A Night to Remember

Posted on June 21, 2012 by jaycluitt

You’re probably wondering how long it’s going to take me, in this review, to mention a certain other film from 1997, directed by James Cameron, that follows a similar plot to this film, and I’ll tell you that it’ll take exactly 48 words for me to mention Titanic. If you’ve never seen A Night to Remember, but are a fan of Titanic (as indeed you should be, for it is a much better film than it’s cool to admit), then you need to start paying more credit towards Night‘s director Roy Ward Baker, for it is from his 1958 picture that Cameron stole most of his film.

Now I’m not saying Cameron stole everything, for if there’s one thing Night is missing, it’s main characters to follow through the events. Instead we follow various groups of people – Second Officer Lightoller (Kenneth More), some steerage passengers, a young 1st class couple (Honor Blackman!) – throughout the night of April 14th, 1912. This lack of focusing on a few people leaves you caring for the characters less, in the same way you didn’t care that much when Fabrizzio got hit with the funnel, here its no bother when the same fate is met by other people we’ve been following. This gives Night a more procedural, re-enactment-like tone, not helped by the generally unmoving performances that leave you cold and distant.Had I never seen Titanic, chances are I’d have been far more impressed with this film, but the remake (that’s essentially what it is) has shown that almost every shot can be composed and recorded at least a little better. The fact that it was made almost 40 years later helped drastically, as the technology did not yet exist to encompass the full scope of Cameron’s vision, but the fact that it does now has left Night a little obsolete.

I found myself mentally checking off every scene that Cameron stole – the steerage dance number, lavish 1st class dining scene, the soot-caked stokers escaping the closing doors in the engine rooms, playing football with ice on the deck, the dining cart gently rolling down an increasingly listing dining room, the steward appalled at the passengers damaging White Star Line property, the musicians disbanding then reforming to play as the boat sinks. The drunken chef even looks the same, and the shot of Murdoch turning his head away in shame, unable to stand watching the boat sink from his wrongfully claimed lifeboat seat is identical! I understand that a lot of these scenes help to set the atmosphere aboard the boat and couldn’t really be avoided, but Cameron should either have admitted he was remaking, paid some form of acknowledgement to the previous film, or at least changed the shot compositions. Mr. Andrews, the boat’s designer, even at one point gives a young couple – who may as well be called Jack and Rose – details on how to survive whilst he’s stood next to the clock on the mantelpiece, and the ‘unsinkable’ Molly Brown, here played by Tucker McGuire but more famously by Kathy Bates in Titanic, vehemently demands that her lifeboat turn around to help drowning survivors.

Based on the book by Walter Lord, and using the real-life experiences of survivors, the film paints an effective picture of the differences between the classes – made particularly clear when some steerage passengers attempt to flee the waters, but recoil in shock at the extent of the upper class facilities. After some initial scene-setting and the launch of the boat, we pick up the action on the night of the 14th, as the supposedly unsinkable liner receives warnings of ice in the area. As opposed to after 90 minutes, the immortal line of “Iceberg, dead ahead” is heard after just half an hour. After the boat has struck and a 300-foot long gash has been haphazardly carved into the hull, events play out largely in real time, and a great deal of time is spent on the engine rooms and the crew’s efforts to contact the nearest boats, of which the Carpathia, a good 58 miles and 4 hours away, is the only one to respond. There are some nice examples of the typical British stiff upper lip – a man putting on a brave face as he waves goodbye to the wife and children he knows he’ll never see again – but there are all in all far too many scenes of the crew trying to convince disbelieving passengers of the seriousness of the situation, to the point where I got so annoyed with some of the passengers that I hoped they’d stay on the boat and attempt to sit it out.

