videotapes’ Graham, making this an adequate, if not necessarily exceptional, character thriller.

Choose film 7/10

Five Easy Pieces

Posted on January 28, 2012 by jaycluitt

Jack Nicholson is Bobby, a talented pianist who gave up his life of potential greatness to slum it on an oil rig, with a waitress girlfriend and spending his time bowling and gambling with his buddies. The movie is comprised of several great scenes – Bobby playing the piano on the back of a moving truck, trying to order French toast from a difficult waitress (“I want you to hold it between your knees”) and being ‘recognised’ by two girls at a bowling, only to be accused of being bald, but everything between these scenes is forgettable and bland, with only Nicholson’s performance – his reaction at the bowling alley is priceless – being worth paying attention to.

Choose life 5/10

Dark Star

Posted on January 28, 2012 by jaycluitt

Imagine, if you will, that Alien was made in a garage, and with a tongue planted firmly in cheek, and you’ll have something close to Dark Star, John Carpenter’s directorial debut about 4 men travelling through space on a mission to destroy unstable planets. Little attempt has been made to disguise the near non-existent budget used to shoot the film, with a strange creature clearly made by sticking fake claws onto a painted beach ball, with the paint rubbing away in some places and a crewman off screen wobbling it around, but there is a strong vain of humour running through the piece, especially regarding an increasingly irritated bomb refusing to diffuse itself. The sound quality however is terrible, and epileptics would do well to steer clear.

Choose film 6/10

The Star Wars Saga

Posted on January 26, 2012 by jaycluitt

I’ve already discussed my disliking of George Lucas’ recent decision to withdrawn from movie making, and my distaste for those who’ve lobbied against him for years here, so I’ll say no more about that at this time.

I had a problem before even starting to watch these cultural milestones; in what order should they be seen? I’m one of those obscure creatures (also known as ‘young people’) who initially saw the Star Wars films chronologically, from Phantom to Return. My father was never an avid SW fan (to this day he still speaks of the films with a level of disdain and mockery usually reserved for discussing his son), so there were none of the Saturday afternoon viewing marathons subjected upon my friends, and I was left to discover the films by myself, with my first experience being Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson kicking some robot butt, and I’ve seen all the major scenes more time in Lego format via the videogames than on DVD. So, to solve my chronological dilemma, I consulted some of the aforementioned friends, and after being beaten to within an inch of my life with plastic light sabres and busts of Darth Vader, I concluded that release date order was the wisest option (although alphabetically was also suggested, but 4-2-5-1-6-3 is just silly). I should also note that episode 2, Attack of the Clones, did not appear on the list, but is featured here so it doesn’t feel left out, and because there are some (admittedly few) bits I like in it. And yes, this review contains spoilers.

So just what is it that makes Star Wars so iconic? Other than an ever-growing army of fans, the answer lies in the creation of an entirely new universe, where seemingly every minute detail of life has been mapped out. From the robot-hoarding Jawas of Tatooine to repulsive slug-like space mobster Jabba the Hutt, each new and exciting world has its own rules regulations and customs, although most worlds seem to have only one characteristic, be it desert, ice, cloud-city, forest or lava. Throw into this vast cornucopia a story of bounty hunters, intergalactic warfare and a dying breed of oddly magical humans, as well as a buddy comedy about two bickering robots, and you’ve got a license to print money and flog a limitless amount of merchandise to people who really need to get out more (that said, last year my advent calendar may have been from the Lego Star Wars range).

I’m hardly breaking new ground when I say that however big a cult following this saga may have, it also owns a few slaws. The dialogue and mythology are often hokey and cringeworthy (“May the force be with you”) and when not are hardly original (“It’s them, blast them!”) and George Lucas shows a racism and sexism unseen since Disney was room temperature, with one black man in the original trilogy (not counting Vader’s voice), and he is an opportunistic traitor, and no other human races bar whites, and aside from Leia and one other woman in power, all of the female characters are strippers or dancers.

