The Day of the Locust (1975)

Posted on September 18, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #38
John Schlesinger | 137 mins | TV | 18 / R

Adapted from the novel by Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust is a slightly scrappy film about the seedy underside of Hollywood’s golden age. The plot is neither here nor there in many respects — the film is about the grotesques who are attracted to Hollywood, and that being exactly what it feeds on. The bizarre, surreal ending definitely makes more sense if you’re already thinking about the film in this way.

The magnificent riot at the end is a tour de force of cinema that single-handedly almost justifies that whole theme — it’s what happens when their frustrations at dreams not being realised overflows. It could be argued it makes an easy juxtaposition — of fans baying for stars at a premiere with a revenge-fuelled mob baying for blood — but it’s still a just one. It’s capped off by the way one turns into the other, and how that turns into a kind of apocalypse. I don’t know how it’s meant to be read, but I choose to take it that way

(Spoilers in this paragraph.) If the riot is a literal apocalypse, then the next scene becomes an afterlife-set coda. It’s very brightly lit and white, like a Heaven, and Faye is still there — still in Hollywood, exactly where she’d dream of being — while Tod is gone. She’s looking for him, back at the Bernadoo where she was kinda happy, and she wants him after all — but he’s not there; he doesn’t want her. It’s a tenuous reading for a film that seems to be a real-world drama, maybe… but not a wholly unsupported one — it’s a flat-out unusual scene.

Also brilliantly staged is the collapse of a Waterloo battle set. Appropriate as it’s one of the novel’s most memorable moments.

Despite having top billing, Donald Sutherland’s part is a beefed-up supporting role. Except he’s so good in it that he fairly steals the film. And despite fourth billing, William Atherton is ostensibly the main character. I don’t know if the film takes lengthy asides from him because they cast a fourth-billed-level actor, or if they cast a fourth-billed-level actor because the film takes lengthy asides from him, but either way these long-feeling stretches away from the only character we’re really encouraged to identify with dilute the film’s drive. Primarily for this reason, it could do with being shorter. Interestingly, the novel is a mere 163 pages (in my edition), meaning the film is close to translating it at a rate of a page per minute, which is rather extraordinary — very few adaptations do so little condensing.

(You probably recognise William Atherton from slimy supporting roles in Ghostbusters and the first two Die Hards. Believe it or not, his Ghostbusters character is available as an action figure. That is madness.)

The Day of the Locust may be a mess, or it may be a flawed masterpiece. It may very well be both. For much of it’s running time it pootled along at 3 stars, pushing down toward 2 the more diluted it began to feel. But seeing the completion of Donald Sutherland’s performance in the final scenes, plus the way those scenes seem to draw together the whole film, revealing and fulfilling themes I hadn’t even noticed developing until that point, in a spectacular orgy of apocalyptic violence… well, the stars suddenly ratchet back up.

~~The Day of the Locust is on Sky Movies Indie tonight at 9:30pm, and at various other times throughout the week.~~

Nirvana (1997)

Posted on August 29, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #75
Gabriele Salvatores | 89 mins | TV | R

The Radio Times film section may be steadily going down the drain, but when anyone describes something as “one of the best science-fiction films ever made” it’s worth paying attention. “Yet few people outside Italy have seen it,” they add. Indeed, despite screening at Cannes (albeit out of competition), this Italian movie has never been classified by the BBFC, so I presume it’s never been released here (though this was its third showing on the BBC). It’s been released in America though… by Miramax. They did their usual foreign film job, chopping out 17 minutes, changing the music and adding an English dub. This is the version shown by the BBC (at the time of posting, also available on iPlayer) and reviewed here.

Most sci-fi we see is of the American variety — partly due to the fact most of any cinema and the vast majority of imported TV we get is from there, partly due to that being where the money is for special effects and what have you — and that tends to mean tonnes of CGI, a fast pace and action sequences up to the eyeballs. Nirvana is more stereotypically European, however: it’s clearly a Deep and Meaningful film, though unlike many examples of Thoughtful cinema it at least has a slightly thriller-ish plot and a hefty dose of cyberpunk styling for us plebs to pick up on.

Sometime in the future (I read 2005 in one review, but best to ignore that now), Christopher Lambert is a computer game designer working on a new title for Christmas. Somehow a virus invades his system, in the process making his lead character, Solo, fully sentient. Unable to escape the game, Solo wishes to be deleted, but Lambert can’t because the final software is owned by some giant corporation and will be released in just three days… so he has just three days to get into their computer system and delete the file, before Solo is condemned to never-ending life stuck in the game.

