About badblokebob

Aiming to watch at least 100 films in a year. Hence why I called my blog that. http://100films.co.uk

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

Posted on June 24, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #30
Randall Wallace | 132 mins | download | 12 / PG-13

From the off it’s clear that The Man in the Iron Mask is not going to go well. It’s an adaptation of a tale of the Three Musketeers, so naturally is set in historical Paris… where everyone has a different accent and very few of them are French. It is, to be blunt, a horrid mishmash — much like the whole film.

Wordy political intrigue tries to coexist with broad comedy which is squashed against swashbuckling adventure. The latter two could co-exist, but the film feels like it wants to be the former and so suffers for it. The comedy jars too much to be effective, while instances of unintentional comedy unfortunately provoke more frequent laughs. It should at least be able to swash buckles effectively — these are the Three Musketeers after all — but entirely fails to achieve this until the climax. The plot, semi-faithfully adapted from one of Alexandre Dumas’ original novels, offers a level of complexity to which the film clearly aspires, but the adaptation and acting struggle to match it.

The majority of performances are marred by overacting — John Malkovich, especially, is woefully miscast, while Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t appear to give a particularly good performance as either Louis or Philippe. In DiCaprio’s defence I suspect this is actually the script’s fault, because he manages to clearly differentiate the two when they are silent or pretending to be the other — it’s when they open their mouths that it all goes wrong. Gérard Depardieu is fine as the comic relief, though that relief is tonally misplaced, while Gabriel Byrne makes an interesting d’Artagnan — there’s nothing at all wrong with him, and yet he doesn’t feel quite right. Which leaves just Jeremy Irons among the main cast. He fares the best of the lot, even getting the occasional scene or speech that is genuinely quite good, though it’s clear he is far better than the material. To be fair, the same is also true of everyone else.

For all this, The Man in the Iron Mask is more disappointing then bad. The Bastille-set climax is occasionally brilliant and never less than entertaining, delivering on the film’s swashbuckling promise in a copious fashion. Throughout, there’s the occasional good scene — or even just a decent line of dialogue — and you can briefly understand what inspired such quality actors to sign on.

Something went wrong somewhere though, and the obvious culprit must be writer/director Randall Wallace. The story’s good, but that’s Dumas’, while the adaptation’s weak — and that’s Wallace’s. The actor’s are good, but battle the poor script — and that, obviously, is Wallace’s. They don’t seem to have been given any significant direction, they’re not helped by an uneven tone, and even the cinematography falls short, failing to make the spectacular locations and costumes look suitably beautiful on screen — and we know who’s ultimately in charge of all that too.

The Man in the Iron Mask desperately wants to be better than it is — it’s a great tale, packed with politics and swashbuckling, and this particular version has the high calibre cast to pull it off. But both are left floundering by a writer/director who isn’t up to either task — poor dialogue, a gyratingly uneven tone and lacklustre direction abound. A missed opportunity, and all the more disappointing for it.

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Posted on June 20, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #8
Richard Donner | 110 mins | download | 18 / R

Lethal Weapon comes from another era — an era in which R-rated films were still allowed to be blockbusters. One only needs to look at the classifications attached to the most recent instalments of formerly-R-rated ’80s franchises — primarily, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Die Hard 4.0, both PG-13 — to see how things have changed. Of course, maybe they have just cause: Watchmen, the first proper R-rated blockbuster for a while, has been labelled a box office disappointment (because that’s what $150m worldwide in two weeks is these days).

I digress. Though, my mind frequently wandered during Lethal Weapon — often to Die Hard. This may predate the Bruce Willis franchise by several years, but it’s a testament to the fame of that film’s Christmas setting that my first thought was they’d ripped it off (Lethal Weapon, like Die Hard, begins with a classic Christmas song over an urban setting). And my next thought was, did they not have a costume budget? The film opens with a young girl, lazing provocatively with one tit out… at first, before Donner makes sure to show them both off thoroughly before she hurls herself from a building; and then we find Danny Glover’s Murtaugh in the bath and Mel Gibson’s Riggs wandering around showing his arse off. Nudity is fine in its place, of course, but here it’s so gratuitous that it sets a low tone — to be fair, one the film does little to belie.