That said, the character designs are phenomenally memorable by being really quite simple – Chewbacca’s walking carpet, clean white stormtroopers and the perfect villain in the glossy helmeted, all black Darth Vader, employing both David Prowse’s imposing figure and James Earl Jones’ mellifluous tones, no other character has so richly deserved their own theme tune.

hough the plot has many aspects to it you never lose track, and any scenes of dialogue and exposition are soon broken up with spaceship battles, light sabre action or new and interesting discoveries in the mythology. A New Hope is easily the most stand-alone film, with no initial setup required (other than rogue paragraphs travelling through space) and a satisfying ending only hinting at a sequel, but the Empire Strikes Back is widely regarded as the superior film, with the inclusion of diminutive Jedi master Yoda and jetpacking bounty hunter Boba Fett, two of the most enduring and iconic characters from the franchise, yet who only have a small fraction of the screen time between them. It also features that great twist ending, now sadly ruined by endless parodies and misquotes. Episode 6, the Return of the Jedi, is the weakest of the three, though there is no shortage of spectacle with the giant Rancor, the Sarlacc Pit and a landspeeder chase through the dense woodland of Endor. It is everything else of Endor that is the problem – the teddy-like Ewoks in particular – that explain the negativity, for if such crude creatures as these cuddly toys can take out the stormtroopers, why has everyone been so worried this whole time? That, and C3PO being heralded as a deity and the Emperor’s flawed plan to kill the rebels – if you’re leaking a plan to send the rebels somewhere deliberately so you can kill them, why not send them to a place where you don’t keep the shield generator for your new planet-destroying Death Star? – deters from the lofty levels of the earlier films.

And so we arrive at the new trilogy. As a child of 12 I must admit I really enjoyed these films, so in some aspect George Lucas succeeded. The Phantom Menace was the most anticipated movie of all time, and there was no possible way it would ever live up to expectations (something I hope is not suffered by the Hobbit, the Dark Knight Rises or the Avengers later this year) so instead Lucas aimed the film not at the hoards of devoted fans he already had, but at newcomers and younglings. The fans would flock in anyway, their money was guaranteed, if not their approval, and which is more important to a movie studio? But, in a vain attempt to pander to the fans, attempts were made to tie the prequels in closely with the originals, and to expand upon the elements most popular in the older films.

And so it is that we see Jake Lloyd’s infant Vader Anakin building C3PO and playing with a child alarmingly similar to Greedo, we discover the stormtroopers are all clones of Boba Ferr’s father Jango, Jabba starts the podrace and Chewbacca pops up with Yoda in Revenge of the Sith. It’s a wonder we aren’t shown Han and Chewie thrown into detention together at school.

Across the trilogy there are some astounding set pieces – the adrenaline fuelled, Greg Proops’ commentated pod race, Attack of the Clones’ gladiatorial battle and Obi-Wan’s light sabre battle with four-sabred robot General Grievous being particular highlights, but too much emphasis is placed on the politics of the Trade Federation and the soppy romance of Anakin and Padme that has no place in a Star Wars film. That, and too many mysteries are uncovered – no-one cared that the force comes from midichlorians in the blood stream and Vader’s rise and conversion to the dark side was more effective before every detail was explained and we weren’t shown him as an annoyingly precocious brat or lovesick teenager.

Some performances are terrible – both Lloyd and his grown up counterpart Hayden Christensen are wooden and aggravating, especially when placed alongside Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Samuel L. Jackson, and even Natalie Portman gives an uncharacteristically poor performance. The final film, Revenge of the Sith, is also disappointingly, but inevitably, bleak, lumbered with having to set up the gloom and oppression at the start of A New Hope. This sense of inevitability ruins the final battles between Obi-Wan and Anakin and Yoda and the Emperor, for we know everyone involved will survive, as they all appear in the original trilogy.

But however poor it seems in comparison, the new trilogy still contains films far superior, and more entertaining, than a lot else out there, and therefore should still be viewed, if a little less frequently.

This post could have gone on a lot longer – I haven’t even mentioned Jar Jar, Han shooting first, Luke Skywalker, Peter Cushing’s most evil face in the world™ or the glorious key to the series, R2D2, but I’m guessing no-one is actually still reading this, and I’ve still got over 30 posts to write, so I think I’ll call it a day.

A New Hope: Choose film 8/10

The Empire Strikes Back: Choose film 9/10

Return of the Jedi: Choose film 7/10

The Phantom Menace: Choose film 6/10

Attack of the Clones: Choose film 5/10

Revenge of the Sith: Choose film 6/10

In This World

Posted on January 25, 2012 by jaycluitt

Michael Winterbottom’s semi-documentary uses a novel approach in setting up and suggesting situations, then filming the reactions of Pakistani refugees at Shamshatoo Refugee Camp, Pakistan in February 2002, blurring the line between fact and fiction. We Follow Jamal and Enayat, a boy and his uncle, as they attempt to seek asylum to London, being smuggled across borders packed behind orange crates or hiding amongst sheep on a truck, but more information would have been appreciated on the details of why they are seeking asylum when their other countrymen aren’t, and some shots – a cow being brutally sacrificed, twitching as its life is forcibly removed – should have been omitted.