The most obvious point of reference for Nirvana is Blade Runner, which I’d wager was a hefty inspiration. Writer/director Salvatores introduces themes of what it means to be human and a lead character one might like to decide isn’t after all, and sets it in a perma-night, dystopian, multi-cultural future. It doesn’t quite have Ridley Scott’s consistency of vision, though: while he just rendered an Asian-American future L.A., Salvatores takes globalisation to the max, running us through locations named after Marrakech and Bombay City, which may or may not be part of the same sprawling metropolis, and which all exhibit appropriately specific cultural stylings. These aren’t just pretty backgrounds, but in some ways reflect the film’s use of video games — in which you can, of course, constantly re-spawn your character — as a metaphor for reincarnation.

In aid of this, while Lambert is collecting the plot pieces needed to attack that corporation — at the same time as following a subplot about a missing girlfriend — we get to witness Solo’s experiences inside the game, frequently dying and re-living the same story with a group of characters who aren’t aware in the way he is. To be blunt, the in-game stuff is a bit odd. It doesn’t really go anywhere, and builds to a lacklustre climax — indeed, the word climax is a bit strong. But perhaps this is part of the point: as the only character in the game capable of independent thought, Solo is stuck in a loop of story and fellow characters who just re-enact what they were programmed to re-enact. Literally, he can’t go anywhere.

This part of the film calls to mind eXistenZ, David Cronenberg’s film about a virtual reality game that blurs the line between reality and the game. It’s rather a surface similarity though — Lambert barely spends any time in his game, interacting with Solo merely though a series of screens on his journeys (and, one presumes, a series of microphones too). Cronenberg’s film was made a couple of years after this, so commending it for not doing the same thing would obviously be a bit rich. It is to be commended for not descending into a needlessly twist-strewn third act though, which I had thought was coming — there’s plenty of bits along the way that could be used to build a ‘surprise’ or two. There’s some ambiguity in the ending, but not too blatantly (unlike later versions of Blade Runner, for instance), and Emmanuelle Seigner’s ex-girlfriend character is never quite used in the way I expected.

For all its intellectualising, Nirvana can still be a fun film, and not just because Lambert’s accent is always set to provoke a giggle. That sounds horribly xenophobic written down, but it’s all Highlander’s fault: there’s no reason he shouldn’t sound European here (and he has dubbed himself), but the memory of that accent supposedly being Scottish does linger. (And, just so we’re clear, I love Highlander.) But no, there are proper dashes of humour, scattered here and there to provide some subtle texture. And there are action sequences too, and dated ’90s music (presumably thanks to Miramax), and even some boobies. To be honest, though, if you just want humour, action, dated music and boobies, there are dozens of films that will serve you better. At least they stop it becoming too dry, and give you a chance to let what’s going on sink in, helping prevent total confusion every time the film threatens to become incomprehensible (maybe it’s just me, but it took a little while to work out what Lambert was actually getting up to in the main plot).

I’d quite like to see the original version. Who knows what changes Miramax have wrought with their fiddling (that woman on the poster certainly isn’t in this version, at least), and I imagine subtitles could be easier to follow than this dubbed version, in which everyone’s covered by either the original actors straining with English (based on the accents) or the typically bad voice actors employed for such dubs. The Italian DVD is reportedly English-friendly and very good quality, so perhaps I’ll get hold of that (expect another review if/when I do… well, eventually).

Apparently Nirvana “has achieved something of a cult status, especially in Europe”, and I think I can see why: there’s a few themes that might be worth a ponder, and enough splashes of style and action to keep one’s attention… most of the time. It might not be as stylistically delineated as either of the films it brought to mind, but then Blade Runner is perhaps the pinnacle of screen SF and eXistenZ… well, now I really want to see that again. I don’t know if this is “one of the best science-fiction films ever made” — especially not in this Americanised version — but it certainly has a few things going for it.

