Ip Man 2 (2010)

Posted on April 28, 2013 by badblokebob

aka Yip Man 2 / Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster

Picking up more or less where the first film left off, this sequel sees Ip and his family settled in Hong Kong, struggling to get by as he attempts to set up a Wing Chun school against opposition from the existing establishments.

The main thing to note about Ip Man 2 is that it has stunning fight sequences, especially a large sequence in the fish market and a one-on-one tabletop challenge. The latter sees star Donnie Yen take on legend Sammo Hung, which I imagine was a treat for genre fans (though it’s not their first encounter). For those of us less well versed in this world, it’s still a bloody good fight scene.

The first Ip Man was about considerably more than just action, but that’s where its sequel sets its focus. Human drama remains, but it doesn’t ring quite as true and perhaps isn’t trying to be as much of a feature as before. Ip Man’s relationships with his wife and with his students are hinted, told with plenty of shorthand — she’s pregnant, goes into labour just before his big fight (not that he knows), that kind of thing. They’re quickly tucked away as something for those really interested, rather than playing an essential part.

The only major downside comes when the Brits turn up for the final act. Stereotyped and poorly acted, presented with palpable jingoism and xenophobia, their presence and storyline drag the film down.

Still, at least it’s all wonderfully shot. Dismissing the clichéd desaturated look of the last film, here we get something a little more colourful, though never close to garish, with well chosen angles and superlative editing.

Ip Man 2 doesn’t have the same majesty as the first, but there’s an enjoyably pulpish sensibility in its place. Fast-moving and literally action-packed, on that level it entertains.

Iron Sky (2012)

Posted on February 26, 2013 by badblokebob

Period sci-fi comedy/action/adventure Iron Sky is the 21st century answer to Snakes on a Plane: the worldwide internet geek community got hold of the idea/trailer for a film about Nazis on the moon coming back to Earth, and somehow pushed the concept into being via crowdfunding and a general sense of “doesn’t that sound cool?” Then, again like Snakes on a Plane, no one seemed to actually like it.

Well, I’m going to be a bit of a dissenting voice, because I thought Iron Sky was quite fun. It’s by no means perfect, with some clunky dialogue, weak acting, blatant virtual sets, thuddingly obvious satire, and so on (for more crushing criticism, see the ghost of 82’s review)… but, equally, it’s a low-budget SF comedy — you have to admire some of its ambition.

If you take the rotten dialogue and variable performances to be part of the intentional humour (and, in some cases, I think it is), then they’re less objectionable. The CGI is no worse than we’ve seen in some major productions down the years (for various reasons it brought to mind Sky Captain). Its attacks on a Palin-esque US President are remarkably untimely now she seems to have been ignored even in her own country, but at least it does place the US and their foreign policy attitudes in its sights — the advantage of it being a foreign production, because I’m sure if it was US-made they’d be the gung-ho spotless heroes defeating that Natzees for a second time.

Throw in a moderately witty spoof of the Downfall-based Hitler YouTube meme, and moderately audacious elements like the Nazis turning a black astronaut white as part of their new attitude to racial purity, and you have a film that is moderately successful on its own terms.

It’s brain-in-neutral entertainment, certainly, but there are worse examples of that. Snakes on a Plane, for instance. And if you really need convincing, just imagine how Michael Bay would’ve treated this concept: exactly the same, but without the awareness of it all being silly.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

Posted on January 31, 2013 by badblokebob

aka Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec

Based on the long-running bande dessinée (aka “comics”) by Jacques Tardi, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is occasionally sold to English audiences with a handy quote from Empire: “Amélie meets Indiana Jones”. I’ve never seen Amélie (though, funnily enough, I ordered the Blu-ray in a sale last week), but I still think that’s a pretty fair summing up.

Adapted from two of Tardi’s tales (the first and fourth, fact-fans), Adèle Blanc-Sec is set in 1912 Paris, and concerns the titular adventuress’ quest to resurrect an Egyptian mummy who may be capable of healing her sister, while also having to deal with an escaped pterodactyl. Pretty instantly you can see this isn’t what we Brits typically think of as A French Film… that said, the often farcical tone allies itself with another preconception about the French, so that’s OK.