Whilst occasionally moving – the lifeboats forced to listen to the screams of the drowning – there is little reason to watch this now Titanic has made it redundant. In it’s day it was probably a much better film, but alas now it has been surpassed.Choose life 7/10

The Ides of March

Posted on June 18, 2012 by jaycluitt

Ryan Gosling is Stephen Meyers, assistant campaign manager to Governor Morris (George Clooney, who also directed and co-wrote), who is currently locked in a battle with opposing democratic candidate Senator Pullman to win the Ohio Democratic Primary and eventually win the nomination as the next potential president. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti are their campaign managers, Marisa Tomei the Times reporter out for inside information, Evan Rachel Wood a young intern with her eye on Gosling’s big man on campus, and Jeffrey Wright is the senator both sides are eager to please.

In the past few years there have been a number of talky, ‘important’ films with predominantly male all-star ensemble casts, with generally well written scripts dealing with issues whose effects can have life or death ramifications. From The Company Men, Moneyball, Margin Call and Wall Street 2, they all have something else in common – I haven’t seen them yet. It’s not that I don’t want to see them (Moneyball and Margin Call are in my LoveFilm queue and The Company Men is sat on DVD form on my shelf – Wall Street 2 will take me a while as first I must get past a hatred for Shia LaBeouf) it’s just that I don’t have many opportunities to go to the cinema, so I use them for seeing movies with a certain sense of spectacle, ones that will make the better use of a gigantic screen and that, should I happen to miss a line of dialogue from a fellow patron’s ringing phone, screaming child or popcorn-chomp, I can still follow the plot amidst the explosions and giant robots. The more dialogue-heavy, less action-y films are saved for DVD. This even applied to such masterpieces as The Social Network – I saw Toy Story 3 instead. Please don’t have a go at me about this. Rest assured that if I had the time (and the money) to see the other films at the cinema too, then I would, and there have been difficult decisions made in the past as to what must be sacrificed for a smaller screen some months down the line.

And so it is that it’s taken me a little while to watch The Ides of March, though it was well reviewed, I’m a fan of 5 of the principle players (Gosling, Clooney, Hoffman, Giamatti & Tomei) and The West Wing has made me at least interested in the ins and outs of American politics, more so than I am in the British trivialities. Plus, my girlfriend could be described as being more than a fan of Gosling (I’m still receiving backlash from my rant on The Notebook).

Now this isn’t a bad film, but I got the feeling that every actor involved was retreading ground they’d walked down many a time before. They all performed well – though Gosling goes a bit glary-eyed on a couple of occasions – but no-one really showed anything new. This is kind of a testament to the acting talents on display. Nobody does cynical schlubs like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, but they’re settled into a well formed groove, and who is Clooney’s smoothly persuasive senator than a slightly more ambitious Ryan Bingham from Up in the Air? Only Gosling gives something of a fresh performance, but only in terms of him being something of an impressionable blank slate of contradictions. His Stephen has supposedly worked on more campaigns by the time he’s 30 than most of his peers ten years his senior, yet it sends him reeling when he discovers that the world of politics is more than occasionally played with cards to the chest and the odd stacked deck.

At times the plot goes a bit overly dramatic. The outcome from who is the presidential candidate already has the potential for phenomenal consequences, yet the scriptwriters felt the need to show the devastating effects this can also have on individual people, with the fate of Evan Rachel Wood’s intern Molly being particularly distressing. It hits the point home, but does so in too severe a manner. I feel that there was greater scope for exploring the characters of Gosling and Clooney being two sides of the same coin twenty years apart. Had equal time been spent on their stories, rather than instead focusing more on Gosling – who I never really believed in as a masterful campaign manager sought after by everyone – then this could have been more interesting. The whole poster campaign was set up to show them, and their freakishly symmetrical faces, as being the same person anyway, yet this seemed completely lacking in the film.

Were this the first film I’d seen with most of these actors in I’d no doubt have been floored by the incredible performances on display. I don’t mean to take anything away from them – they are all consummate professionals who are incredible at what they do and I look forward to seeing them do it again – it’s just I’ve seen them all do it before.

