Blue Velvet (1986)

Posted on July 28, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #35
David Lynch | 116 mins | DVD | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 18 / R

Before he brought the disquieting underbelly of small-town America to television audiences with Twin Peaks — and revolutionised the medium in the process — auteur David Lynch subjected cinemagoers to its perversions in this 1986 cult masterpiece, the first cohesive expression of concepts, themes and motifs (and cast members) that would inform the rest of his career.

Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan plays Jeffrey Beaumont, home from college to visit his hospitalised father when he discovers a severed human ear in a field (as you do) and, unable to resist playing private eye, gets drawn into a bizarre web that includes a burgeoning romance with Laura Dern’s high school student, a twisted sexual relationship with Isabella Rosselini’s trapped nightclub singer, and, most famously, Dennis Hopper, whose character and performance invites descriptors like “creepy” and “perverted” but transcends such notions to the point of their obsolescence.

There’s a mystery plot to tie things together, but it’s not really Lynch’s point: by the end, things that would be The Big Twist in other movies are almost glossed over; present because they’re needed for clarity, but not what Lynch wants to focus on. The film is heavy with symbolism, although for once you don’t need to be a genius to spot the major signifiers: it opens with a shot of a lovely suburban lawn, but moves closer until underneath it we see a swarming nest of nasty bugs. I was always led to believe Blue Velvet was about the secrets lurking behind small-town America’s white picket fences, and parts like that opener suggest such a reading.

But… is it, really? The white-picket-fence-dwellers are pretty clean; it’s the people inhabiting the scuzzy apartment blocks and industrial estates nearby who are the problem. Those characters are as corrupt and degenerate as their abodes might lead those with regular prejudices to suspect. It’s a less subversive point of view, and I don’t think it’s what Lynch was actually going for. Anyway, the entirety of his moviemaking technique is so outré that you can’t help but find the whole twisted nonetheless.

Exposing the (sometimes-)reality behind the perfect veneer of American suburbia was not something all audiences at the time were prepared to embrace, though a couple of decades or so of emulation — not to mention the odd news story exposing reality — have led such a perspective to be less controversial. Yet the extreme ways Lynch employs to depict this nastiness mean the film hasn’t lost any of its impact. Back in 2001, critic Philip French wrote that “the film is wearing well and has attained a classic status without becoming respectable or losing its sense of danger.” Another 13 years on and I think that quote is still on the money. Blue Velvet is a film that features on respectable “Best Ever” lists (it’s in the top 100 of Sight & Sound’s latest, for instance, tied with Blade Runner (amongst others)), but is still quite shocking to watch. It’s not so much that it’s sexually or violently graphic — though, in places, it is a little — but the mood and feeling Lynch evokes is so darn unsettling and weird.

“It’s not a movie for everybody,” Lynch himself said (to Chris Rodley for the book Lynch on Lynch). “Some people really dug it. Others thought it was disgusting and sick. And of course it is, but it has two sides. The power of good and the power of darkness.” He’s not wrong. Despite the acceptance of it in some mainstream circles (arguably, you don’t get much more “mainstream” than the Best Director Oscar nomination Lynch received), Blue Velvet remains the very definition of a cult film: some will (and do) love it unreservedly; some will (and do) hate it with a passion; and some, like me, will look it and kind of go, “…hm.” The more I read about it, though, the more I warm to what Lynch was tilting at. Given time, and inevitable (though, knowing me, a long time coming) re-views, I can only see my appreciation growing.

Blue Velvet was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2014 project, which you can read more about here.

The Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery and the Missing Pieces Blu-ray box set is a surefire contender for “release of the year” even before it is released — which is tomorrow, Tuesday 29th July, pretty much worldwide.

Journey into Fear (1943)

Posted on July 7, 2014 by badblokebob

2014 #51
Norman Foster | 68 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | PG*

Remembered largely thanks to the involvement of Orson Welles (he has a supporting role, produced it, co-wrote it, and reportedly directed a fair bit too, though he denied that), Journey into Fear is an adequate if unsuspenseful World War 2 espionage thriller, redeemed by a strikingly-shot climax. The latter — a rain-drenched shoot-out between opponents edging their way around the outside of a hotel’s upper storey — was surely conducted by Welles; so too several striking compositions earlier in the movie.