Indeed, this lightness — fairer to say silliness — might alienate some viewers hoping for more Indiana Jones and less Amélie. There’s a sequence in Egypt that’s very much in the Indy mould, and much of the stuff with the pterodactyl too, but it’s always underscored and surrounded with humour. Caricatures and exaggerations abound. And if that doesn’t put you off, the introduction-heavy opening minutes might, dense with introductions for disconnected characters and locations. Stick with it, it sorts itself out.

The film finds itself with a 12 certificate in the UK, and that age might be the perfect target audience. There’s dinosaurs and mummies, car chases and fireballs, derring do brushing up against irreverent humour, and even some boobies. Hurrah for the Frenchies’ casual attitude to nudity — its appearance here is in every possible way gratuitous, and yet with a snippet of plot information that means you couldn’t snip it out without creating an obvious jump. It’s only these fleeting nipples that prompt the film to be higher than a simple PG (the BBFC’s explanation is here), though there’s a mildly harsh edge to some of the action too. Should a man being guillotined be funny? Well, it is here.

Star Louise Bourgoin is/was a model, which you can believe from her looks but wouldn’t know from her performance. Her Adèle is quick-witted and funny, terse but likeable, and she’s prepared to don all sorts of daft and occasionally unflattering disguises in service of both story and laughs. An able supporting cast includes Bond villain Mathieu Amalric, unrecognisable under heavy prosthetics, who is unfortunately underused. Some reports say this was planned as a trilogy (whether the sequels are still in the works, I know not), so perhaps he was being established for that purpose.

Director Luc Besson managed to build up something of a following with a regular output of films through the ’80s and ’90s, perhaps culminating artistically with the exceptional Leon, which he followed with US-styled (but French-produced) sci-fi epic The Fifth Element and an ill-received re-telling of the story of Joan of Arc. For much of the ’00s he moved further behind the scenes, writing and producing a flurry of mainstream-flavoured Euro-produced crossover hits — film series such as District 13, Taken, Taxi, The Transporter, and more can all be attributed to him. Adèle Blanc-Sec isn’t his first time back in the director’s chair since the ’90s, but while there’s nothing wrong with its production, nothing suggests Besson in particular needed to be calling the shots either. Maybe someone more intimately familiar with his previous work would see something I didn’t, but though it’s all competently handled, there’s nothing to remind you this is a man who once helmed some truly great films.

The music is by Éric Serra, who murdered the score for GoldenEye with some electronic modern rubbish instead of the classic John Barry-inspired style David Arnold brought for Tomorrow Never Dies through Quantum of Solace (and, one hopes, he’ll bring to Bond 24, after Thomas Newman’s bland and self-copying effort on Skyfall). Serra has clearly spent the intervening 15 years learning how to copy, however, as there’s a distinct John Williams flavour to the music. I’m not objecting — this is an Indiana Jones-esque tale and Indiana Jones-esque music fits like a glove.

I suppose Adèle Blanc-Sec won’t be to everyone’s tastes. Comparisons to the Stephen Sommers Mummy have been made, but its tone is sillier still than that and not everyone approved then. That’s before we get on to its occasionally scrappy nature, including a slightly overlong third act. But that’s piffle I say, because in the right frame of mind it’s all rollicking good fun. I sincerely hope those mooted sequels happen.

The UK TV premiere of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is on Film4 and Film4 HD tomorrow, Friday 1st February, at 9pm.

It placed 10th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2013, which can be read in full here.

Django (1966)

Posted on January 18, 2013 by badblokebob

The ’60s were a pretty exciting time for cinema. In France, the Nouvelle Vague were tearing up the rulebook and pushing forward their own techniques; in Britain, the James Bond series was ditching kitchen sink drama in favour of reinventing the action movie, turning itself into a global phenomenon in the process; and in Italy (and Spain) they were pulling a similar trick on that most American of genres, the Western.