Choose life 7/10

Once Upon A Time In China

Posted on June 16, 2012 by jaycluitt

It’s probably not a good thing that the only Jet Li movies I’d seen prior to this film are his most American ones – Lethal Weapon 4, Unleashed, The Mummy 3 and The Expendables, so his notoriety as a master of martial arts has been more than a little lost on me, as though he gets to show his stuff in most of these films, they aren’t built around him and he is far from the star. There are several other Li films on the List, including Hero and Enter the Dragon, and I hope that they aren’t as much of a mess as this one.

Li plays Master Wong Fei-Hung, who is put in charge of organising the local non-military men into a local militia to defend China if they are attacked whilst the army is busy elsewhere. This initial premise is soon skipped to see Wong and his rag-tag band of one-note misfits – the fat one, the big-toothed one – become involved in a hectic plot involving a mob-run protection racket and the westernisation of China, as the English influence is felt through weaponry, religion, clothing and cutlery.

The film’s saving graces are the cast and the action. Li proves himself as the martial arts legend he is regarded as, and the various fighting scenes are, mostly, memorable and entertaining. One near the end, a one-on-one fought almost entirely on long, weak ladders, is particularly good, and has a nice payoff too. The moment with Li and the bullet took it a bit far for me, as did the occasional uses of wire-fu to allow characters to jump an awful lot further than they should. These artists are capable of great things with their limbs alone, so whenever stage effects are used to enhance them I’m always taken out of the film, as it shows the stars as mere mortals like the rest of us.

There is far more comedy here than I was expecting too, on an almost farcical level, and many times the scenes seem to be set-up for a fight or a larger, recurring joke that never happens. A scene where a character finds himself with an arm and a leg needlessly plastered could have led to a fight scenes where the casts were used both as his hindrance and advantage, but alas he just runs off and it’s never mentioned again. Similarly, a photograph posing culminating in a burst of flame that ends up roasting a pet bird could have been used later to vanquish an attacker with an unexpected fireball, but again no.

The moments of culture clash comedy – Wong encountering a fork – are nice, but there isn’t much here that’s new, and by the end (the film is well over 2 hours) even the action has gotten almost boring.

Choose life 5/10

Scream 4

Posted on June 11, 2012 by jaycluitt

I wrote in one of my first posts aaaaaaaaaaages ago that I was really looking forward to this film, as I loved Scream and Scream 2, and enjoyed Scream 3 enough to justify owning it, but when the reviews came out and Scream 4 was deemed something of a failure I became lukewarm to the idea, and have put off watching it until recently. I went in with fairly low expectations, which is probably the best approach to take if you want to enjoy this film.

The problem with the Scream franchise, and indeed with pretty much every horror series, is that it tells the same story every time. Yes, a new batch of barely-characterised nubile young hotties is brought in to be creatively slaughtered, and at least with these films the killer changes each time, but the motive always seems to be the same and it’s always someone you’re not supposed to expect, meaning you work out who the killer couldn’t possibly be, and then you’ve solved the mystery.

It’s not difficult to see why the surviving leads from the series, Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette, have returned, seeing as none of them has had a very successful venture since the last movie, and the likes of Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin and Adam Brody were probably only too willing to work with Wes Craven, the legend behind the original trilogy as well as A Nightmare On Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes and The Last House On The Left.

The plot sees Sidney Prescott (Campbell), the key surviving victim from the series, as she returns back to her home town of Woodsboro 15 years after the original murders to promote her new book, where Dewey (Arquette) is now sheriff and married to Gale Weathers (Cox). At times it’s more than a little awkward to see Cox and Arquette working together after their divorce, as they’ve lost that spark of chemistry present in the earlier films. Coinciding with Sidney’s return, a new killer is murdering random victims, and seems to be doing so by following the rules set by modern horror multi-sequels. This time amongst the knife-fodder is Sidney’s niece Jill (Roberts) and her friends, as well as movie nerds and audience cyphers Charlie and Robbie (Culkin and Erik Knudsen).

Seeing as the antagonists murder weapon is a big knife, the kills here can never be all that inventive. It’s more a case of where the killer jumps out from and who is behind the mask more than how will everyone die (hint: by being stabbed). The film has now surpassed it’s previous level of satire and whip-smart semi-parody by becoming overly self-deprecating, with the multi-layered opening being a prime example of how silly it has become, and how little the film cares about the kind of emotional attachment the audience is willing to put into the characters and plot. The ending makes sense within the film’s universe, but only because it’s frightfully similar to that of the three films before it.

