A Canterbury Tale

Posted on January 22, 2012 by jaycluitt

If I’ve never heard of the film I’m watching, I usually assume it’s from the 1001 or 5-star lists, as though I’ve heard of a lot of films, these lists are peppered with some pretty obscure titles, so I was surprised to find this 1944 British film to be sitting at number 176 on Empire’s reader-voted top 500 and nowhere else.

Writing/directing/producing duo Powell & Pressburger, of the previously reviewed the Red Shoes and Black Narcissus, here tell the story of an earnest and open-minded American soldier alighting from his train a stop early in the small Kent town of Chillingham during World War 2. With the next train not scheduled that day, he hangs around and assists the locals in the search for a man terrorising the female residents by pouring glue in their hair.

There is some nice back-and-forth dialogue, and interesting ruminations on the famous Pilgrim’s Road, blacksmithing, church organs and UK/US comparisons, but also a lot of “Say, what’s that over there?” mundanity. The creative use of lighting is interesting, with a face and body all in darkness with only the eyes illuminated, but the ending is too twee and nicely tied up for my liking.

Choose life 6/10

Henry V

Posted on January 11, 2012 by jaycluitt

Before going in I thought I’d be completely lost in this, having not seen Henry I-IV, but I think the films must be standalone stories or something. This adaptation of Shakespeare’s royal epic (which I haven’t read, yet, and am not overly inspired to do so now) stars, and was directed by, Sir Lawrence Olivier, and uses the novel concept of being set on a stage at the Globe, complete with a heckling audience and backstage costume changes. Whilst certainly an interesting idea, this distances us from the film, in the same way as a laugh track would from a terrible sitcom, constantly reminding you that you’re watching a film. The conceit is wisely dropped for the central acts, freeing up the action for larger sets, sweeping camera movement, horses and battles. The rousing speeches are highlights, but the whole affair is dry and slow.

Choose life 5/10

King of New York

Posted on January 11, 2012 by jaycluitt

Christopher Walken landed a rare starring role in Abel Ferrara’s 1990 thriller as NY crime lord Frank White, recently released from prison and patrolling the rain lashed, neon-lit underbelly of his city. With the aid of his crew, Frank sets out to fix the city that has fallen apart in his absence, whilst retaining his criminal status, something cops Wesley Snipes and David Caruso rather object to. Also featuring Lawrence Fishburne, casting a shadow over everyone else’s performance as Walken’s right hand man and overall manic chicken-eatin’ mother fucker Jimmy Jump, and small roles from Steve Buscemi and Lost’s Harold Perrineau, if anything this film focuses too much on the policemen, and would have benefitted greatly from more Walken (as indeed could every film). He is the titular king, the film is his story, yet he seems to be a lesser character in it, though he is the most interesting as he disposes of the competition that have been running his city into the ground, and walks coolly and calmly away from a kill. I don’t think the ending did him justice either.

Choose life 6/10

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

Ivan the Terrible

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

Oh dear God how many films about Russian history do I have to watch? Jesus I’m getting tired of typing about this, so you must be tired of reading this (I’m under the misapprehension that anyone is actually reading this. Or I’m talking to the voices in my head. But then why would I type that? Now I’m confused.). Our old friend Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky, October) has been at it again, and fortunately I’veonly got one more of his films to watch now (1924s Strike, available to watch online at LoveFilm, yet I just can’t bring myself to do it yet). As I’ve said before, I don’t know anything about Russian history, nor do I really care about it, and I’m trying not to do any extra research to review these films, to help my ‘man of the people’ style reviews. I’m not going to recommend you watch a film that requires you to pass a history A-Level to a high degree beforehand.

So, in a nutshell, Ivan the Terrible tells the story of the man who united Russia in the 16^th century. It was conceived as a trilogy, but Eisenstein passed away after making part two (I really shouldn’t be, but at least a small part of me is glad about this, although of course I’d have preferred he lived but just not made it, or anything else, ever again). The subtitles are difficult to read – white text on a light grey background – so much of the dialogue is lost, but I think he takes on the Russian leaders who opposed him, and the general people turn against him for going against God. There is a song including the lines “Sew a cloak of fox fur, trim it with beaver,” and the use of shadows is nice, with Ivan’s (Nikolai Cherkasov) distinct beard silhouetted against a wall, but the plot is dull and impenetrable without the aforementioned qualifications.