Say ‘Spaghetti Western’ to most people and what they’re envisioning is the work of Sergio Leone, but you and I know it stretches much further than that. Aside from his works, the original Django is arguably the best known, so successful it spawned over 50 sequels and rip-offs (only one, made 21 years later, is official). With Quentin Tarantino adopting the name for his latest cinematic outing (in UK cinemas from today), I imagine its renown has only increased.

The titular gunslinger (Franco Nero, dripping with silent tough guy masculinity) is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, walking into a near-deserted town on the US-Mexico border dragging a coffin in his wake. There he runs afoul of a local Major, who consequently descends on the town with his 40-strong army… and that’s just act one! That alone would sustain plenty of films, but Django has more in store.

Much of the film plays as an action movie. There’s a lot of atmospheric ponderousness at the start, but once things kick off they rarely let up. In just over 90 minutes the film rattles through a damsel-in-distress rescue; a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shoot-out; a 40-on-1 massacre; a raid on a fort; a barroom brawl (one of the stand-outs, that — anyone who thinks handheld ShakeyCam fights are a modern invention should take a look); a tense, silent escape; a brutal punishment (or two); a valley ambush; and a graveyard stand-off. I think that’s all, but I may have missed some. It’s practically a definition of bang for your buck, which I’m sure goes a long way to explaining its popularity.

It all culminates in a final act that’s remarkably fatalistic, almost to Shakespearean levels. Without wanting to spoil too much, nearly everything goes wrong and hardly anyone makes it out alive. The answers about Django’s past aren’t exactly cheery either. It’s all a bit doom and gloom, though ultimately not as depressing as it could be. But almost.

I don’t normally comment on the format in my reviews — especially Blu-ray, which I never feel well enough qualified to offer detailed comment on — but it’s fair to say the US Region A-locked BD from Blue Underground has questionable picture quality. Some would say it was atrocious. The film begins with a note that this transfer is from the original negative and there were some age-related faults, but if that leads you to expect the odd scratch or speck of dirt, you’d be wrong. Detail, colour, and so on are actually all very strong, but it’s like watching something on a not-quite-correctly-tuned analogue TV; like you’ve found the channel, but you’re one or two points off the optimum frequency. Or, to put it another way, it’s really snowy. As I said, I’m no expert in BD quality, but this looks like it needs a sympathetic dose of DNR. No one but fools want a waxy Predator-esque hack job, but the mess here is equally distracting. When the odd clear bit comes along, though, it looks gorgeous. There’s a UK version out on Monday, but obviously I have no idea if it’ll be any better.

Django is exactly the kind of film you’d expect Tarantino to love: violent (so violent it was denied a UK certificate until 1993), yet classically stylish, but with boundary-nudging parts, the odd vein of dark humour, and a rough-round-the-edges feel (no doubt because they started shooting without a finished story, and never had a full screenplay!) It’s not as slick as Leone’s work and, even with Tarantino shining a spotlight on it, won’t challenge the Dollars films or Once Upon a Time in the West for a place at the top table. But it is entertaining.

As noted, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is in UK cinemas today, while Argent Films release a UK Blu-ray of the original on Monday.

Passchendaele (2008)

Posted on December 16, 2012 by badblokebob

Despite winning a bunch of Canadian film awards, this First World War drama seems to have been really poorly received by critics — the Radio Times even saw fit to award it just 1 star! I must dissent, however, because I thought it was very good.

The story concerns a Canadian soldier who is invalided out of the war, returns to Canada to recuperate, falls for a local outcast woman, and eventually returns to the front in time for the titular battle. There’s more to it than that, but I’ll leave that for you to discover. Sandwiched between the two battles, the stuff in Canada makes up the bulk of the film, making this more of a period social/romantic drama than a war film. You could class this bit as a melodrama, something that never seems to go down well with critics, but I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. In the ’40s, say, that would probably be considered the height of cinema. I appreciate we’re not in the ’40s any more, but that kind of epic feeling is still welcome to some, in the right place. That said, it does get a bit cheesy at times — the climax in particular is a bit heavy-handed with its symbolism.