Sadly there’s little else to commend the film, which takes a leisurely approach to its hero’s escape from Istanbul by a boat aboard which, unbeknownst to him until it’s too late, are assassins. Sounds tense and exciting? It isn’t; or, at least, nothing like as much as it could be. It doesn’t help that it was buggered about with by the studio, leaving subplots alluded to but deleted — the original version reportedly ran 91 minutes, a fair chunk longer than what we’re left with. (There’s also a version with opening and closing voiceovers and a pre-titles sequence, all added by Welles after the studio had their way, which seems to be the one US viewers know. The version without those seems to be the only one shown on UK TV, however.)

On the bright side, it has a brisk running time, and as 70-minute ’40s thrillers go it’s at the upper end of their quality. And in spite of the mere adequacy of the rest, that climax honestly makes it a recommendable watch.

* Having rated it U in 1986 and 1998, come 2010 the BBFC decided it needed to be a PG. ^

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976/1978)

Posted on June 30, 2014 by badblokebob

aka The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Short Version)

Ever since I read the blurb for Masters of Cinema’s DVD of Maurice Pialat’s Police, I’ve been casually enticed by The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Said blurb asserts that “Police is a genre-defying excursion rivaled only by John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie in the pantheon of cinema’s most idiosyncratic thrillers”, which is both a nice turn of phrase and an intriguing one. The thriller is very much a Genre — that is to say, it’s a label loaded with rules and expectations, and to be idiosyncratic within such a form is an interesting notion. Both “thriller” and “idiosyncratic” are pretty accurate labels for Chinese Bookie, though, even in its re-cut (by the director) ‘short version’.

The plot sees strip club owner Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) lured in to killing the titular bookie as payment for his gambling debts to some gangsters. The title kind of gives away whether he does it or not (though an ever-doubtful Cassavetes reportedly considered having him not go through with it), but nonetheless the film doesn’t lack the genre’s requisite tension and suspense. However, it’s more of a character study. How aware is Cosmo of the mess he’s getting himself in to, and how far is he prepared to go? What drives the man? There are no easy answers, unsurprisingly, but that doesn’t make the questions unworthy of consideration.

According to the notes accompanying the BFI’s Blu-ray release, the ‘short version’ — which Cassavetes created after his original cut was “almost universally panned [and] yanked from the theatres within days” — not only makes the film shorter, but also more focused, clarifying various plot points. The style of much independent ’70s cinema — naturalistic to the point of being almost documentarian, with half-caught snatches of dialogue and sequences that seem trimmed to (almost) the relevant moments from much longer filming — still begs that you pay attention, but it seems this cut gives you more of a hand: it gets to the killing quicker (“63 vs 82 minutes”), a meeting with gangsters is “longer, more coherent and explicit”, and so on.

Perhaps the biggest change is early on: the short version implies Cosmo takes his girls out to celebrate (then gets into debt); the original cut implies he’s been invited to the gambling den so he can be set up. That’s quite a shift in emphasis, turning the lead character from a picked-on ‘mark’ in the long version to a sort-of-coincidental brought-about-his-own-downfall type in the re-edit. In his 1980 review (included in the BFI booklet), John Pym asserts that Cosmo is “clearly” a patsy, a fact obscured in the short cut by the removal of that scene where he’s invited to gamble. Is he an easily-lulled patsy, then, as the gangsters think? Or is it more as I interpreted: here’s a man who acts the fool, who pretends to be easily tricked, in order to keep people happy; but who is actually much more competent and aware of what’s going on? Look at his speech near the end about being what others want. This is a man determined to keep others happy and thinking well of him; not in a superficial way, but as some fundamental character trait. Is that how he gets lured into the killing, then — purely because they asked nicely? But then later, when he escapes and gets some kind of revenge or freedom… well, that’s not so friendly. Is he finally doing something for himself? Or was he selfish all along — not much of a leap, especially considering the world he operates in.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is not a neat little thriller in any respect. As Tom Charity puts it (in the BFI booklet again), “if the scenario sounds generic, the film is something else”. It reminded me of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, a film I didn’t particularly like (but which did inspire Cassavetes), but I had more time for this. Perhaps that’s just me ageing (it’s the best part of seven years since I saw Mean Streets) and becoming more attuned to this kind of movie; the kind that uses “hesitations, repetitions, and longueurs as tools of disruption and misdirection”, by a director so “mistrustful of anything that smacked of tidy resolution, he regularly turned his movies around in the editing to more ambiguous and purposefully aggravating effect.”