If you enjoyed the previous films, and heaven knows I did, then chances are you know what you’re getting yourself in for here, and won’t necessarily be disappointed. If, however, you’re looking for the series to get a kick start and head off in a new direction, you’ll find it sadly lacking. This was intended to start another trilogy, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Choose life 4/10

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror

Posted on June 7, 2012 by jaycluitt

There are at least six variations on the Dracula myth on the List, and probably hundreds that aren’t. I’m ashamed to admit that the only other vampire movies I’d seen prior to this (other than Les Vampires, which doesn’t really count) are a half watched Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Twilight, which I did not choose to watch and am still trying to scrub from my retinas. And yet, though my life has been surprisingly devoid of vampire fiction (I’ve never even seen an episode of Buffy, or an instalment of the Underworld or Blade films), I’m still well versed in the vampire mythology, as indeed is everyone else. It seems one is almost born knowing that vampire’s transform into bats, suck your blood and can be vanquished with a stake in the heart, exposure to sunlight or too much garlic on their pizza.

This version is one of the earliest vampire films, having been released in 1922 and directed by German silent director F. W. Murnau. It follows the traditional Dracula beats (though the vampire is named Count Orlok as this is an unofficial retelling), and stars Max Schreck as the titular creature of the night.

Jonathan Hutter (Gustav von Wangerheim), a clerk from the town of Bremen in Germany, travels to Transylvania (ominous thunder roll) to complete some legal paperwork with the mysterious Count Orlok, who wishes to buy a house in Bremen. Though there are many clues as to what is in store for Hutter, including terrified locals speaking of nocturnal spirits and his creepy, Orlok-controlled boss hinting that the journey will cause him pain and cost him blood, Hutter merrily laughs everything off as ludicrous superstition and hokum, until he arrives at the castle and meets the Count, who keeps unusual sleeping hours and sleeps in a coffin in the basement.

Most of this film is predictable if you know the traditional Dracula legend, but what makes it truly memorable is Schreck’s performance. His distinctive appearance – all pale skin, pointed ears, giant eyebrows over sunken eyes and clawed hands on arms stuck firmly to his sides – sticks in the mind, and his presence is greatly missed whenever he’s off screen. Scenes of Orlok’s stark shadow descending on a prone figure, or his body, stiff as a board, rising from a coffin, stick firmly in the memory, and at the end of the film, when he is staring, unmoving, from a window, is genuinely disconcerting and more than a little terrifying.

It’s unfortunate then that the score for the film is more than a little insane. It kicks off with a cartoonish plinky-plonk tune over the supposedly doom-laden title cards detailing “Nosferatu! That name alone can chill the blood!”, and later the score goes crazy when Hutter is merely reading a book. Also some scenes are let down by a distinct lack of quality in the print. I understand that the film was made 90 years ago, but the scene in which Hutter is discovering bite marks on his neck is ruined by the fact that the bite marks are not even slightly visible on his bright white skin.

The ending is a little hurried, though by that time I was starting to get bored anyway. I was also surprised by how little the character of Van Helsing had to do with the plot, as I’d always thought he was pretty integral to the story, yet he turns up from nowhere halfway through as an expert on vampires in nature.

All in all, this is a good example of an early telling of a classic horror, that unfortunately has become very dated since its release. I’m sure that one of the more recent versions on the list – 1931’s Bela Lugosi starring Dracula or the 1958 Hammer version starring Christopher Lee – will be much better.

Choose life 6/10

The Queen

Posted on June 4, 2012 by jaycluitt

Well it’s a bank holiday this weekend over here in Blighty, because our reigning monarch has succeeded in not dying for 60 years on the throne, and doesn’t deem any of her offspring worthy enough to take her crown whilst she has enough life in her hands to grip onto it, so what better way of celebrating than by watching The Queen?