On the whole, however, the bookending battle scenes are suitably evocative. The opening owes a lot to Saving Private Ryan & co in its style (the film’s relatively low budget makes it look distinctly like something from Band of Brothers), but many things owe their style to many other things, so I don’t think this is a problem either. Besides, that look has become the visual shorthand for This Is A Gritty Real War, that’s all. And besides, the sequence does its own thing with it. It’s quite a chilling, effective opening.

The later scenes at Passchendaele itself have more of their own feel. This is the muddy, rain-soaked First World War, and the fighting is chaotic, brutal, messy. Some have criticised it for not showing the scale of the event, which confused me because I thought it had a grand scale. And even if the scale isn’t big enough, the up-close-and-personal fighting surely gives an indication of what it was like to be there. If you were there, you wouldn’t have got an aerial shot of a huge battlefield with thousands dying, would you.

Serving triple time as star, writer and director, Paul Gross’ work as the latter is very good — see again comments on the battle scenes. Cinematographer Gregory Middleton also gives the Canadian scenes a painterly style, making a pleasant contrast. Gross’ screenplay… well, see the comments on the melodrama again. I think it’s mostly fine; we’ve all witnessed a lot worse — there’s nothing clunkingly bad here. His acting is equally solid.

For all the apparent critical bile you’d expect there to be obvious flaws, like terrible acting, but I really don’t think that’s the case. Again, like with the melodrama, some of it is occasionally a little mannered and some of the smaller roles are a fraction below par; but goodness, I’ve seen much worse performances in bigger roles in much better-regarded films.

Passchendaele may not be an exceptional achievement in cinematic quality, but it is very good and I really don’t see why some have such apparent hatred for it. In its own way it conveys well the lives and horrors of that time, and by being made from a Canadian perspective it offers a slightly different view to the one we normally see. And to be honest, I appreciate a film that remembers and in some way honours those that fought in the First World War — thanks in no small part to the Americans, we’ve had an endless stream of World War Two pictures, but the very particular circumstances of the Great War are less often put on screen. I think Passchendaele does a solid job of rectifying that, at least a little.

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2012. Read more here.

The Beast Stalker (2008)

Posted on November 3, 2012 by badblokebob

aka Ching yan

2012 #48
Dante Lam | 110 mins | TV* | 1.85:1 | Hong Kong / Cantonese | 15

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.

The Beast Stalker is the kind of thriller that’s far less convoluted when you actually sit down to watch it, even if it does contain flashbacks that some other reviewers found confusing. Personally I had no trouble spotting them, but then thanks to those other reviews I was looking out for them, so who knows? Do note that the title is absolutely meaningless. Even if you read it as the “beast” being some kind of human, none of the characters are specifically a “beast stalker”. Maybe its meaning got lost in translation.

As a Hong Kong-produced thriller, you’d expect the focus here to actually be on the action sequences, but that’s not the case — there’s a real effort to look at the characters and the investigative side of the story. It’s by no means a procedural, and the character drama isn’t as deep as it might like to be, but the intentions are good. When HK’s famed action does turn up, it’s quite fleetingly and entirely plot-driven. The pivotal opening car chase is a nice one, topped by a crash realised (I presume) through seamless CGI. It reoccurs in flashbacks, each time with equal visual awe. Other punch-ups arise from the story rather than action-movie-necessity, 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.

That said, it’s not an overly surprise-laden plot — following the heroes and villains throughout sees to that — but that doesn’t leave it without tension or surprise. In the final reel, however, it tries to have its cake and eat it, first with a Shocking Moment it retreats back from, then with a final twist that ties everything up in a neat little bow; the kind of narrative trick which feels satisfying when you write it but comes over as too pat to an audience. It doesn’t ruin the film, it’s just a bit of a cheap “ta-dah!”, and perhaps with some more groundwork it could’ve been made to make sense.

In the lead role, Nicholas Tse fails to bring much more than standard action movie heroism to his character. There’s the occasional scene where he’s clearly been instructed to convey self doubt, but it isn’t pervasive. His best emoting comes courtesy of a nosebleed. Left to his own devices, his performance consists of business-like heroism, massively OTT shouting, or wails of crying sorrow. But that nosebleed… that works.