That’s the kind of movie Chinese Bookie is: ambiguous, purposefully aggravating, without a tidy resolution. It requires the audience to work a bit. Is it worth the effort? You know, I’m never quite sure (see Bicycle Thieves for another example), and whether I appreciate it or not probably depends as much on the mood a particular film catches me in as much as its inherent quality (see also Rage). This one, while as awkward as any, engaged me just enough.

Wallander: The Troubled Man (2013)

Posted on June 21, 2014 by badblokebob

aka Mankell’s Wallander: Den orolige mannen

Krister Henriksson returns as the Swedish detective for a third and final series of mysteries, starting with this final theatrically-released episode, based on the final Wallander novel. Yes, there is a sense of finality here — albeit one not reached just yet.

The central mystery revolves around a foreign submarine being discovered in Swedish waters back in the ’80s — inspired by real events that caused a national scandal, something which (if I remember rightly) was also an element in the plot of The Girl Who Played With Fire. Thirty years on, the body of a diver who disappeared during that event is discovered, kicking off a whole political brouhaha. Wallander’s son-in-law’s father was a high-ranking official at the time, and when he disappears, Wallander gets unofficially roped in to investigate.

Alongside this runs a more personal story for our hero: he’s free to go off on this personal inquiry because he’s been suspended from the police after leaving his gun in a cafe while drunk. It’s moderately clear to the viewer, however, that Wallander wasn’t drunk, but that he’s perhaps getting forgetful more generally… A major part of the first couple of British Wallander series was Kurt’s father’s battle with dementia, something which I don’t think has been touched on in this Swedish series, but that knowledge makes it all the more clear where this is headed.

It’s here that Henriksson gets to show off his acting chops the most. At a dinner party with his family, Wallander largely sits quietly with a drink rather than interact with others, occasionally staring aimlessly into the distance, or only remotely engaging with what the others are doing. He witters about a painting of a goat. Later, he has a disproportionately angry response when his friend brings news that he’s been suspended. He dotes on his granddaughter, but one day loses her and her buggy when he pops into a shop — but finds her quickly enough that no one will be any the wiser. Little signs like this are scattered around, clueing us in to where Wallander will presumably end up: retired from the force, and possibly retired from his life. Whether Mankell brought the issues to a head in his novel or not, I don’t know, but here I can only imagine it will build throughout the series.

As a fan of the character, it can be a little difficult to watch at times, I suppose similar to the way I imagine it must feel to watch a loved one begin to struggle so (not that I mean to equate the life of a fictional character to real-life suffering, but you know what I mean). That’s really another credit to Henriksson, for making a character we identify with who is now in trouble. He’s never been a maverick or a whizz kid or any of those flashy things that make some characters obviously identifiable as The Hero that we’re supposed to love, but his steadfastness created a character many admire and are attached to, and it’s disquieting to see that begin to slip away.

The one thing that really cuts through Kurt’s newfound confusedness is when he gets a nose for a case. Quietly, by himself, he sets about digging in to what’s going on, unearthing evidence that’s been missed by others, piecing it together to complete a picture of long-kept secrets and new crimes committed in the name of keeping them. It resolves into a complex conspiracy, one that touches the lives of altogether innocent people. Is there justice at the end of it? Of a sort, but how satisfying that justice is… well…

Incidentally, this story is on the slate to be filmed as part of Branagh’s final series of Wallander tales, whenever he gets round to it. He’s said in interviews that he feels it requires two full 90-minute episodes to tell, which is interesting because here it’s completed in just one — and not one that feels rushed. Quite the opposite, if anything: this has all the slow pace of gradually unfurled storytelling that you’d expect from European Drama. Perhaps there’s some personal stuff that’s been bumped to the rest of this series; perhaps subplots were ditched. I’d like to have seen more of the female detective Wallander encounters in Stockholm, Ytterberg, who seemed like a great character given too little to do — perhaps she has a bigger role? We’ll find out, eventually. (Or I could just read the book now, of course.)