Choose life 2/10

Dog Day Afternoon

Posted on January 15, 2012 by jaycluitt

Based on a true story, Sidney Lumet’s tale of two inept criminals (Al Pacino and John Cazale reuniting after the Godfather 1 & 2) whose attempted robbery of a Brooklyn bank descends into chaos once the police, the media and the general public get wind of their plans. Pacino gives arguably one of his best performances – without resorting to ‘shouty Al’ – as he struggles to handle a situation completely out of his control, that is only ever going to become more so, and it’s refreshing to see a heist film with a couple of average Joes doing the robbing, as unlike Ocean’s Eleven or Inside Man, these guys have no plan, no masks, hell they even use their real names. Lumet excels when restricted to small locations (see 12 Angry Men), and here is no different, with almost the entire film taking place in and around the bank, as Pacino’s Sonny becomes a hit with the crowds gathering around the crime scene. Heading straight into the plot – Lumet rarely bothers with much initial back story – the direction is tight and entirely to the point, as every scene helps to progress the story further, or reveals a character detail previously unknown. There are some nice comedic touches – a bank teller hostage receives a call from her husband, asking what time she thinks she will be finished there, and when Sonny asks Cazale’s borderline psychotic Sal what country he wants to flee to, Sal replies “Wyoming,” and look out for Lance Henrikssen as FBI agent Murphy in one of his first film roles.

Choose film 8/10

Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

Although at times laughable now, back in 1931 James Whale’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic horror may well have been truly terrifying. Everybody knows the story; a mad scientist and his hunchbacked assistant rob some graves and, with the aid of a handy lightning bolt, create life in a giant, shambling monster, who eventually escapes his castle prison and is hunted down by a screaming mob with pitchforks and torches. This sense of inevitability is what lets the film down, and the limited effects available 70 years ago makes the film pale in comparison to however you can picture it in your imagination. Boris Karloff (replaced with a large ‘?’ in the opening credits for maximum levels of mystery) is brilliant as the monster, displaying childlike innocence in a giant, rigid, wordless performance that sees him throwing a young girl into a river to see if she’ll float, yet remains the victim in this tale.

The sequel picks up at the exact end of the first film, but is not encumbered by knowledge of the plot, or at least not for me, as all I knew was that at some point a female monster was created with a big black Marge Simpson hairdo with a white streak through it. The film uses a nice reminding device – the story is being told by original author Mary Shelley to her husband ad Lord Byron – which although takes you out of the film, adequately reminds of the climax of the previous picture. There are some cringe worthy scenes, most notably a blind man teaching the monster how to speak reminiscent of the worst scene of Terminator 2, with John Connor teaching Arnie how to be cool. The bizarre scene where Dr. Frankenstein’s former mentor Dr. Pretorius reveals the miniature people he has created in jars, including a king, a queen and a mermaid, is just insane, and Pretorius himself is a perfect combination of Doc Brown and Grand Moff Tarkin.

Frankenstein: Choose life 5/10

Bride of Frankenstein: Choose life 4/10

The Dollars Trilogy

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

Widely regarded as the first spaghetti western (actually 1959s Il Terrore dell’Olkahoma), Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is at least the first important one, birthing the greatest western icon since John Wayne in Clint Eastwood’s drifter, immortalised by a hat, beard, poncho and a squint. Before Leone, Eastwood was known best for his TV western Rawhide (the theme tune of which is sung at the country and western bar in the Blues Brothers) , but this shot him into not just the Hollywood A-List, but into the pantheon of American icons as the nameless cowboy out to make a profit from a small town heading into ruin. Run by two warring families, the Baxters and the Rojos, Eastwood sees a unique opportunity (unique that is unless you’ve seen Yojimbo, from which this borrows heavily) and sets about pitting the two families against one another. Leone’s direction, only cutting a shot when he has to, combined with Ennio Morricone’s whistling score and the spectacular cinematography of a barren, bleached landscape under a harsh, unforgiving sun makes for a spectacular western steeped in both American characters and European style.

Inconceivably, Fistful’s lesser yet still unmissable semi-sequel For A Few Dollars More didn’t make it onto the list, but I watched it again anyway. This time, Eastwood’s identically attired yet still nameless drifter finds that it may be beneficial to team up with Lee Van Cleef’s rival bounty hunter to catch their latest target. Look out for Klaus Kinski as a hunchbacked member of the gang they’re chasing.