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, according to Wikipedia, which seems deserved to me.

No other roles offer quite so much, scuppered by subplots that either go nowhere or are too familiar to care about. There’s the prosecutor’s failed marriage which may have led to the death of her child, or the cocky bossy cop who has a crisis of ability after an accidental killing, and so on. The theoretical main villain barely even features, which is refreshing in a way — it’s not that he’s underplayed, just that he’s not that relevant. Plus there’s the odd completely misjudged bit, like Tse’s cop stalking the sister of the little girl he accidentally killed, sketching her and offering her sweets. Creepy.

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.

As a straightforward thriller, The Beast Stalker ticks boxes admirably. As something with more meaningful depth, it manages to pull off a couple of threads, but is left wanting in other areas. The foundations are there, but the script needs a re-write to build on it.

* I watched it on Film4 HD, though it wasn’t listed as being in HD. Still looks a helluva lot better than regular-quality digital TV though. ^

Three Colour TV

Posted on August 19, 2012 by badblokebob

Sky Arts 1 are showing Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy over the next few weeks, starting tonight with Three Colours: Blue at 11pm (I believe it’s also repeated later in the week). My ‘reviews’ from back in the blog’s first year aren’t really up to much, but now seemed as good a time as any to bring them over.

This is a set of films I really need to re-watch (and perhaps then re-review), preferably with some kind of academic extras to put them in context. I believe Criterion’s Blu-ray box set is pretty stacked in that department, but at at least £40 it’s a tad rich for my pocket when I do already have them on DVD. (That said, it’s less than I initially thought and only about a tenner more than the UK set, so it’s not so bad really. But as anyone who follows BD releases knows, this September/October is a spectacularly busy one.)

Anyway, here’s the little I had to say in 2007…

Wallander: Before the Frost and other stories

Posted on July 22, 2012 by badblokebob

Tonight sees the finale of the third series of British Wallander adaptations, this one based on the novel Before the Frost. It was previously filmed seven years ago, as the theatrically-released first episode of the Krister Henriksson-starring Swedish Wallander series, and I reviewed it as part of 100 Films 2009, back when BBC Four aired the Henriksson Wallander, creating the vanguard of our current obsession with Scandinavian crime drama (without this, no The Killing! Guardian readers everywhere gasp at the horror of such an imagining). The broadcast of the English-language re-adaptation seemed like a good time to bring my review over here.

The Henriksson series ran for a total of 26 feature-length episodes. They’re mostly very good and I’d recommend them (they’re available in the UK across four DVD box sets from Arrow). After Before the Frost, three further episodes were treated to a theatrical release, so naturally I reviewed them too. Links to all four follow…

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)

Posted on July 6, 2012 by badblokebob

aka Di Renjie: Tong tian di guo

This year’s 52nd film is, in many ways, thanks to DC’s The New 52 (the comic book initiative/publicity stunt that saw DC relaunch their entire universe across a series of 52 new #1 issues, for those who don’t do comics): it got me back into reading regular comics, and featured in multiple titles for several months was a cool-looking advert for the US release of Detective Dee, complete with the attractive review quote, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Sherlock Holmes, only a lot more fun”. A little research finds it highly recommended in other arenas too: there’s a host of awards nominations and wins, from the Venice Film Festival to the Hong Kong Film Awards; an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes; Blu-ray.com furnished the UK BD release with a glowing write-up; Time ranked it the third best film for the whole of 2011 (behind The Artist and Hugo). Even the unreliable film section of the Radio Times saw fit to give it four stars.

All of which hopefully establishes how I found it to be a massive disappointment.

Days before the coronation of China’s first Empress, a high-ranked man is mysteriously burnt alive from the inside out. Then the man charged with investigating the case suffers the same fate. On advice (from who or what I shall mention later), the Empress assigns the case to Detective Dee — who has been in prison for eight years for rebelling against the Empress. Sounds like a good setup, eh? A super detective, at conflict with his employer, looking into supernaturally-tinged murders; and it’s a Hong Kong movie so you know there’s going to be some impressive action sequences.

