Category Archives: 2007

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

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2007 #114
Martin Scorsese | 116 mins | DVD | 18 / R

Bringing Out the DeadIt’s hard to know what to make of this, because by the end it all seems a little pointless. The storyline, which follows Nicolas Cage’s paramedic across three nights in New York, is a mixture of short episodic medical incidents with longer threads that continue throughout. These connect and fall apart, feeling as episodic as the rest, and most of them don’t really lead anywhere.

Perhaps the best description is that it’s a collection of subplots in search of proper story. There are some decent scenes and good shots, but the film doesn’t seem to have anything to say, and it doesn’t end so much as simply fade to black when it runs out of things to do.

3 out of 5

On the Town (1949)

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2007 #113
Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly | 94 mins | VHS | U

On the TownGene Kelly and Frank Sinatra lead the cast in this musical comedy about three sailors who have 24 hours of shore leave in New York. The plot is sometimes predictable, but at least it’s not as standardised as many. Equally, none of the songs are truly memorable but most are fun while they last.

The humour may be quite gentle (though be prepared for some sexed-up female characters!), but as a whole it’s never less than entertaining (with the exception of a third act dance almost as incongruous as Oklahoma!’s change of cast). Several of those who watched it with me were surprised to find they actually enjoyed a musical.

4 out of 5

An extended musing on falling in love with films

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An issue that came to my mind while writing this entry (specifically after viewing film #123): when was the last time I ‘fell in love’ with a film? It’s got me pondering not only that, but also what caused me to ‘fall for’ the films I do like? Was it the critical reaction as much as my personal opinion? The in-built notion of This Is A Good Film making sure I liked it?

I don’t think that’s quite true: I was certainly aware of the high praise for films like Pulp Fiction or Fight Club (both of which I adored from first viewing) when I saw them, but I’m sure there was something more to them that impressed me. Certainly, there are films I’ve enjoyed to a similar degree where my awareness of its wider praise has followed later, such as Donnie Darko or Children of Men. By a similar token, there are films where I knew of the praise, such as Memento and The Departed, and still didn’t come to love them.

It leaves me wondering if, as I grow older, I’m less prone to being swayed by received critical opinions and finally just judging films on their own merit; or, possibly, I’m so eager to try to have my own thoughts and to therefore avoid things that I’m not taking them in the right way? It’s a very self-reflexive question and consequently a hard one to answer, especially as all opinions on art are so subjective anyway.

As for the issue of films I’ve ‘fallen in love’ with, the issue is slightly complicated by a division between Entertainment Films and Proper Films (I use these terms loosely, for the sake of this argument). To use some of the same examples, I would class all the films thus far mentioned as Proper Films (we can already see the line blurring as they all certainly have high entertainment values too), whereas things like Pirates of the Caribbean or Serenity are more clearly of the Entertainment variety. Handily, I have a list of all the films I’ve seen in the past eleven months, so I can see what I may’ve loved in the past year.

And, indeed, there are some. Under the Proper banner we might find the likes of Mean Creek, Brief Encounter, or, probably most of all, United 93. Under the Entertainment heading there could possibly be 300, Stranger Than Fiction, or, undoubtedly, Hot Fuzz. But it can be tricky to designate the difference between “liked a lot” and “loved” — there were several more films I nearly listed, but then just wasn’t sure.

Indeed, how much I love even the ones mentioned, and even more so whether they rank amongst films I’d call all-time favourites, is a complex proposition. When does “liked a lot” become “loved”? In the past, the likes of Se7en, Apocalypse Now and Magnolia, as well as one or two others mentioned earlier, easily jumped straight to the top of my favourites list after just one viewing… but then maybe I was just young and impressionable. Or maybe I wasn’t as easily persuadable as I seem to think, and I’m just still waiting for something to capture me the same way they did…

2007 | Weeks 46-48

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Welcome to the second most film-packed entry ever! Why has this come to be so?

I’ve had a little bit of a theme season (one might say) these past few weeks, so I’ve been waiting for those films to appear in a single entry; plus there are other films watched in between, making the list even longer.

So, what was the theme? Well, being the dedicated student that I am, I’ve watched all the suggested viewing for a seminar in which my group had to pose the questions. The seminar was on “Urban Rhythms”… but in film-viewing terms that translates to four Scorseses, four Woody Allens, and an anthology featuring shorts by both of them and Francis Ford Coppola (plus a fifth Scorsese that wasn’t on the list but was on TV). Such respectable viewing!