The Troubled Man is not the greatest of Wallander tales, in the end, and as the opening act of a final movement it lacks conclusions that will, one can only assume, ultimately come in a few episodes’ time. But, like our titular hero, even when not at his best, he’s still a force to be reckoned with.

The last-ever episode of Wallander, The Sad Bird, is on BBC Four tonight at 9pm.

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Posted on June 15, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 #38
Sergio Leone | 220 mins | DVD | 1.85:1 | Italy & USA / English | 18 / R

Part of Leone’s intended trilogy about the history of violence in the USA, Once Upon a Time in America is the life story of four friends and gangsters in Noo Yoik during a large chunk of the 20th Century. So it’s a gangster film focusing on violence, then? Well, no… not at all, really. Indeed, saying Once Upon a Time in America is a film about gangsters is a bit like saying Die Hard is a documentary on police procedure during a hostage crisis — sure, there’s something of that in there, but if you’re focused on it then you’re missing the point.

I refer to “the point” as if, a) I’m some kind of expert about to expound on it, or b) there is a singular ‘point’ to this three-and-a-three-quarter-hour epic. Neither is true. In fact, I’ve perhaps never felt less qualified to discuss a film in depth. Thing is, it’s a difficult film to digest in one viewing, because there’s so much there. It’s not just the length (Titanic is pretty straightforward through its three-and-a-bit hours; even something superior like Apocalypse Now Redux I ‘got’ first time), though that is a factor: over such a long time, it’s packed with incident, and shaped in a non-traditional — or non-common (uncommon, you might say) — narrative structure. A first viewing is an exercise in following what’s going on, what connects to what else, why things are happening in such an order. It fairly begs, “get a handle on it this time, you can analyse it when you watch it again”.

And analysing it may, I think, be a requirement, because this isn’t a film of straightforwardness or easy answers. For one, it asks much of the viewer in our interpretation of the characters: this is a film where our (supposed?) heroes do truly despicable things, and not in aid of a “they’re actually the villain” twist either. Is Leone exposing us to reality — that not all those who do horrible things are horrible people? Or is he just a misogynist? Or a lover of violence? It’s something grander critics than I have battled with for decades.

Leaving aside the less savoury aspects (as, it seems, many have to), a lot of the discussion when it comes to a Leone film is always of his fantastic visual and storytelling style. That’s not unmerited, and while it’s not as overt here as in his Westerns, it is present. But he was a filmmaker with an awful lot of substance too — perhaps a daunting amount. What he created here is an Epic in the truest sense of the word, but in addition to that, it’s a peculiarly intimate one. It has an epic’s length and a decades-long sweep, at times exposing and commenting on facets of entire eras that it traverses; but it’s really ‘just’ the story of a small group of friends, their successes and their failures, their triumphs and their tragedies — probably with the emphasis on the latter — over a more extended period of their lives than most movies are prepared to tackle. That probably doesn’t make it unique (someone else must have attempted such a feat, surely), but it does make it rare; and when something rare is created with such undoubtable skill and achievement, it certainly merits deeper consideration — over an equally long period of time, I suspect, as the ghost of 82 notes in his summation.

My relationship with Leone’s oeuvre is, on reflection, a vexed one. While I liked A Fistful of Dollars and was instantly beguiled by For a Few Dollars More (both fairly straightforward action Westerns, or at least digestible in that way), it took me two or three viewings to appreciate Once Upon a Time in the West (now it would contend for a place among my favourite films), and I wasn’t congruent with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — to a point where, about a decade on, I still haven’t found time to revisit it and try to see what all the fuss is about. Once Upon a Time in America falls somewhere between these two stools. It’s a film that is, I think, easy to instantly admire — if not wholly, then for its majority; but also one I found difficult to process a full personal reaction to. With the recently-extended version set to arrive on DVD/Blu-ray/download later this year (in the US, at any rate), an ultra-convenient chance for a second evaluation looms.

Once Upon a Time in America was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 12 for 2013 project, which you can read more about here.