Diana, Princess of Wales, divorced wife of the Queen Elizabeth II’s son Prince Charles and mother of her grandchildren Princes William and Harry, is killed in a car accident in August, 1997, causing uproar throughout the UK, not least for the royal family and the recently elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen). In the aftermath, the royal family take a period of mourning in their Scottish residence, whilst Blair remains in London to almost take advantage of the situation.

First off, the performances in this film are mostly excellent. There was never any doubt that Helen Mirren would make a perfect choice as QE2 (the monarch, not the boat), and she gives a repressed, buttoned down portrayal of a woman few know personally. Sheen, too, is at his best when playing a real person (see also The Damned United, Frost Vs. Nixon, half of his CV) and James Cromwell is good as the Queen’s cantankerous husband Prince Philip. It is only really Alex Jennings as Charles who goes too far. The rest of the cast limit how much of an impersonation they are making of their subjects, whereas Jennings tries too hard to mimic Charles’ more exaggerated mannerisms and persona already expanded upon in the media, as though he’s performing a sketch show impression rather than showing just enough for us to know who he is.

This is the kind of film that lives and dies by it’s script. The West Wing covered a similar theme on a weekly basis, and succeeded not just because of the stellar cast and direction, but mainly due to Aaron Sorkin’s masterful way with words. Here we have a good cast and a slightly above average director in Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dangerous Liaisons), but the script is written by Peter Morgan, whose CV is littered with other mediocre biographies lifted only by acting talents (The Last King of Scotland). Had this film had a punchier script, with some rat-a-tat dialogue and an entertaining turn of phrase, it’d be a much better piece. As it is, the story isn’t terrible, but it is largely forgettable.

Being English, you’d think I’d be well versed in the goings on around such a recent major occurrence, even if I was only 10 at the time, but alas I’ve never known an awful lot about the events both before and after Diana’s death. Much that occurs in the film came as a surprise to me. I’d obviously heard of Diana, dubbed the People’s Princess by Blair, but knew very little of her exploits or the reasonings behind her tabloid headlines. I’ve never paid much attention to the royal family, to be honest. It’s not that I’m anti-monarchy, it’s just that I really don’t care about them. The most I’ve seen of the jubilee celebrations was some highlights I caught whilst channel surfing this evening, and were we not having family over to visit I’m sure I’d have been writing posts or watching something off the List, so would have missed it completely. This film has done little to nothing to increase my interest in the royals, though it has provided an insight behind the closed doors of their world.

The movie seems to take a fairly pro-Blair stance, as he seems to be the most considerate character in the film, especially when compared to his far more callous spin doctor Alastair Campbell (Mark Bazeley). The relationship between the Queen and Blair is nicely played out – she kicks off his first day in power by reminding him that he is her 10th Prime Minister, with the first one being Winston Churchill, so he has a fair amount to live up to. There are some nice comedic touches – in her death, Diana is still proving an annoyance to the royals, including the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms, Helena Bonham Carter’s character in The King’s Speech), whose funeral arrangements Diana has pilfered. It’s very bizarre to see the Queen calling someone Mummy, and even more so to see this usually confident figure spending much of the film deliberating and worrying, as she finds herself in the middle of a major royal event with complete and utter media coverage.

Not much of the film has stayed with me after watching, other than Mirren performance, which is especially spot on during the Queen’s address. I’ve had a little royal history filled in for me, but it was never anything I really cared about anyway.