Throw in another four films and this is the most film-packed entry since the seven-week, fifteen-film behemoth that was the first entry! And it makes it to only one film less in under half the time. Well blimey. Best get on with it then…


#113 On the Town

#114 Bringing Out the Dead

#115 Annie Hall

#116 Wild at Heart

#117 New York Stories

#118 Play Time

#119 Manhattan

#120 Hellboy: Director’s Cut

#121 The King of Comedy

#122 Taxi Driver

#123 Goodfellas

#124 Manhattan Murder Mystery

#125 Bullets Over Broadway

#126 Mean Streets

Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine (1913)

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aka Fantômas: À l’ombre de la guillotine

2007 #111
Louis Feuillade | 54 mins | DVD | PG

FantomasThe first of the silent Fantômas films (I reviewed the second previously).

It’s interestingly structured: there’s no ‘origin story’ for Fantômas, he just is an infamous master criminal, who’s introduced in what would undoubtedly be a pre-titles sequence today, before the story switches to follow Inspector Juve and his quest to solve the disappearance of Lord Beltham… which of course leads back to Fantômas. Its pulp fiction roots shine through in the entertaining plot that’s just far-fetched enough.

As I said before, it’s not for everyone, but for those who enjoy this sort of thing it’s unmissable.

4 out of 5

The Naked City (1948)

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2007 #112
Jules Dassin | 92 mins | DVD | PG

The Naked CityPolice procedural film noir, shot entirely on location in New York (unusual at the time).

The story is quite straightforward — girl is murdered, police investigate — but it exists mainly as a structure on which to hang perspectives of the city, its criminals and its law enforcement (though in an infinitely less pretentious way than that sounds). The odd, character-less voice-over narration is more puzzling than any mystery in the plot.

The acting is sometimes stilted and some of the direction is actually a little flat, but there are enough enjoyable elements to cover for it — particularly the chance to see so much footage of a real city at this time.

4 out of 5

The Crowd (1928)

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2007 #110
King Vidor | 98 mins | TV

The CrowdLate silent-era drama — though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a comedy until halfway, when the light antics of a young couple in ’20s New York give way to some increasingly dark drama (interesting trivia: seven endings were shot for distributors to choose from, some happy and some sad; all chose sad ones. However, the copy we saw (taped from an ’80s TV showing) had a happy ending).

The first half is gentle but amusing; the sudden shift catches the viewer off-guard, undoubtedly making what follows more effective. The main character is in many ways pretty useless and at least some of the problems that befall him are his own fault, yet his comedic treatment in the first half makes you care for him throughout the second.

If you can accept the shifting styles of an age before genre was rigidly defined, The Crowd is a worthwhile experience.

4 out of 5

Manhatta (1921)

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2007 #109a
Paul Strand & Charles Sheeler | 10 mins | download

Another ’20s city film, showing off (as you might guess from the title) parts of New York. The focus appears to be industrial — skyscrapers under construction, finished architecture, tug boats, trains near the docks; the people of the city only crop up at the start and close, and then only in faceless crowds. It’s interspersed with poetic intertitles, which make for an odd contrast.

Once again, I feel that, unless you want to go getting a bit pretentious (and, to be fair, at least some of these films were made for just that), the main interest here is in an historical perspective: it provides another snapshot of a time and place long gone.

2 out of 5

The full short is available on Wikipedia.

2007 | Weeks 43-45

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It’s goodbye to October and hello to November, as the year moves into its final sixth. It’ll be over before you know it — and with it, my final total of new films this year. How exciting! It may wind up being lower than some of my previous predictions would’ve had it, though, considering the increasing number of weeks I feel the need to cover, and with an increasingly low number of films too…

But anyway, all of that’s a whole seven weeks away yet. For now, let’s stick to this little (literally) lot:

#109a Manhatta

#110 The Crowd

#111 Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine

#112 The Naked City

The Paleface (1948)

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2007 #109
Norman Z. McLeod | 87 mins | DVD | U

The PalefaceBob Hope and Jane Russell star in this Wild West comedy, in which Calamity Jane (Russell) has to stop a group of men smuggling rifles to the Indians. It’s clearly designed as pure entertainment, mixing styles in a way no film would dare attempt today — there’s broad comedy, gunfights, horse chases, and even a song or two!

It works too. OK, so the direction may be a little flat and some of the comedy old fashioned… but it was made in the ’40s and there’s still a good number of laughs, so it seems churlish to complain.

4 out of 5