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Posted on May 4, 2014 by badblokebob

aka Ladri di biciclette

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

The victor of Sight & Sound’s inaugural “greatest film” poll (though it’s slipped down the rankings ever since), this is the simple story of a man hunting for his stolen bicycle, which is vital for his job, hard-won in a time of unemployment and poverty.

Bicycle Thieves is deemed “one of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism”, which apparently means it’s without symbolism or allegory. But if it’s nothing other than a “slice of life”… if we’re to garner nothing more than “here is something that happened”… well, is it even more simplistic than it already appears? And is that enough?

Bicycle Thieves was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 12 for 2013 project, which you can read more about here.

The Box (2009)

Posted on April 8, 2014 by badblokebob

The writer-director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales applies that same schtick to a combined adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button (previously adapted into an ’80s Twilight Zone episode), and the life story of his parents.

It’s almost Christmas, 1976, when a mysterious package is left on the doorstep of teacher Norma (Cameron Diaz) and her NASA employee husband Arthur (James Marsden). It contains a box with a button, and that afternoon Arlington Steward (Frank Langella, with a chunk of his face missing thanks to CGI) visits to explain what it means: if they press the button, someone they don’t know will die, and Norma and Arthur will receive $1 million cash; or they can not press it, and nothing happens. They have just 24 hours to decide.

It’s an intriguing “what would you do?” premise, which Matheson apparently lifted from a psychology class discussion scenario. I believe that’s about the extent of the short story too, which is all of six pages long — not exactly feature-length. Kelly has bulked it up by expanding the characters, who are now based on his parents to an almost freakish degree, and a massive back-end extension (the short story accounts for 30 to 40 minutes of the two-hour film) that heads deep into the same “what the…?” territory that he mined in his previous directorial efforts.

In the case of the former, Kelly’s dad really did work at NASA, his mum really was a teacher, and she really did have a foot disability, for which Mr Kelly Sr. and his NASA chums really did engineer a kind of prosthetic to help her resultant limp. What a nice tribute to his supportive parents and their devotion to one another, eh? At the start, perhaps, but by the end of the film you may be wondering what the writer-director’s subconscious wants to do to his ma and pa…

As for what that plot entails… I shan’t spoil it. Suffice to say it’s better explained than the ending of Donnie Darko and infinitely more comprehensible than Southland Tales, even though mysteries and questions remain. That’s fine in my book (I loved Donnie Darko), but the story that leads to said inconclusions isn’t all that. To boil it down, it takes a story that was fine at its short length, and attempts to add all kinds of explanations and expansions that just feel needless. It’s B-movie schlocky.

In fact, The Box is at its best when it almost embraces that genre side. There are some fantastically creepy sequences; genuinely discomforting lo-fi scares. They’re not inherently undermined by the plodding dramatic sections or the kooky sci-fi wobbly bits (or even the bizarre, oddly dated, slightly uncomfortable thematic reading suggested by who always presses the button), but they leave the unnerving parts to function as isolated instances of quality horror moviemaking rather than a consistent mood or tone.

What could function well as an indie-level thriller is further undermined by abundant, therefore costly, CGI. Whether that’s Langella’s facial disfigurement (what could’ve been make-up is actually a complex array of tracking dots, green face-paint, motion-control cameras, and so on; all used merely to place him in simple dialogue scenes), or wide shots of ’70s Virginia, with a computer-adjusted skyline, computer-animated cars, and computer-painted snow. It’s not that the effects work is poor (though don’t look too closely at those cars), but that it screams “this must be special effects!” when you don’t want such distractions.

For all that can actually be ignored, Diaz’s performance sadly can’t be missed. On the evidence of this, she should stick to the lowest-common-denominator comedies and comedy-action movies that made her the one-time highest-paid Hollywood actress (she may still be for all I know, but films like this aren’t the reason why). Maybe it’s not her fault, maybe it’s the inconsistent and inexplicable Southern accent she’s been landed with. The only reason for it is that Kelly’s mother has one, but the only favour it does Diaz is as an excuse for her generally poor acting. At least the rest of the cast are up to scratch — in fact Marsden, who I can only recall as stick-in-the-mud Cyclops in the first three X-Men movies, is practically a revelation.