More seriously then: the plot is full of holes with great gaps in its logic, especially as it heads towards the climax. There’s also no mystery — the investigation is just an excuse to string together action set pieces and comedic buddy scenes, neither of which are much cop, and most of the story is conveyed in a couple of info-dumps that supporting characters volunteer for no definite reason. The dialogue and performances are appalling — “may I remind you of some stuff you already know, that’s convenient exposition for the audience, thoroughly explaining the troubles of the main character and the scene you just saw”. I’ve seen better episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Their motivation makes about as much sense too — “tell me the truth!” “But they’ll kill my daughter!” “We can protect her!” “No you can’t!” “Tell me!” “Oh OK then.”

The villains aren’t just poorly drawn, they’re barely sketched at all. There’s an early scene where we see how Hard they are, then they just turn up in time for the climax and do little more than get chased around and die explosively, and in the wrong order to boot. At the very end, our heroes capture the one remaining bad guy… and then have a fight. Why? Because they do. And then all the police turn up and just watch this punch-up going on. It’s the thinnest excuse for a final fight ever put on film, and consequently the least tense — none of those officers are going to let the villain kill Riggs, and even if he did beat or kill him he’s not going to escape. There is literally no point to it. It’s appalling writing, and dire filmmaking to have left it in.

Oh, and Murtaugh smashes a car into his own front room for no reason.

Lethal Weapon probably wants to be a lot better than it is. Was it supposed to be a drama about these two cops with any old investigation plot stuck on, or a standard action-thriller with too much time spent on character? At best, it falls somewhere between the two — they’re not real characters (i.e. it wouldn’t pass as a drama if you cut out the thriller), each being made up of several stock Action-Thriller Hero traits; but nor is the plot the main focus, what with it being rather generic and not especially interesting or at all complex. The leads’ repartee and bonding is more interesting than the actual plot, and is surely the explanation for the film’s enduring popularity and three sequels, though to be honest I didn’t get it.

I’d always thought Lethal Weapon must be alright — after all, as I said, it’s had an enduring popularity and was written by Shane Black, who went on to both write and direct the thoroughly wonderful (and underrated) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (with Robert Downey Jr being fantastic a good few years before his popularity resurgence in Iron Man) — but having seen it, I struggle to see why people like it to any significant degree.

ITV1 are showing Lethal Weapon tonight at 10:15pm.
Lethal Weapon is on Watch tonight, Tuesday 23rd September 2014, at 10pm.

Glory (1989)

Posted on June 18, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #28
Edward Zwick | 117 mins | DVD | 15 / R

Ed Zwick seems to like war. More accurately, Zwick likes making films about war, but clearly isn’t a fan of the act itself. Since gaining attention with multi Oscar-winner Glory, about the first black regiment during the American Civil War, he’s directed a number of films concerned with wars and those that fight them: Courage Under Fire (“Army officer investigates female chopper commander’s worthiness for the Medal of Honor”), The Siege (“a wave of terrorist attacks in New York lead to the declaration of martial law”), The Last Samurai (“American military advisor embraces the Samurai culture he was hired to destroy”), Blood Diamond (a group of people battle for a diamond during the war in Sierra Leone), and most recently Defiance (“Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape into the forests”). Whatever the reasons for Zwick’s preoccupation, he certainly has a talent for it.

In Glory, Zwick is helped by a story that’s definitely worth telling, one which I imagine seemed even more pertinent on its original release, when Nelson Mandela was still in prison and the state of race relations in the US would contribute to riots in Los Angeles inside of 18 months. Still, it would be easy to slide into Issue of the Week melodrama in handling such a tale, but Zwick manages it without undue sentiment — there’s an appropriate realisation of the importance of events, perhaps even occasional reverence, but time is taken to show doubts and prejudices. It may get too sentimental for some tastes toward the end, but considering the importance of the story I don’t think it’s unwarranted or overplayed.