~~Nirvana is available to UK viewers on the BBC iPlayer until 3AM on Saturday 3rd September (i.e. Friday night).~~

Source Code (2011)

Posted on August 15, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #73
Duncan Jones | 93 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

The second directorial outing from BAFTA-winning Brit Duncan Jones (after Moon) is another sci-fi mystery, this time set in the present day. A terrorist blows up a commuter train entering Chicago; a new device called the ‘source code’ allows US helicopter pilot Colter Stevens to re-live the final eight minutes of one of the train’s passengers, in the hope of finding out who did it. But this isn’t time travel — he can’t affect the outcome — only hope to find the bomber and bring them to justice.

Naturally there’s more to it than that; you may have even read what in other review’s plot summaries, but I’m trying to keep it vague-ish here. Does Source Code benefit from being spoiler-free? No more than any other mystery-based film… which is to say “yes”, I suppose.

Having not seen Moon (still — bad me) I can’t compare, which is a shame because the heralding of Jones as a key new voice in film and/or SF film suggests that’s one of the best ways to approach his work. He’s clearly a good director, constructing a credible mid-scale thriller here (the same could be said about the work of screenwriter Ben Ripley, or the performances of any and all members of the cast) with a few flashier elements that stand out (in a good way), but I presume his previous effort showed more promise, because Source Code is hardly groundbreaking. It’s certainly a solid, dual-pronged, science-fiction mystery — dual-pronged because not only is Stevens working to find the bomber, but also fighting amnesia to discover what the source code is and how he wound up there — but not an especially deep or complex work. There’s nothing wrong with something being little more than an exciting, engrossing thriller, it’s just not revelatory.

Anyway, it’s in the latter of those two prongs that the film’s heart lies. Running under an hour and a half once you lose the credits, the bomber is uncovered about an hour in, which leaves the last 20 minutes or so to deal with what else Stevens has uncovered. The efficiency of storytelling is to the credit of both Jones and Ripley: rather than emphasise the Groundhog Day element of the plot, for instance by having Stevens making endless trips into the eight minutes and gradually uncover slivers of information, he finds the bomb on his second trip and makes significant headway with each recurring one. All sorts of parts of that could have been stretched out, easily pushing the film to two hours or beyond, but rather than padding we’re left with something that’s quite taut. For a thriller, that’s definitely a good thing.

The other side of the plot is not only where the heart is, but also where the real twists and mysteries lie — I guessed the bomber the first time I saw the character; even if you don’t, it ultimately matters little. Vital to the finale are the subplots like Stevens’ relationship with his father and his growing affection for the passenger his alter ego was travelling with — but who he can’t save, of course, because the source code isn’t time travel.

Spoilers follow in the rest of this review (bar the final paragraph), because I have to discuss the ending — because it’s where the film sadly begins to fall down for me. You see, the logic of the source code holds up most of the way through, and I can understand Stevens’ motivation for wanting to save the people in what is, really, little more than a simulation — he’s accepted he can’t really save them, but he wants to have the satisfaction of feeling he has before he dies. Nice enough. I can even accept the Spielbergian sentiment this ending arguably generates — that freeze-frame track down the train with all the laughing people, for instance. What doesn’t quite make sense is what follows.

The source code definitely isn’t time travel — Stevens saved Christina on an earlier pass, after which Goodwin confirmed she was dead, so he clearly isn’t changing the single timeline — so the next best theory is that he’s created parallel worlds, and it was in one of those he saved the day. Did he create a new parallel world every time he entered the source code, or only the last time? I’m not sure that’s relevant. This is, though: at the end, he seems to remain in Sean’s body. So if he’s in a parallel world, he’s just stolen another man’s life? And Stevens — at least, the Stevens of that reality — is still lying, mutilated, half dead, in some government research facility? Hardly a cheery resolution.

And I wouldn’t mind — it doesn’t have to be cheery — if it weren’t for the fact that none of this is alluded to. It’s just presented as wonderful. Stevens lives! With the girl he’s come to love (in an afternoon)! And Goodwin feels good because she saved the world! But how can we truly feel triumphant, which the film leads us to, if he’s just stolen a man’s life and the alternate him is still, to put it politely, screwed? Maybe this is somehow Jones’ aim — if you don’t think it over too much, you go away with a satisfying thriller that had a happy ending; if you do think about it, you realise this joyous result is going to fall apart around the time the end credits stop rolling. I think presuming the latter may be allowing a little too much though.

Still, problems aside, Source Code remains an exciting, taut, puzzling sci-fi thriller. On a train — there’s a whole long line of movies and connections to be explored there. Many reviews have noted the Hitchcock connection and I’m sure that’s an interesting route to look down, so maybe there is a bit more to Source Code after all… but even if there isn’t, it’s a fun ride.