Choose life 6/10

Through A Glass Darkly

Posted on May 29, 2012 by jaycluitt

I rarely watch a film I literally know nothing about, and I must say it’s an unsettling experience. I’ve witnessed people walking up to a cinema and asking “What’s playing today?” in shock and awe. “How can these people not know about the film they’re going to see? Who are these people? Have they left the house just to see any film, rather than planning, sometimes weeks in advance, to go and see a specific film?” are often thoughts that run around my head and occasionally out of my mouth as the clerk at Odeon reels off a list of the current blockbusters and horrors for the third time to a pair of elderly women in front of me in the queue, clearly looking for something starring Clark Gable. On occasion, and as happened recently with Time Regained, I will pause a movie I know nothing about some way into it, to have a quick check online or in the 1001 book, to give me some idea of what I’m supposed to be watching. If I do this, it’s not generally a good sign, as a) I’m as yet unsure of what the film is about, and b) I’m clearly bored. This was not an option with Ingmar Bergman’s Through A Glass Darkly though, for I watched it streaming via LoveFilm, and I find that if I pause it for more than a quick toilet break, the damn thing refuses to load unless it plays from the beginning, so I had to sit it out and find out what I was watching afterwards.

We open with four people swimming gleefully towards a deserted island. Amongst them is Karin (Harriet Andersson), who suffers from some kind of mental illness that she doesn’t know is incurable, but her father David (Gunnar Bjornstrand) and husband/doctor Martin (Max von Sydow), both also present, do. David is a writer of novels, who has been away recently and plans to leave again after finishing his current book. Also along for the trip is Karin’s 17 year old younger brother Minus (Lars Passgard). These four make up the only characters in the film, which takes place entirely on and around the island, yet the film never really feels claustrophobic, just a little muddled.

Karin’s illness leaves her with no desires to sleep with her husband, yet she has acute hearing, leaving her to wander around the house late at night (pretty much no-one ever sleeps in this film) and at one point she seems to reach an intense state of ecstasy whilst alone and unprovoked.

All four people have fairly strained relationships with one another, especially the children with their father, who is self centred and has a robotic detachment of emotion towards his daughter’s potentially fatal condition, so much so that he is morbidly interested in documenting her deterioration. His son Minus feels especially distant, feeling that he is completely unable to talk to his father.

Frustratingly, the film offers only the minimal amount of closure, as Karin’s condition worsens to critical levels. I’m always impressed when directors overcome extreme limitations – usually set by themselves – for example here with the restricted location and cast quartet, but I feel that a great deal more could have been done. Director Ingmar Bergman has many films on the List, and this is only the second one I’ve watched. Winter Light disappointed me a little, but this was a definite improvement. Bergman seems to be one of the most notable directors of all time List-wise, and regularly comes up on many people’s greatest lists, so I’m looking forward to seeing some of his better works in the future.

Choose life 5/10

Invictus

Posted on May 28, 2012 by jaycluitt

South Africa, May 1994. Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) was released from prison 4 years ago, and has just been elected as the country’s president. Amidst a nation-wide racial clash, Mandela believes that the key to a united country could lie within the national rugby team, the Springboks, and their captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon).

Mandela’s plan, it seems, is for the Springboks – a team so despised by the black population that they instinctively root for whoever is playing against them, and who hadn’t been doing terribly well before Mandela got involved – to win the Rugby World Cup in less than a year’s time, though experts believe they’ll get no further than the quarter finals at best. The Springboks, with only one black player and a uniform of apartheid’s green and gold, find themselves in a position where their president wants them to be cheered on by the entire mixed nation, so embark on a PR campaign involving playing and teaching rugby to the poor black kids from the slums of the country. Going in, I thought his plan would have been to create a team comprised of 50% blacks and whites, thereby creating animosity as to whether the players were recruited for their skill or the colour of their skin, but in effect his plan was… nothing. Other than some inspirational speeches, standard marketing techniques, a slightly more intense training regime and an admirable cause, the aim seems to be just to will the team to win. Much like Million Dollar Baby, I could have done with some more time spent on the reasons behind the success, not simply showing it.

The subplot involving Mandela’s begrudgingly mixed race security team being forced to work together, eventually bonding over the rugby matches, was well played if predictable, but ably showed the success of the president’s plans. I’d have liked more time spent on Mandela as a person, maybe depicting his rise from prisoner to presidential candidate in an extremely racist country, as opposed to skipping through it in an all-too-brief opening montage. The man behind the title is hinted at – his broken family, way with the ladies and fondness for afternoon tea – but such a prolific, historical figures surely deserves a full biopic that doesn’t spend half it’s time on the rugby field. But then Eastwood’s recent biopic, J. Edgar, has received largely negative reviews, so there could be a reason for why he didn’t do the same here.