The Box should have been a film we all discussed for years to come, its “what would you do”-ness providing an Indecent Proposal for the 21st Century (as other reviewers have suggested). Sadly the water is muddied by a series of crazy twists and out-there revelations, which sometimes pay off in atmospheric individual sequences, but overall feel… wrong. With Donnie Darko Kelly showed an overabundance of promise. He’s still not fulfilled it, but does present moments of brilliance that suggest we shouldn’t give up hope yet, and which render The Box at least watchable. For that, my score errs on the side of generosity.

The UK TV premiere of The Box is tonight at 11:20pm on BBC One.

The Next Three Days (2010)

Posted on April 6, 2014 by badblokebob

If someone you loved was locked up for decades for a crime you were sure they didn’t commit, how far would you go to get them out? That’s the premise of this methodical thriller from writer-director Paul Haggis (of Crash, of course), based on the French film Pour Elle.

Those with even a very basic grasp of French (like me) may spot that translates literally as “For Her” (though the English releases call it Anything for Her), which is why Russell Crowe does what he does: his middle-class idyll is shattered one day when police storm into his house and violently arrest his wife (Elizabeth Banks), in front of their small child, for the murder of the boss she argued with the night before. (This, incidentally, is the least plausible part of the entire movie — there’s no need for the police to storm the house like that, and in real life they wouldn’t. Well, American police might, I suppose. But I still don’t believe it.) The evidence is stacked against her, and her explanations for it sound a little far-fetched. She’s convicted, sent down… and when all legal means of appeal are exhausted, Crowe sets about planning a prison break.

This setup is, in my opinion, a really good one — though I feel kind of biased as the basics have crossed my mind as a good basis for a plot long before this or Pour Elle existed. Thing is, it’s inherently quite a daft concept: prisons are (rightfully) incredibly secure places — no ordinary Joe is breaking anyone out of there in a couple of weeks. By rights, a film of this ilk should probably be a Taken-esque slightly-OTT action-thriller, with a protagonist who either already has a “particular set of skills” or implausibly learns them (maybe over a longer period of time) before putting in motion their crazy scheme.

Haggis’ film is a mix of that, in its final act, and an attempt at depicting a serious, plausible, realistic version of what might happen if a regular, intelligent guy set his mind to such a task. Except it’s not really plausible that he’d get very far. Nonetheless, the film takes its time going through the motions of how Crowe might learn and practice the skills required, fund the enterprise, formulate his plan… Some have described this as dull, but I think it actually works. It’s a different kind of film to a pacey prison-break actioner, but if you were crazy enough to try this in the real world, of course you’d start by looking up “how to” articles online, by finding the authors of “how I escaped” books, by trying to buy a gun on the black market and messing it up, and so on.

According to Haggis, the French film is actually quite American-styled, a fast-paced thriller, which he chose to expand out. I’ve not seen the original so can’t say how he’s done that, but the implication is that the detail of the planning, and of the characters’ regular lives, has received more attention. A subplot with Olivia Wilde is a pointless aside that only explains itself once it throws a spanner in the works during the climax, but the scenes with Crowe’s parents pay off thanks to an excellent near-wordless supporting turn from Brian Dennehy. Best thing in the film, easily.

Running him a close second is the all-action final half hour or so, when Crowe (spoilers! but not really!) finally stages the actual escape. It’s a long time coming, but we’re paid off with a pretty fantastic long-form action sequence. There’s genuine tension about whether they’ll pull it off or not, and along the way we’re treated to a few nice flourishes in his plan. There’s a fair degree of silliness still, though, so at least that’s in-keeping with the rest of the movie.

Thing is, for all my love for the idea, it’s ultimately quite a silly concept. As much as we might dream of rescuing our innocent loved one from a life of torment behind bars, if it came to pass in reality, the vast majority of people would immediately realise it was an impossible dream. By trying to treat it plausibly, The Next Three Days is on a hiding to nothing — for all the realism of how Crowe begins his research and planning, there’s the downside that this slow-paced plausibility turns some viewers off; and when we do get the eventual escape, it’s an “in movie’s only” adrenaline-provoker that said viewers wanted all along. The film pretty much can’t win.