Source Code is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK today.

Catfish (2010)

Posted on July 25, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #49
Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman | 84 mins | TV | 12 / PG-13

Catfish is a documentary (probably — we’ll come to that) in which 20-something Nev falls in love with a girl somewhere else in America over the internet. He and his friends become suspicious that she’s not who she claims and set off to find out The Truth.

Some have said that Catfish reflects our current relationship with social networking technology more than the highly-acclaimed-for-reflecting-our-current-relationship-with-social-networking-technology The Social Network did. They’re right. That’s no criticism of Fincher and Sorkin’s work, though, because I’ve never really held with the notion that their film was a generation-defining tale — it’s about the birth of the largest social networking tool yet seen, but it’s only about that in part; it’s more about relationships between people in business. Catfish, however, is about how said tool (and others) are and can be used, and what effects this can have on human relations.

It’s hard to meaningfully discuss Catfish without looking at what happens towards the end of it, which is obviously spoiler territory, a no-no for any half-decent review aimed at viewers who’ve not viewed the viewing in question. The film’s ‘big reveals’, which everyone talks about coming at the end, actually begin to stack up from about halfway through; there’s no last-minute twist here — the answers are a huge part of the whole film. And so they should be, I think; but it also means if you don’t want to reveal them you have to not discuss a good chunk of the film — the most important chunk, to my mind, because it is after the reveals that Catfish finds its greatest weight and importance.

Before I get spoilersome, then, let me say this: you will probably guess where it’s going. Even if you’ve not had it in some way revealed (however little of it) before you watch, early scenes will lead to the obvious conclusion: why am I being shown this if it doesn’t go somewhere? And what’s the obvious place it’s going to go? I think most viewers must guess. But I think many — probably even most — will not guess precisely where it ends up; the exact nature of the truth it finds. So this is not as much of a Thriller as it’s been sold in some quarters. It has suspense, certainly, and it has mysteries that have answers… but there’s not some dark secret at the heart of it all; instead, there’s a painful emotional situation. Already I’m saying too much.

And now I shall go on to discuss things that might get spoilery, including the much-debated topic of whether the film is real or a hoax. If you’ve not seen it, I encourage you to skip to my final two paragraphs.

All documentary is constructed in some way — it is, at best, an edited account of real filmed events. As a society/culture we’ve been taught to assume it’s edited in such a way as to present a true-to-life-(but-abbreviated) account of what Really Happened, but that’s not necessarily the case. When you throw in an authorial voice — an onscreen presence or a voice over — it becomes if anything less truthful, especially if the filmmaker has a particular message they want to convey. Sadly, despite the masses of “don’t trust what you read”/”don’t trust what you see” comments that come from more responsible sources and/or satire, I still think most people fundamentally believe what they see in a documentary (or they read in a newspaper) to be the truth.

So whatever the reality behind it, Catfish is unquestionably a construct — it has been edited (like all documentaries), so it automatically is; it can’t be anything else. The filmmakers have chosen what they want us to see, whether that be real or staged. The questions of veracity, then, are: did these events really happen, and/or did they happen as the film depicts them?

Some have noted the makers got lucky to be filming when all the major points of the story happened. Rubbish. Poppycock. Stronger words with swearing in them. If they were making a documentary, surely they’d be filming a lot? Especially whenever they knew Nev would be having a phone call with Angela/Megan/etc. There’s nothing in the film to suggest they didn’t shoot dozens or hundreds of hours of footage of Nev reading out Facebook messages and text messages, or dozens of phone calls, then trimmed them right back to the most interesting or relevant (in their eyes, naturally). If they were committed to making a documentary, the likelihood is they would have shot almost all the time, recorded him reading out every message (or as much as they could), then selected the most relevant or revealing bits in the edit. That’s how documentary filmmaking works. And when it gets to the point, surprisingly early on, where they suspect something’s amiss, of course they’re filming all the time: they’re on an investigation and they’re filming that investigation! The allegation that it can’t be real because they happened to film everything that happened is nonsense.

That said, there is a theory that some of the earlier scenes were shot later; that they realised they were on to something around the time it started to go awry, then went back and staged earlier events for the sake of storytelling. That explanation I can buy.