The closest the film comes to spectacle is in the rugby matches, and I’m no sports fan. Every modicum of emotion that can be wrought from the game has been, but those unfamiliar with it’s intricacies (I’m only just out of this category) could believe it to be simply about mid-pitch wrestling matches and kicking a ball between two posts.

Morgan Freeman has been trying to play Mandela for years, eventually getting the project off the ground with his Million Dollar Baby/Unforgiven director Clint Eastwood. He does a great job with the accent and the performance, but his casting was such an obvious choice that it dullens the impact. There is no-one else that could have portrayed the character better, and its doubtful that were someone else casting the film they’d’ve asked anyone else. If Freeman weren’t involved, the project probably never would have gone anywhere, and perhaps that’s how it should have been. Damon is good too, and it shows the notoriety of Eastwood as a director that Damon, one of the most outright and capable leading men working in Hollywood today, is willing to take a supporting role just to work with him.

Some plot points are clearly superfluous – much attention is put on Chester, the Springbok’s only black player, injuring his hamstring so he is unable to play a couple of matches – and far too much time is spent on the less interesting sports aspects over the far more captivating figurehead at the heart of the story.

Choose life 5/10

Last Tango in Paris

Posted on May 27, 2012 by jaycluitt

This is one of those films that I’ve often heard mentioned, but never knew anything about, other than it had Marlon Brando wearing a long camel coat, and some degree of nudity. This is true on both counts, though ‘some’ could be something of an understatement, as barely a scene goes by without flesh being exposed, love being made or pleasure being administered by a character to themselves.

Our leads are Paul (Brando) and Jeanne (Maria Schneider, at the time a somewhat inexperienced actress). After several near-meetings and glimpses on the street and in a bar, she goes to rent an apartment that he has already entered. Without knowing one another’s names, or anything else, the two engage in a burst of passionate, impromptu sex, before embarking on a relationship centred around the apartment, despite troubles in their personal lives and an obvious age gap of at least twenty years.

The most annoying thing about this film is the dialogue, specifically Brando’s. He’s not known for his eloquence with enunciation, and here he excels himself with his mumbling. If it weren’t for the subtitles in some of his earlier scenes, I wouldn’t have known he was talking at all, and my constant need to keep readjusting the volume become tiresome after only a short while, and downright infuriating at the end, for almost everyone else speaks at a normal level (though Schneider has a go at mumbling too) and the score is at an average volume, but I had no desire to annoy my neighbours by keeping the sound at a raised level. This made for a very unpleasant viewing experience.

The script is scarred with hideous puns and double entendres (“What’s that for?” “Your happiness, and my hap-penis”) as well as enough crudity and sex scenes to make anyone blush. The scene where Paul rubs butter into Jeanne’s anus before raping her from behind is beyond uncomfortable (especially for her), as is the fact that she stays after the deed is done. Later, he seduces her by saying that he wants to get a pig, have the pig fuck her and vomit on her, then she eats the vomit and the pig dies whilst fucking her. I have no idea what that means, nor do I have any desire to, and in fact I’d have been happier had that been part of the dialogue I hadn’t heard.

The relationship between the leads is interesting, as it provides something segregated from their everyday, troubled lives, but it seems to bring about more problems than it solves. Schneider is shot attractively – the camera all but making love to her exposed thigh in an early shot in a phone booth – and the colour palette is full of sumptuous browns and ochres. Jeanne’s subplot involving her boyfriend making a semi-documentary film about their relationship was distracting and irritatingly confusing.

I wasn’t sure what I’d make of this film before going in, and I’m only slightly more sure of what happened during it now that it’s thankfully over. If Brando, who admittedly is excellent, hadn’t been in the film I doubt it’d be on the List, and the audio problems, lack of a fully structured plot and unnecessary diversions make this more annoying than entertaining.