Similarly, most of the hero characters are less than perfect, with Matthew Broderick’s Colonel of particular note as a conflicted and initially cowardly commanding officer, more concerned with propriety than what is right — until he’s led to a change of heart, of course. His is just one of several excellent performances: Morgan Freeman does what Morgan Freeman does best as the Authoritative Elder, while Denzel Washington’s angry young man justifiably earnt him his first Oscar. The wider supporting cast hold their own against these leads, particularly Andre Braugher as the idealistic but ultimately unsuited volunteer Thomas Searles.

The handful of battle sequences are effectively staged, suitably tense and brutal, though these are really ancillary — the regiment only engaged in conflict a couple of times and so, appropriately, actual fighting makes up a relatively slender portion of the film. The unfamiliarity of the story helps keep things tense both in and out of battle — for obvious reasons, the majority of battles depicted on film are famous ones, often because of their outcome, so it makes for an agreeable change to not know where events will lead.

These elements all blend to create a film that is, at the very least, the sum of its parts: a significant historical story with strong performances and a convincing depiction of war, which negotiates the thin lines that surround sentiment and reverence. Zwick may not be a fan of war, but he certainly knows how to put its stories on film.

The Great Dictator (1940)

Posted on June 15, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #31
Charles Chaplin | 120 mins | DVD | PG* / G

One of the great things about doing 100 Films in a Year has been the number of firsts it’s either led me to or just been there to document: my first time watching films on Blu-ray and via legal download; my first time seeing films from directors as diverse as Woody Allen, Akira Kurosawa, F.W. Murnau and Krzysztof Kieslowski; my first time viewing such notable works as Breathless, Brief Encounter, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, This is Spinal Tap, The Wizard of Oz, and many more — including my first time seeing Citizen Kane. And here’s another for the list: my first ever Charlie Chaplin film.

The Great Dictator is one of Chaplin’s most widely-known films thanks to setting its sights on the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler in particular. The general perception of silent comedians like Chaplin immediately suggests slapstick, but the real-world targets here make his work (on this film at least) satirical as well. I’m sure this made for great propaganda when it was released just a year into the war, but Chaplin’s skill and accuracy mean it works beyond that: like all good impersonations or spoofs it doesn’t make its objects silly for no reason, but instead takes what’s inherently laughable about them and exploits it. This would age some satirical humour, reliant as it can be on topicality, but the wide awareness even a modern audience has of Hitler means there are no comprehension problems today.

The style of humour can date nonetheless, but The Great Dictator remains funny — arguably the real test of a good comedy. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but that’s a problem comedy faces whenever it’s made. Chaplin loads the film with inventive and timeless routines, like the upside-down-plane, the coin-in-the-pudding, or the classic dance with an inflatable globe. Sometimes with comedy from decades previous, there’s the feeling you’re watching something that was funny at the time but no longer actually makes you laugh, thanks to changed conventions and expectations. For me, at least, there was no such problem here.

Surprisingly, there are some serious scenes too. While it doesn’t outweigh the comedy, there’s a degree of semi-factual drama in the plot that’s been well judged to help the humour cut deeper. The closing speech could come across as overly propagandistic but, again, it’s well pitched and therefore more galvanizing than inappropriately laughable. There are some bits, like this, that are sadly just as applicable to the modern world.

Chaplin allegedly said he wouldn’t have made The Great Dictator if he knew how bad things really were under Hitler, though some dispute this, arguing he knew and made it regardless. Some bits are slightly uncomfortable when one knows the reality, but whether Chaplin knew the truth or not these moments are fleeting. And, either way, Hitler and the Nazis were a worthwhile target: laughing at those who attempt to terrorise and dominate us is one of the most powerful weapons we have against them. That, certainly, is still true today.

* For reasons known only unto the BBFC, The Great Dictator was classified U until 2003, when film and video reclassifications both made it a PG. ^

Solaris (2002)

Posted on June 13, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #13
Steven Soderbergh | 94 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

When Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanislaw Lem’s thoughtful science fiction novel in 1972, it took 165 minutes. When Steven Soderbergh did it 30 years later, it took just over 90. Lem hated them both, stating that he didn’t write about people’s “erotic problems in space”, but for those concerned with what the film is about rather than what it (perhaps) should have been about, it seems that an abbreviated running time is no barrier to loading any adaptation of Solaris with a weighty thoughtfulness.