In some respects, I find the reaction of viewers more interesting than whether the film is wholly truthful or not. Some people seem to hate and despise Angela for what she did. Really? How heartless a human being are you? What she did was wrong, to a degree (it’s hardly robbery, or murder, or worse, is it?), but she is clearly a woman stuck in a life she’s not happy with and looking for a means of escape; but she’s a fundamentally good person, who won’t abandon the people she cares for and cares about. How people can reach the end of Catfish and still be condemning her I don’t know. She earns our sympathy. If anything, the filmmakers look bad — at times, it looks very much as if they’re about to exploit her or use the film to attack her. They don’t, because they see the truth and they sympathise too. If anything, they use it to try to help her.

If you have any interest in the internet and the way so many people now live their lives through it, with all the social networking it offers, and how that impacts back on their ‘real’ lives, then Catfish demands to be seen. I don’t want to suggest you’ll definitely like or even appreciate it, but I do think you need to see it for yourself. As much as I loved The Social Network (it’s still on track as the best film I’ve seen in 2011), Catfish probably has more to say about the actual impact of Facebook on our lives than Fincher/Sorkin’s biopic does.

And for those wondering about the unusual title, it’s eventually explained in the film itself. The anecdote that inspired it is interesting, memorable, and quite possibly fictional — how appropriate.

~~Catfish is on More4 tomorrow, Tuesday 26th July, at 10pm, and again at 1am.~~

High Plains Drifter (1973)

Posted on June 29, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #36
Clint Eastwood | 101 mins | TV | 18 / R

That this is the first Western directed by perennial Western star Clint Eastwood is enough to make it worthy of note. To be honest, I’m far from immersed enough in the history of Westerns to know if anything else makes it worthy of note either; but I did like it.

The film doesn’t begin how one might expect. Clint rides into town — OK, that bit you would — has a beer and a bottle of whiskey — OK, that bit too — kills three men for no good reason and rapes the only woman in sight. Hm. It’s a fine introduction to our ‘hero’. But instead of setting the sheriff on him, the townsfolk bend over backwards to help him (more or less). Why? Are they as uncaring as he? Or do they need something from this capable man? Turns out, a bit of both.

As the story progresses we get a gradual unveiling of a mystery in the town’s past, hinted at in flashbacks and dreams; who was responsible for it, what the others did about it — or didn’t do. It’s all revealed nicely across the course of the film, leading to a finely staged conclusion in a vision of Hell. Eastwood’s real motivations for taking the job of protecting the town become clearer… that is, clearer while still remaining mysterious. There may not be definite answers to all the questions, but some people here need punishing and Eastwood’s come to punish them.

That said, tonally it’s quite odd. There’s a lot of violence and horrid behaviour, but it contrasts with a lot of dismissive humour. The raped woman attempts to kill Eastwood in revenge while he’s in the bath — not a tense stand-off, but a chance for a joke. Similar things occur when he abuses the privileges given to him by, say, tearing down the barn. Shades of grey are all well and good, but this juxtaposition of light and dark is a little too high-contrast.

Clearly Eastwood has a taste for the mystically-tinged Western, as here he’s even less coy about the story’s supernatural possibilities than he would be 12 years later in Pale Rider. Not by much, perhaps, but it’s nonetheless clear that he’s some kind of angel/devil/ghost/natural force: he emerges from the heat haze like a mirage, and disappears back into it too; he dreams of past events before he’s told about them; and he has no name, of course — this is an Eastwood Western, after all. That’s not to mention the ton of mentions of the devil, Hell, the dead not resting…

Eastwood’s first Western in the director’s chair is obviously influenced by those he’s worked with when on the other side of the camera, but by making sure the mix is a bit dark, somewhat ambiguous, but also gratifying in turns, he crafted a supernaturally-tinged revenge tale that packs a few satisfying punches.

Salt: Director’s Cut (2010)

Posted on June 24, 2011 by badblokebob

including a comparison to the Theatrical and Extended versions.

2011 #53
Phillip Noyce | 104 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / PG-13

Angelina Jolie takes on a role originally earmarked for Tom Cruise in this Bourne-ish spy thriller from screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen, the Total Recall remake; writer/director of Equilibrium, Ultraviolet) and director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Saint, The Bone Collector).

I list all of those previous projects because it might give you some idea of the calibre involved here — i.e. solid, but perhaps not exceptional. That’s more or less what Salt represents. It offers a handful of moderately exciting action sequences — a multi-vehicle highway escape is the best — and a plot with an engaging mystery eked out through good twists and developments.