Choose life 3/10

October 1917: 10 Days that Shook the World

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

I’ll be honest, about 10 minutes into this film I got up and started making my dinner, occasionally glancing at the screen just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything important. This is a propaganda piece made for the 10^th anniversary of the Russian revolution, made by several filmmakers, led by Sergei Eisenstein. The ‘film’ re-enacts the first days of the revolution, shows inspirational imagery of men drinking together, and is occasionally intercut with large text proclaiming FRIEND! or BROTHER! or some such nonsense. I’m sure it served its purpose back in the day, but is it really necessary to include this on a list of films you must see before you die? I could have quite happily died without seeing this film. Hell, halfway through I could have quite happily just died.

Choose life 1/10

Top Hat

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

My first encounter with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, this does not make me look forward to any others. The plot is paper thin and rests upon a simple, easily clarified misunderstanding – Astaire’s dancer Jerry Travers falls for Rogers’ Dale Tremont staying in the hotel room below his, but she thinks he is married to a friend of hers and rebukes his advances. Every plot point, from their initial meeting (he is dancing in his room, alone, for no reason, waking her up, so he dances on sand to not make any noise, instead of, I don’t know, just not dancing) seems to have been contrived simply to show off the dance skills of the two leads. Seeing as I’m incapable of telling good dancing from bad, or even if the dancers are in time to the music, this is entirely lost on me, the dance sequences left me bored and awaiting a scene where someone didn’t spontaneously burst into song for no apparent reason.

Choose life 5/10

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

Aguirre: Wrath of God

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

In 16^th century South America, a large group of conquistadors are exploring the jungles, searching for El Dorado, the city of gold. Among this group are knights in full armour, maidens riding in slave-carried sedan chairs, monks, llamas, pigs and men dragging cannons, desperately trying to traverse knee deep mud and extremely dense rainforest. It was these images that first made me think this was a comedy, as the shots of these 100s of people blindly heading deeper and deeper into the lush undergrowth without even contemplating what could possibly be ahead is frankly hilarious, but when a smaller (but still fairly sizable, and weighed down with unnecessary items and people) is sent forward as a scouting party, they are rapidly picked off one by one by natives, illness and each other. Eventually leading this group is Klaus Kinski’s wild-eyes Aguirre, desperate to divert to mission to his own gain via any means necessary, even shooting the man currently in charge. After the initial hilarity the movie takes a dive towards bleaker, more surreal pastures, and although some shots, the final one for instance, of Aguirre finally controlling his raft, apart from the hoards of monkeys, are memorable, this film really isn’t worth the time.

Choose life 5/10

The White Ribbon

Posted on January 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

One cannot deny that this is an excellent, well made film by director Michael Haneke about a pre WW1 German village suffering from seemingly random acts of terrorism – the doctor’s horse is tripped on his way home from work, a barn is burned down, a woman dies when some rotten floorboards give way beneath her. Yet viewing is not a satisfying experience, as our narrator, speaking from the future about years long past, seems reluctant to release all the details of his story. The children of the village are severely mistreated by the pillars of their community, namely the pastor, doctor and baron. The pastor labels them with the titular white ribbon for the smallest offence, and when his pubescent son admits to self gratification; his hands are tied to the posts of the bed when he sleeps, to prevent any further sinning. It is obvious from the start that the children are behind the village’s incidents, having formed a kind of gang, yet these suspicions are never fully confirmed, with the most validation provided by a character approaching a bird’s cage holding a blade, and then the bird later found dead. Though Haneke has made a living from ambiguous works, some of his other features – Hidden or Funny Games for example – are superior to this in that you feel you have been told at least most of a story, rather than excerpts from a couple of chapters.