Everyone knows Solaris is a sci-fi film — the title sounds that way, for one thing, and George Clooney in a space helmet on the cover certainly does the rest. It’s a shame that’s so well known, because if one came to this version cold it would take a good few minutes before there was any inkling it wasn’t just a drama. The underplaying of the scientific elements may have angered Lem, but Soderbergh uses them to create a backdrop to the emotional story he wants to tell — Solaris the sentient planet was the point of the novel, as far as Lem was concerned, whereas to Soderbergh it’s a device to explore relationships and grief.

In doing this the film merrily mixes genres: it looks very much like it’s Science Fiction, all futuristic TVs and space station settings, and there are a few scientific concepts touched on; but it’s also a Romance, occasionally; and a Drama about coping with death, amongst other things; and an ‘arthouse’ film about notions of God and memory and reality and humanity; and there’s a huge chunk of Mystery in what the hell is going on; and there are a couple of moments that wouldn’t be out of place in a Horror film… About the only conventions Soderbergh doesn’t bother with belong to Action-Adventure, which as the normal stomping ground of big-name sci-fi certainly makes for a change.

It’s likely this that explains its low rating on IMDb and the like. A slow pace and obtuse storytelling that leaves plenty of gaps for the audience to fill is not the experience implied by an advertising campaign showing a Space Movie starring Movie Star Heartthrob George Clooney. Obviously it doesn’t fulfill these expectations, and will likely have still been too slow and difficult for even more viewers. (As it makes for a slow hour-and-a-half, I wonder how they would feel if told there’s a version over an hour longer.) The question is, does it also deserve such a low rating from those ‘clever’ or accepting enough to ‘get’ it? That depends on your perspective. It’s either Deep and Meaningful, or a bit Pretentious and Pointless. In this respect it’s highly reminiscent of The Fountain (or, rather, The Fountain is reminiscent of Solaris) — an unusual sci-fi/romance angle, slow pace, and ambiguous to the last. As one character says, “there are no answers, only choices.”

Soderbergh’s direction, plus the performances of Clooney and Natasha McElhone on which the film relies, do have the power to hold you, but only if you’re prepared for — and, more importantly, open to — the sort of experience Solaris offers. Undoubtedly not for everyone.

A pair of shorts for summer

Posted on June 12, 2009 by badblokebob

Neither of these films, or their reviews, have anything significant to do with summer, but that pun was too good to resist.

I say “good”…

2009 #4a
The Wraith of Cobble Hill

there’s no reason that any story shouldn’t be told in animated form… but sometimes, you have to wonder if it’s the best choice for the job. The Wraith of Cobble Hill is a perfect example for this debate as its modern, urban story seems to clash with the cartoonish style employed to bring it to the screen.

The Wraith of Cobble Hill (2005)

Posted on June 12, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #4a
Adam Parrish King | 15 mins | DVD

Animation isn’t a genre, it’s a medium, as Brad Bird would be so keen to tell you. As such, there’s no reason that any story shouldn’t be told in animated form… but sometimes, you have to wonder if it’s the best choice for the job.

The Wraith of Cobble Hill is a perfect example for this debate as its modern, urban story seems to clash with the cartoonish style employed to bring it to the screen. There are no flights of fantasy, few implausible shots, nothing that couldn’t be achieved in live action even on a low budget. Ultimately the only reason for it being animated is, why shouldn’t it be? Personally, I’m not convinced it works; at the very least, it distracted me enough to consider it.

Otherwise, the story is a bit slow paced and perhaps uncertain of what it wants to say. By the end, ignoring the question of if the right form was chosen, I was unsure what it did say — what had actually happened, what had changed. Without giving away the ending, obviously rather a lot changes for one peripheral character, but for the central character it seems to have minimal impact. Well, he acquires a dog…

In short (sorry), The Wraith of Cobble Hill is nicely animated, though you might wonder why. More importantly, you might wonder what it was trying to say.