The closer to this trilogy is widely regarded as one of the best films in the world, and currently holds the number 4 spot of IMDb’s top 250. From the opening score, undoubtedly one of the greatest in cinematic history that would be my ringtone were it not Reservoir Dogs’ Little Green Bag, you can tell you’re in for something special. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly follows, as the title suggests, three men, whose lives converge around a loot of gold buried in a grave. Eastwood’s Blondie is debatably the ‘Good’, a bounty hunter returning criminals for reward, then shooting the noose when they’re hanged so he can collect it again in the next town. Eli Wallach’s Tuco is the ‘Bad’, one such vagrant Blondie hands in, and Lee Van Cleef is given short shrift as the ‘Ugly’, as hired killer Angel Eyes, who always goes through with a job he’s been paid for. Unlike the previous two films, this is not the Clint Eastwood show, and if anything Wallach, the most interesting and entertaining character, is given the most screen time as the three set out to torture, beat and murder the others for a shot at the gold. Although the plot gets lost a little in the middle, when the US Civil War takes over, but by the three-way standoff at the end any flaws are forgiven. It’s the kind of scene that just doesn’t work on paper (shot of eyes, then a gun, then feet, eyes again, repeat for 5 minutes) but is unequalled on screen, and the ending is perfect.

A Fistful of Dollars: Choose film 8/10

For a Few Dollars More: Choose film 7/10

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Choose film 9/10

Friday Night Lights

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

I’ve heard before that this is one of the better sports movies and, though I know very little about American football (or women’s rugby, as I like to call it), the games shown here were well shot and captivating. But, a good sports movie is still just a sports movie, and is therefore about nothing. I didn’t play sport in school. I dabbled in cricket a little, very briefly played football but then gave up when I saw the little benefit that could be achieved with the maximum effort put in. So instead I studied hard, did my homework and did OK in school, and from there went to college and university on my academic qualities, got a job and now make a living. I’m not a natural genius, I worked hard to get what I have, so when a film tells me that these kids playing football aren’t the brightest, and their only way out of their backwards hick town is via throwing a bag of air across a line or between two posts or whatever the hell they do over there, I just have to sit back and try not to throw everything to hand at my TV. I don’t care how committed the rest of your town is to a game, and it is just a game after all, if you don’t have yourself a backup plan when you’re relying on not damaging that oh-so-fragile body of yours to secure you’re future, you’re even dumber than anyone could have predicted.

Anyway, rant over, as you can guess, I’m no sports guy, so good luck to this film. Billy Bob Thornton is the football coach to a high school football team in a town full of meat sacks that shuts down every Friday night come game time. Every man, woman and inbred child in this town has an opinion they’re only too willing to share as to how the game should be played, and generally a different one after to the event as to how it should have been played. Local radio shows take call-ins from fans, on suggesting that they’re “doing too much learnin’ in this school,” and the kids themselves are under more pressure than is healthy from all around, particularly in the case of Garrett Hedlund’s Don Billingsley, whose father was a star in his day, yet Don is playing third string (I think this is a bad thing). Meanwhile current star quarterback Boobie Miles enjoys a celebrity lifestyle and just has to show up to training, with all the plays centred on him, so guess which players going to receive an unrecoverable injury? This true story from director Peter Berg, helmer of least anticipated film of 2012 Battleship, follows the Permian Panthers, for that is their team name, from the play-offs to the final, and though the outcome of the final match isn’t inherently obvious, everything else in this film is.

Choose life 4/10

sex, lies and videotape

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

The first spoken word in this film is “garbage”. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I don’t quite get the big deal of this piece. Centring around four main characters, Andie Macdowell’s prudent homemaker Ann, her promiscuous sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), Ann’s lawyer husband John (Peter Gallagher) who is sleeping with both of them, and his old college friend Graham (James Spader), this plays out slowly and plainly, with plot points signposted miles in advance. Graham hasn’t seen John for 9 years, but has moved back into town and needs somewhere to stay temporarily, so crashes at theirs. He seems a little off, a little antisocial and distanced from the world, and when Ann goes to visit him in his new apartment, she discovers he has a ‘personal project’ that involves him videotaping women discussing their sexual experiences, and occasionally masturbating. It seems the only way the impotent Graham can become aroused is via a camera, hence this rather literal stockpiled wank bank. The film shows how powerful a camera can be, with the subjects being more willing to open up when staring into a lens than someone else’s face, and Spader’s performance is riveting and genuinely unsettling at times, but watching Macdowell trying to act is painful, and not enough unexpected occurs.