Choose life 4/10

Ring

Posted on May 26, 2012 by jaycluitt

I always seem to end up watching horror movies on my own. Very few of my friends, and definitely not my girlfriend, actually like scary films, and though my Dad likes a couple my Mum always essentially banned them from the house (Carrie is her least favourite film of all time, possibly the main reason my Dad still has it on video back at their house). And so it was that I ended up watching Ring, the Japanese 1998 original, alone. It’s subtitled, which rules out the only people I know that would have been willing to watch it with me, but as I was expecting something thoroughly disturbing, bordering on terrifying, I made sure to watch it first thing on a bright and sunny Saturday morning. I even left a curtain open to stream in some sunlight, just not the one that gives glare on the screen.

I’ve seen the remarkably successful Gore Verbinski US remake of this film and found it thoroughly underwhelming and forgettable, so much so that going in I couldn’t really remember much about it, other than the basic plot and at some point it involved a well, so I was actually largely looking forward to this viewing, to see what all the fuss was about.

The premise is delightfully simple – there’s an unmarked videotape that, after you watch it you receive a phone call, and exactly 7 days later you die. A group of friends watched the video a week ago from the start of the film, and they all die, with no cause of death. Two were even found in a car locked from the inside, their faces similarly locked in a mask of terror. The aunt of one of these victims is Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) a newspaper journalist working on a story about the tape. Believing the story, she sets out to discover the truth. That point right there is where I get annoyed with the plot. I know traditionally the characters in horror films aren’t always the brightest bulbs in the box, but this is ridiculous. Reiko believes that if someone watches the tape, they will die in seven days, so when she discovers a mysterious, unmarked tape found in the youth’s cabin, she gleefully sits down and watches it, then takes it with her and shows it to her ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada), thereby damning him as well. She even makes him a copy! I’d understand if she was depicted as sceptical or downright disbelieving, but from the start she seems genuinely on board with the idea that a video can kill you. Oh, and it’s not that big of a spoiler to say that she leaves it around the house for her young son to find and watch too; now that’s good parenting. I’m still not sure why, at any point in the film, no-one took a claw hammer to the video and smashed it to bits, as had this been done directly after Ryuji had seen it, the outcome would have been roughly the same, but without the need for any future work.

The video itself is quite disconcerting; a series of seemingly random images and clips of a girl combing her hair in a mirror, writing characters rearranging themselves, people crawling around on the floor, a blinking eye, the aforementioned well and a man standing by a large body of water with a hood over his head, pointing. The grainy footage and eerie soundtrack add to the feeling of discomfort, but it was nowhere near as disturbing as I was expecting. In fact, and this may be because of my immunisation by dumbed down, mainstream US horrors, I was actually disappointed that the film wasn’t more disturbing. There is a rising sense of dread throughout, but it’s not until a scene near the end that this comes to a head, and the only really scary image, the weird overly bulging eye from the disc cover, is briefly glimpsed. The point at which some characters revealed they were privy to psychic powers also took me out of the film a great deal.

I foolishly watched this film on a morning when I was expecting a phone call, and sure enough about an hour in the call came, but I did not jump out of my skin or cower in terror as I thought I might, but it did raise the question as to how many people out there have received a call mere moments after the film has finished, just like after those that watch the video in the film? Chances are there are dozens, if not hundreds of people out there who have experienced this, and, for a little while at least, have maybe feared for their lives. That’s the great thing about the premise; once you’ve watched the video, there’s not a lot you can do about what’s going to happen. It’s a fear of the inevitable. There is no killer, not of this world anyway, so there’s no bargaining, no reasoning, few would believe you if you asked for help and there’s nothing they could do anyway.

A lot is done with a little in the film, with almost no special effects and most of the film being characters worrying or performing an All The President’s Men style investigation into the tape. The conclusion though is hurried and uses a hastily arrived at, unproven theory that happens to fit the one scenario in the film, yet is taken as the only logical solution. This, along with the other plot annoyances, took me out of the film too much, but I’m very glad it didn’t ever resort to cheap surprise shocks.

Choose life 6/10