This short is available on the Cinema16: American Short Films DVD.

The Lunch Date (1990)

Posted on June 12, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #9a
Adam Davidson | 10 mins | DVD

Short films are paid minimal attention by most people, but a good one can launch a career. Take this, for example, which won the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990 and the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 1991. Writer/director Davidson may not have had a significant film career since, but he has directed episodes of Dexter, Deadwood, Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order, Lie to Me, Lost, Rome, Shark, Six Feet Under, True Blood, and more. Not all great TV, true, but there are some outstanding series in there and it makes for an impressive CV.

If any short were to kick-start a career it would be The Lunch Date. As with many shorts, to attempt to describe the plot would be to give too much away, which would be a mistake because this is a beautifully shot (in grainy black & white) and performed tale with a distinct, yet subtle, character arc and an important, but not over-egged, moral message. There’s virtually no dialogue, everything conveyed by what Davidson does (and, importantly, doesn’t) show and the performances, particularly that of Scotty Bloch as the central Lady.

Some of the film’s power rests in a neat twist, cunningly obscured by intelligent blocking and timing of other plot elements. Personally I saw it coming, but that didn’t diminish its point. It’s also worth nothing that none of the twenty-or-so others I was watching with spotted the twist ahead of time and they all seemed to find it even more effective.

Why short films are ignored is a discussion for another time, but The Lunch Date is an outstanding example of why they shouldn’t be.

The Lunch Date is available on the Cinema16: American Short Films DVD.

In 2013 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Insomnia (2002)

Posted on June 10, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #33
Christopher Nolan | 113 mins | DVD | 15 / R

This review contains minor spoilers.

Between becoming a Geek God with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and coming to everyone’s attention with a stunning more-or-less-debut that managed to elbow itself right up into the IMDb Top 10 (that’d be Memento — obviously, it’s slipped since), Christopher Nolan directed this: an American remake of a Norwegian police thriller, and the only one of Nolan’s five major films not to be on that be-all of film quality, the IMDb Top 250 (the fifth is of course The Prestige, while Begins is the lowest at #106.) So is Insomnia a forgotten classic robbed of a spot, or just a footnote to the rest of Nolan’s superb career?

These days, there’s a murder mystery/thriller on the TV most weeks — heck, most days thanks to the abundance of repeat-laden digital channels — and so a film attempting one can’t just settle for the usual array of clues, suspects, interviews and twists. Insomnia looks like it’s heading down this road early on — an interview with the victim’s boyfriend in particular could easily slot into any episode of Midsomer Murders or what have you — but soon does what’s required of any film entering this territory these days: it provides more. Most obviously, despite the early plot and stylistic conventions, this is not a “whodunnit”: the killer’s identity is revealed around the halfway mark (assuming you haven’t already guessed it from the opening credits) and from then on the film gradually moves into murky moral territory, quickly leaving behind those early trappings for a set of more complex noir-ish moral conundrums.

Al Pacino’s detective, for example, is a man under pressure — not just from the case, nor the usual clichés of a messy divorce or alcoholism, but from a pending Internal Affairs investigation that may or may not be justified, and an incurable bout of insomnia brought on by the Alaskan summer’s lack of night. The pressure mounts, he makes bad decisions (which I won’t spoil here), and even if the use of these plot points was merely that they occurred it would have offered something above the norm. Hillary Seitz’s screenplay pushes it further however, digging far deeper than usual for the genre into debates about the morals of police work, what seems acceptable and what is acceptable, and perhaps even what should be acceptable. The ending may seem to offer a Hollywoodised “everything’s set right then” denouement, but while it’s true that the plot is neatly resolved the considerations raised are not so easily ignored.

