Christ, is it December already?!
Never mind film watching (though, more on that in a minute), what the hell’s going on with my film reviewing?! I’ve got stuff backed up to January there, and it’s going to be January again at this rate. I don’t know how I’ve let it fall so ludicrously behind this year, but Something Must Be Done — a dedicated amount of writing and posting, I do suppose. I keep getting distracted bringing old reviews over when something’s on telly, but I should make a concerted effort to post new stuff more regularly. I wonder what might help with that…
The past month has done very little to contribute to that backlog, mind — just four new films, half the amount required to keep me on track. Also, this year’s weakest month (previous was a tie between May and June, each with five).
It means I go in to December ever so slightly behind. But that’s OK — before now, I’ve started December with just 81 films under my belt and made it to 100, so 91 should be a cinch. Equally, the year after that I went in with 80 and only made it to 94… but that was the only year I didn’t make 100, so it’s hardly a precedent.
#87a Thunderball (1965)
#88 Tiny Furniture (2010)
#89 The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
#90 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part I (2012)
#91 Moonfleet (1955)
Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…
For the next month, lots of reviews! And in one month, I’ll let you know if I made it to (or even past) 100.
And then there’s all the lists and stats and fun! Just what you need to pick you up after Christmas, I’m sure.
Mainstream US superhero comics underwent something of a revolution — or an evolution, if you prefer — in the ’80s, moving from simplistic good vs evil tales-of-the-week to deeper, thematic- and character-driven stories that in some cases took months or even years to relate in full. It’s a change that’s still felt today (some would contend that they’ve been stuck for decades in a rut these developments ultimately led to). It’s generally considered that there were three works at the forefront of this wave of more adult-orientated comics, all of which still rotationally top Best Graphic Novel Ever polls today: Alan Moore and Dave Gibson’s 
Like Year One before it, the team behind these direct-to-DVD DC animated movies have taken a reverent route to bringing DKR to the screen. It’s in two parts because the original story is too long to faithfully adapt in their limited-length movies (it’ll work out at about two-and-a-half hours all told, which isn’t commercially viable for a direct-to-disc animation), but that also works out OK from a storytelling point of view: this first half ends with a major threat wrapped up and a great cliffhanger to kick off the second half. Those with less appreciation for the economics of film production have slated DC/Warner for splitting the film in two like this, but in some ways it works to its benefit artistically as well as commercially.
Stylistically, the film retains Miller’s designs, albeit a bit smartened up to work consistently as animation. Some will bemoan that homogenising but others may delight in it — Miller’s art is generally a bit on the scruffy side, I think. Is it an appropriate mark of respect that they’ve translated it so literally from page to screen, or would it have been more interesting for the filmmakers to have taken Miller’s plot and situated it in a world drawn from their own designs? I’m not going to argue that they could have improved on Miller’s work, but it might have been interesting to see the story given a spin in a different artistic style.
Voice work — the other major addition of an animated re-telling, of course — ranges from solid to very good. I wasn’t convinced by the casting of former RoboCop Peter Weller as Bruce Wayne/Batman, but he’s pretty darn good, carrying exactly the right kind of aged gruffness. It’s unique, I think, to see an active Batman this old on screen — sure, Nolan forwarded things eight years for Rises, but he’s still played by a relatively young and fit Christian Bale, whereas this Batman is grey, in his mid 50s and looking even older. I don’t recall a significant weak link in the rest of the cast, with 
The documentary that Weinstein reportedly tried to stop existing, including discouraging people from participating in interviews. Either he needn’t have worried or really is a complete megalomaniac, because while there is a certain warts-and-all aspect to Avrich’s cinematic biography, it can’t help but admire all that Weinstein has achieved.
Even for those who were following film culture through this era, and in spite of Harvey’s apparent efforts, there are numerous interviewees who were there — former Miramax employees, for instance — to offer insight. Thanks to archive footage we get even more opinions, including a fair few comments from Harvey himself. How much of this was available at the time, I obviously don’t know. Even if it is mostly recap, it’s a concise and well-constructed one.