Finally, there’s an attempt to keep uncertain the truth about Banks’ culpability. Haggis never wanted that question to be answered — Crowe believes she’s innocent, even when she confesses to his face, and that’s what matters. I don’t think Haggis is a filmmaker who can resist answers, however, and for all his assertions that her innocence/guilt is left ambiguous, by the end I think you can be pretty darned certain which it is… which kinda makes all the previous attempts to leave it open feel hollow, especially the ones that side with the untrue.

The Next Three Days ends up as a solid thriller, with a methodical pace that will kill some viewers’ interest, but which conversely provides a depiction of detail that will hold the attention of anyone who’s ever pondered what they’d do in such a situation. The finale is largely worth the wait, at least, even if everyone will wish Haggis had skipped over a few longueurs while getting there.

The Next Three Days is on Channel 5 tonight at 10pm.

On the Waterfront (1954)

Posted on March 30, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 #104
Elia Kazan | 103 mins | DVD | 1.33:1 | USA / English | PG

So much more than one famous scene, On the Waterfront is a movie about a magic jacket, which causes anyone who owns it to stand up for what’s morally right even in the face of oppression, but also to suffer badly when they do.

OK, that’s not what it’s about. But you keep your eyes on that jacket and, I tell you, it may as well be.

The story, based on a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles, is actually about corruption in the dock worker union of New Jersey, with Marlon Brando witnessing what happens to those who attempt to blow the whistle, but deciding to do so himself anyway. Rather than a hollow issue-driven morality play, it becomes a tense and engrossing character drama in the hands of director Elia Kazan, screenwriter Budd Schulberg, and a capable cast. The latter includes Karl Malden as an initially quiet priest who resolves to stand up and fight the system too, even if he can’t persuade many workers to do the same; Lee J. Cobb as the self-serving man at the top, bitterly clinging to power ’til the last; Rod Steiger as Brando’s brother, part of the corrupt union architecture, but driven to protect his family at the sharp end of the wedge; and Eva Marie Saint, making her screen debut as the potential love interest, whose brothers was murdered doing the right thing but nonetheless persuades Brando to do the same.

The only potential downside to this comes if you dig behind the scenes. Kazan was one of those who testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities during its 1940s and ’50s witchhunt for Communists in Hollywood, naming eight men who were later blacklisted. If you consider the film to be Kazan’s answer to critics of his actions (as it “widely” is, according to Wikipedia), then presumably Brando is meant to be Kazan, calling out those who are doing ill to good hardworking Americans. But many a great film has been made with poor motive — just because Kazan thinks what Brando’s character does and what he did are the same thing doesn’t mean we have to. Even then, the issue of Kazan’s testimony is not so straightforward: a former Communist himself, he faced the end of his career if he didn’t testify, and the names he gave up were already known to the committee. The controversy dogged him for the rest of his career, though: when he received an honorary Oscar in 1999, several notable audience members refused to applaud.

While subtext is undoubtedly a meaningful thing, and using one situation to comment on another is a tried and true way of presenting an argument or criticism, I’m not a proponent of offhandedly dismissing work(s) just because we don’t agree with the actions or beliefs of the person who made it. On the Waterfront is a powerful film, exemplarily made by skilled craftsmen. Whatever Kazan was trying to atone for with its message about standing up to bullies in defence of what’s right, the sentiment is true. And you don’t need a magic coat to do it either.

On the Waterfront is on TCM UK tomorrow at 10:45am.

It was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 12 for 2013 project, which you can read more about here.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Posted on February 25, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 Academy Awards
5 nominations — 1 win

Winner: Best Sound Editing (tied with Skyfall)
Nominated: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing.

I was going to, in the run up to this year’s Oscars, post a series of reviews looking back at last year’s Best Picture nominees. Unfortunately the viewing for that didn’t really come off (February’s been dismal all round, as you’ll find out in a few days in the monthly update) — but I did manage one, and here it is:

The writing and directing team from The Hurt Locker reunite for another perspective on the last decade-and-a-half-(almost)’s ‘War on Terror’. They set out to make a film about the CIA’s decade-long failed search for Osama bin Laden… and then he was found, immediately leading the film to be restructured as the story of the CIA’s decade-long successful search for Osama bin Laden.