To take Time’s opinion as a starting point, I have to wonder if they would rank Detective Dee so highly if it had been an American-produced film with actors speaking English. I don’t mean if the film was Americanised, but exactly the same, just an American production. In that instance, I think it would very much be viewed as a summer blockbuster, because that’s definitely what it strikes me as. It’s one with lots of talky bits and an over-complicated story, certainly, but then it’s not unheard of for US blockbusters to confuddle the viewer with an under-written over-developed plot (less so these days, I grant you).

Apparently it makes commentary on the economic and political situation in modern China. It must be done quite subtly, then. That’s a good thing I suppose, but I imagine you’re only going to notice it if you already have a familiarity with what’s going on. I don’t. Best I can tell, the film’s message is, “even if you think your ruler’s a bad person who’s done bad things, they’re your ruler and you should let them get on with it and not rebel”. I could have misread it, of course, but that’s what I got from the ending. Not a position I’d personally agree with.

Naturally there are plenty of action sequences (choreographed by Sammo Hung), several of them tacked on for the sake of it. Personally I wasn’t impressed. They’re all clearly shot on digital video (the whole film was, but the smeary fights really show it up), several are under-lit, there’s too much Hollywood-style choppy editing, it felt like some had bits missing, others are stop-start in a way that adds up to not very much… Many of them left me confused about what was meant to be going on, not in awe of the performer’s abilities or entertained. One of them features the hero fighting a gaggle of cheap CGI deer. Yes, deer. Why?

Detective Dee is a film of moments. There are some pretty shots, occasionally even sequences; the fight in the Phantom Bazaar, an underground river network, is guilty of some of my criticisms but also pulls off a few nice bits. The CGI is what you’d expect from a mid-range US miniseries, but (with exceptions such as the fighting deer) it works well enough, even creating some dramatic vistas, particularly of the 200-foot tall Buddha statue that’s central to the plot. Some of the sets are also incredibly impressive — again, the interior of the Buddha. Occasionally I was frustrated reading the subtitles (which fly by at a rate of knots, it felt to me) because I wanted to look at the detailed, busy production design.

I mention the fast subtitles because the film feels like it’s moving at quite a lick. There’s little room to get to know the characters, or the situation, or their relationships, or their political machinations, before it’s racing on to the next plot point. And yet despite that it feels incredibly slow as a whole — I was clock-watching before the hour mark.

Perhaps one of the things that suffers for this is the film’s relationship with the supernatural. It’s at first supposed that the deaths are some kind of divine intervention, but then this is kicked away — what a silly idea by some foolish characters! But then everyone’s more than happy to accept a talking magic deer (seriously; and they happily take its advice (see second paragraph)), a fighter whose arms fly off and turn into… something else (choppy editing means I’m not sure), facial transfiguration (imagine Mission: Impossible’s masks with face-churning magic instead of masks), and so on and so forth. Some of it ultimately has a rational explanation, but why is “divine intervention” so much less believable than “magic”? And why do you have to explain the talking deer and flying arms when the face-churning-thing is left untouched? I can take people flying unrealistically through the air — that’s the style of the genre, much like regular folk breaking out into perfectly-pitched musically-accompanied song is the style of the musical — but not internal inconsistency in other areas.

I’ve avoided the comparison so far, but Detective Dee is like a Chinese version of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, only a less inventive and comprehensible one. And it’s certainly not “a lot more fun”. Dee is a great deducer, a la Holmes, though the film gives him no opportunities to significantly show that off. The plot concerns a series of apparently-supernatural murders that actually have a rational explanation, and are ultimately all about taking control of the country. It stars a period detective who’s been reconfigured as younger and a man of action. But whereas Holmes kept things clear-cut and fast-moving, Dee (as I’ve noted) fudges and obscures motivation and plot and feels tediously long.