Cast-wise Insomnia fares pretty well. When it was released, around the same time as the excellent One Hour Photo, everyone was amazed at Robin Williams turning in a pair of non-comedic performances. The quality of them both makes it seem only natural now however, leaving that amazement as a distant memory. His turn as novelist Walter Finch here may owe something to Kevin Spacey’s John Doe in Se7en — indeed, Nolan seems to explicitly reference that film in locations such as the corridor of Finch’s apartment building — but isn’t as lowly as an impersonation. Hilary Swank offers able support as wide-eyed young cop Ellie Burr, while Pacino does a good job portraying the confusion induced by lack of sleep, aided by some effective camerawork, editing and sound design.

In the end, the main damage done to Insomnia is inadvertently by its director: while it is undoubtedly above average for a murder mystery/thriller, its relative straightforwardness pales in comparison to the work Nolan’s done before and since. However, as with every Nolan film so far, I found my perceived enjoyment increase the more I’ve thought about it since. It may not be objectionable that Insomnia hasn’t made it onto that IMDb list then, but if it is a footnote to Nolan’s career it’s a significant and enjoyable one.

BBC One are showing Insomnia tonight at 10:45pm.

In Bruges (2008)

Posted on June 7, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #22
Martin McDonagh | 102 mins | TV | 18 / R

This review contains minor spoilers.

In Bruges has gathered quite a bit of indie-level praise and acclaim, culminating in wider recognition at the Oscars and other awards ceremonies at the start of this year. For those like me, finally getting round to seeing it in the wake of all this, it comes with quite a burden of expectation on its shoulders. Can it possibly be the modern classic many make it out to be? I mean, it is set in, y’know, Bruges…

First and (perhaps) foremost, In Bruges is hilariously funny, much more so than most by-the-numbers ‘comedy’ films can manage. The easily-offended might disagree, and some jokes are a tad too obvious (Americans are fat! Fat people can’t climb tight stairs!), but it’s nice to genuinely laugh at a film rather than force the odd smirk so as to at least get something from an otherwise wasted 90 minutes. It’s also dark and occasionally tragic though, and in this respect it’s unsurprising that writer/director McDonagh started out as an acclaimed and award-winning playwright, as stage plays mix humour and darkness more frequently (and with wider extremes) than films ever dare to. His theatrical roots also go some way to explaining the amount and ferocity of the swearing (again, something plays are more prepared to indulge in), but so too the brilliance of the dialogue. That it takes a playwright to craft such a good film is perhaps an irony, but not a troubling one.

Good dialogue is wasted without a good cast however, and thankfully everyone here gives a fantastic performance. The standout is Colin Farrell as hitman Ray. He initially seems a confident, cocky, experienced young hitman, and therefore verges dangerously close to stereotype, but we soon realise he’s actually twitchy, nervous, insecure, and genuinely sorry for the sole act of violence he committed. It might look like a Black Comedy With Nasty Violence to some — certainly, there are reviews that suggest some viewers are incapable of seeing anything beyond that — but there’s a lot more depth in the characters than the surface would suggest. Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes give consummate supporting performances, like Farrell chipping away at the stereotyped facades to find the hidden facets that the script is kind enough to reveal.

The quality of McDonagh’s writing (and direction) doesn’t stop with character and dialogue. The story is thematically considered, with a variety of paintings and associated imagery to occupy those who might be interested. Events are beautifully tied together and, best of all, none of the early scenes feel oddly inserted or have that nagging sense that they’re merely an excuse for something to be there later — everything works first time, and then has a seamless payoff too. Some viewers have criticised the ending, but I suspect they’re largely more used to mainstream fare and viewers who have ever enjoyed an indie film won’t bat an eyelid. All in, it’s easy to see why the screenplay has become the film’s prime awards nominee and winner.

Nominations, wins and buzz weigh heavy, but In Bruges has shoulders broad enough to carry such expectation with ease. “There’s never been a classic movie made in Bruges,” one character truthfully espouses, “until now.” It seems she couldn’t’ve been more right.

In Bruges placed 2nd on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2009, which can be read in full here.

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Author Archives: badblokebob

About badblokebob

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Glory (1989)

The Great Dictator (1940)

Solaris (2002)

A pair of shorts for summer

The Wraith of Cobble Hill (2005)

The Lunch Date (1990)

Insomnia (2002)

In Bruges (2008)