The film focuses on Maya (Jessica Chastain), a fresh CIA agent in Pakistan who, in 2003, latches on to a piece of information about a messenger. No one else has much interested in this lead, but she pursues it for the next however-many years, most of the time getting nowhere — until eventually it results in something concrete…

Zero Dark Thirty feels like a dispassionate film, a characteristic that has debatable merits. The goal is clearly to present an objective, fact-driven account of how the CIA eventually found their most-wanted target, but how successfully it does that has been called in to question multiple times: there were those who felt it justified the use of torture, and those who claimed its facts were all wrong. On both these facts, any one viewer’s mileage might vary. I don’t think it defends torture, but nor does it condemn it — just as bad, in some people’s eyes. Do the agents in the film get information from torture? Some — but by no means all, and the quality of what little they did get is queried by other characters. I don’t think the film is pro-torture, but by trying to be objective and not really criticise the torture and torturers either, it doesn’t go in the direction some would wish it did.

As for the veracity of the facts, I have no idea. Nothing seems implausible. And when condensing eight years of a manhunt into around two hours of screen time, of course some details will be lost, or truncated, or slightly modified to support the flow. I think those who allege the film is poppycock are accusing it of more than minor tweaks, but nonetheless, that’s inevitably part of the process. What’s perhaps most interesting is it hasn’t whitewashed the facts to make a film that feels like A Movie — this isn’t a relentless thriller-shaped eight-year chase, but a more methodical, occasionally messy, real-life-like quest for information.

For me, that worked. It takes a little time to get going, to settle down into its rhythm and to let us identify the important characters, but once it does that, it’s suitably gripping. Not in a nail-you-to-your-seat way like, say, a Bourne film, but in an ever-more-engrossing fashion. It can feel a bit like watching a drama-documentary, however, because there’s very little investment in the characters. There are maybe two or three brief scenes in the entire thing where we’re invited to identify with these people, or even consider them as people, with emotions beyond the methodical drive for information. Some people will hate that, but I don’t think Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal really want us to focus on the human toll of this almost-never-ending investigation, they just want us to follow what happened. The focus is on how it was done, not the people who did it.

This carries through to the final half-hour (or so), which is a near-real-time rendition of the Navy SEAL mission to invade bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. The unit assigned to the task turn up and get on with it — like the rest of the characters, they are no more than sketches. I read a review that asserted this is where the film’s focus should have been — on who these men were, what their home lives were like, on their training for the mission, and what effect it had on them after. All of which are valid points for a film, but that’s not what Zero Dark Thirty is trying to be.

When we see the mission executed, it feels like a well-researched and detailed recreation of what happened — who moved where and when, how the building was entered, who got shot, etc — rather than asking us to identify with what these characters are thinking or feeling. Nor does it really seek to elicit too much emotion from the audience — it’s not forcing events into a standard action sequence template, with split-second cutting and a thudding soundtrack; it’s not trying to create tension and excitement, or at least no more than is inherent in the real events. I think Bigelow is borderline documentarian in her aims throughout the film, here as much as anywhere else. Clearly some people find that cold, or at least it leaves them cold, but I think it works. Would it be a better film if it came loaded with a greater exploration of the characters as people, or with a depiction of the events in more regular Thriller terms? I’ll let you know when someone makes that film.

The one other criticism I do agree with is that we don’t see enough of the SEALs’ preparation. They built a full-scale replica of the compound and trained on it — was that not worth putting on screen? I know this is the story of Maya and her investigation, not the SEALs and their assault, but I think a bit of time could have been spent on that fascinating aspect of the raid. On the bright side, there’s a sequence where our characters collect their still-in-development super-top-secret stealth helicopters from Area 51. Yes, really. I guess that must be true, because without the reality-claim of the previous two hours it would come across as Independence Day-level sci-fi!

I imagine debates about the moral stance and veracity of its facts will continue to dog Zero Dark Thirty, as well as the question of whether its too emotionless. For me it nonetheless made for an effectively modern and realistic take on the spy thriller.

In the UK, coverage of the 86th Annual Academy Awards is on Sky Movies Oscars from 11:30pm on Sunday 2nd March 2014.

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