There are actually quite a few little things to like about Dee, and maybe there are a few big things too, but I feel like it’s making you work for them — you could enjoy the characters, or the political machinations, but only if you take time to study them slowly and work out what was going on for yourself, because the film’s in too much of a rush to explain it to you. There’s something to be said for entertainment not spelling everything out — it’s often a highly-praised element of anything that achieves it — but Dee doesn’t do that, it rushes headlong past things that could do with more clarity. (One thing I should do is listen to Bey Logan’s commentary — there’s a fair chance he’ll have insights that illuminate me. But in a moment you’ll see why I haven’t done that before posting this.)

Believe it or not, I didn’t hate Detective Dee… but I didn’t exactly enjoy it either. Not fully. I started this review by saying it and I think it’s my key feeling: after getting a little hyped up about something I’d previously ignored the UK release of, I found it to be disappointing. Your mileage may vary.

The UK TV premiere of Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is on Film4 and Film4 HD tonight, Friday 6th July, at 11:10pm.

La Règle du jeu (1939)

Posted on April 17, 2012 by badblokebob

aka The Rules of the Game

I watched La Règle du jeu a year ago today, possibly the longest time I’ve ever waited before posting a review. I actually wrote this months and months ago, but sort of intended to re-watch it (especially as it’s been on Film4 plenty) to try to craft something better. But I still haven’t, and with a whole 12 months gone by — and plenty of new films needing to be watched — I’ve decided just to post this and be done with.

And it’s halfway through April and there’s still three more reviews from last year to post, never mind the nearly-40 from this year.

Sometimes you watch one of the most acclaimed films of all time and find yourself with very little to say about it. La Règle du jeu — or, as it’s commonly known in America thanks to Criterion’s incessant title translation (in fairness, that’s probably the most sensible way to combat the mass attitude of “argh! it’s in Foreign!”), The Rules of the Game* — is certainly one of those films. Regularly voted into the top three on Greatest Films Ever Made lists, it sits at exactly #3 on the last iterations of both They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s 1000 Greatest Films and Sight & Sound‘s decennial Top 10 (one of only two films to have appeared in all six to date; the new one’s later this year).

“RULES OF THE GAME, the mutant, French cousin of DOWNTON ABBEY”
– Patton Oswalt

What little I can say is that it’s a farce, but also a drama, which clearly has Something To Say — I believe I read that Renoir said it’s intended to be more about the lifestyle and the time it’s set than it is about a story. That kind of idea can often lead to pretension, but here it works. The story is simple yet complicated — it’s all about people having various affairs, basically, but there’s a lot of them and they’re constantly shifting. I’m not sure how Proper Film Critics would feel about this link, but I felt a certain affinity for Gosford Park while watching. Either I’m being plebby and there’s nothing substantial there, or that’s something that merits a more considered comparison. There’s some great camerawork — not flashy, not drawing attention to itself, but a lovely use of long takes, fluid movement and deep focus to keep the action flowing seamlessly.

And I agree, it is very good, but unlike Citizen Kane (which I instantly admired, though really need to see again to shake off the shackles of its Importance and just appreciate by itself — hello, Blu-ray!), I didn’t really see why it’s often rated so highly. I imagine there’s something I’m missing; possibly some historical significance. There’s a lot packed in, and I can see how multiple viewings could reveal even more going on. Perhaps a better researched awareness of the period (beyond the obvious Eve Of War, though that’s important) and of French class structure at the time is necessary to get the full richness of Renoir’s vision. The fact it was banned by the French government due to being bad for morale, then also banned by the occupying Nazis, suggests it did have a lot of social relevance.

Not one of my favourites, then, but a definite “must try again”.

* OK, this ‘criticism’ doesn’t stand-up to much scrutiny — it’s not like every UK DVD/Blu-ray release of a foreign film has the original language title on it. But I was inspired by the fact the BFI DVD does call La Règle du jeu by its original title, and numerous other foreign films retain their original titles on UK releases too, whereas you rarely see a Criterion release without a translated title. I also appreciate there’s some kind of cultural snobbery involved in this comment even coming to mind. For these reasons I was going to delete the comment, only I liked part of it too much. So much for kill your babies.

Um, anyway… ^

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