Bill Cunningham is 80. He lives in a small rent-controlled apartment in New York City that is filled with filing cabinets. His bed is little more than a mattress on some boxes. Each day, he dresses in the same distinctively simple blue smock and sets out on his bicycle. He eats at the same places each day; simple cheap food, cheap coffee. He doesn’t have a partner or kids; he may never have had a romantic relationship. He doesn’t watch TV or listen to music. It sounds like some kind of life of poverty or religious devotion. It’s neither, although you could make an argument for the latter, because all Bill does all day is photograph what people wear.
Bill is, technically, a fashion and society photographer. His real passion, however, is clothes. Real clothes. The clothes people actually wear and how they wear them. His newspaper column — a collection of photos from the streets — is essential reading as far up the chain as Anna Wintour. He doesn’t set trends, he observes them. Exposes them, you might say, because in the past he’s used his work to call fashion designers on where they’ve copied (consciously or not) the work of another from years before, and that has sparked arguments.
What he actually is, more than a “fashion photographer”, is a documentarian, recording how people choose to present themselves to the world, both as individuals and how that translates en masse. Fashion may seem like a meaningless, arbitrary, frivolous thing to afford such time to, and I’d have no argument against Fashion being called exactly that. But fashion — the actual clothes we wear in our actual lives — is something a good many people spend a good amount of time obsessing over; it’s how they choose to represent themselves in the world, how they indicate what they’re like as a person, how they show which groups or types of people they align with. We all do it, even if it’s not a conscious choice. Surely that’s worth recording?
But that’s all an aside, probably because it’s so well done. What might be worth picking up on is that there’s no specific story. There are stories in there — like how Carnegie Hall is kicking out its handful of 80- and 90-something resident artists to make way for more office space — but the film doesn’t have an overarching tale. It’s a portrait; one of a fascinating, unusual, but likeable, and certainly unique, individual.
A Bruce Willis action movie? You know what you’re in for here, don’t you? Well, not quite. 16 Blocks casts Willis as less John McClane and more John McCane: old, fat, drunk, limping. He’s a copper still, but the kind of detective whose primary duties are being left to watch over an apartment full of bodies until uniform can show up.
For me, it really lost its way just over an hour in, when our heroes (spoilers!) end up in a hostage situation on a bus. It’s not bad, but it feels like writer Richard Wenk (who’s gone on to co-write heights of culture like 
While in pursuit of an accused murderer, a cop (Nicholas Tse) accidentally kills the daughter of said murderer’s prosecutor (Jingchu Zhang). Three months later, just days before his trial, the accused has the prosecutor’s other daughter kidnapped, to persuade her to destroy the evidence proving his guilt. Despite having spent the intervening time in reclusive self doubt, the cop sets out to rescue the kidnapped little girl.
making them a little perfunctory — the real meat actually lies in the plot’s twists and turns. This is more one for fans of thrillers than beat-’em-ups.
The top performance comes from Nick Cheung as a for-hire kidnapper with the Bondian trait of being blinded in one eye while the other only has black-and-white vision. He gets added complexity thanks to an invalided wife he tenderly cares for — he’s only in this life of crime to pay off his debts and medical bills, y’know. Cheung’s largely silent turn manages a fine balance of menace and sympathy. He won a couple of HK awards for it, 
A brief couple of scenes with a bullied colleague play out nicely, though unfortunately they contrast with a painfully written bit in which another colleague tells Tse’s character what people think of him. “They said you were horrible, but I like working for you,” she tells him (I paraphrase), for no discernible reason. It doesn’t even matter that we’re told that, because we’ve already seen it. I just don’t get it.
Talking of Halloween, you may have noticed that I’ve been re-posting all of my Saw reviews. Now seemed as good a time as any. To accompany that, I wrote some new words on my opinion of the franchise as a whole. If you missed it, you can read those 
#81a Dr. No (1962)
#83 Prometheus (2012)
100Films.co.uk 