Said plot sees Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a US spy accused of being a Russian sleeper who will assassinate a high-profile Russian at a high-profile US funeral in a few days. (In truth, I forget who the Russian is and who the funeral is for. I think they’re the President and Vice-President, respectively. Really, such things are immaterial.) Naturally, she goes on the run… to prove her name, presumably, or is it because she is indeed out to complete said mission?

This is Salt’s mystery, and this is one of its strong points. The plot developments are well-paced throughout, developing and shifting our expectations rather than stretching it all for a glut of final act reveals. In this regard it goes places you might not expect from a mainstream Hollywood thriller. For starters, you expect the funeral-set assassination to eventually be the film’s climax, no doubt revealing our heroine isn’t a Russian spy as she unmasks the real killer. But that occurs at the halfway point, spinning the film off in new directions. To say more would spoil one of the film’s strongest elements: that, as I said, it has twists and follows storylines you wouldn’t expect in a Hollywood summer blockbuster.

But now I am going to digress into spoiler territory, because on Blu-ray Salt comes in a choice of three cuts. Excessive? Yes. One version is basically a glorified way of showcasing a deleted scene. But, actually, these are more interesting than most extended cuts — not merely slight extensions, there are genuine impactful changes to be found here. And that’s what I’m going to natter about now, complete with spoilers. Just so you know. (The final paragraph, incidentally, is spoiler-free.)

The three cuts, then, are: Theatrical (100 minutes — this was trimmed for the UK to make 12A, but is apparently uncut on disc); Director’s Cut (the one I viewed, this is 4 minutes 5 seconds longer); and an Extended Cut (1 minute 5 seconds longer than the Theatrical). The latter is based on the Director’s Cut and I’ll come to it in a minute. The differences between the Theatrical and Director’s cuts are numerous, but mainly amount to some extra character beats (including more flashbacks to Salt’s childhood) and violence — more blood; seeing people get hit rather than just seeing Salt firing; the President is killed rather than just knocked out; plus a very different death for Salt’s husband (again, more on this in a moment). Plus there’s a voiceover ending too, which in my opinion sets up the sequel even more than the Theatrical version does, with a blatant cliffhanger and suggested plot direction. My regular comparison site Movie-Censorship.com disagrees, but… they’re wrong. So there.

As I mentioned above, the Extended Cut seems to have started with the Director’s Cut, then stripped out all references to the death of Orlov (Salt’s spymaster villain, killed around halfway through in both the Theatrical and Director’s versions) in order to include an alternate ending in which Salt travels to Russia to kill him. Additionally, the President doesn’t die in the Extended Cut, presumably to help provide a more conclusive ending — the Extended Cut is the only one that doesn’t suggest a sequel.

One of the key differences — tonally, at least — is the murder of Salt’s husband, which occurs in a very different way in the alternate cuts. In the theatrical version, she walks around a corner and he’s instantly shot. She has to control her emotions so as not to give herself away. In the other versions, however, she’s presented with him in a chamber and given a choice to save him — except trying to save him would give her away, so she’s forced to watch, blank-faced, as he slowly drowns. Salt sacrifices him for the greater good; he dies seeing her cold emotionless face. Ouch. By comparison, the theatrical cut’s blunt gunshot is much softer.

The extended version plays on this nicely with its alternate ending: Salt grieves for her husband during her post-climax interview with Chiwetel Ejiofor’s investigator, even though he reassures her she did it for the greater good (just in case you didn’t understand that when it happened). Then she escapes and toddles off to Russia to kill Orlov. Fundamentally I’m not a fan of this alternate ending — I like that she takes her revenge on the boat-load of people when she does — but it does have one fairly major plus point, I think: she kills Orlov by tying him to a stone and pushing him into the river; she watches him drown, just as he made her watch her husband drown — Noyce’s choice of camera angles emphasises this comparison — but whereas before tears formed, now she is genuinely stony faced. It’s a fitting form of revenge; more fitting, really, than just stabbing him with a broken bottle, as she does in the two other cuts. And this is the real advantage of the DVD era: if the filmmakers considered another option, now we can see it, and in cases like this choose our preference. Though it seems clear, by its inclusion in both the theatrical and director’s cuts, that Noyce preferred the instant-revenge option.

In conclusion, Salt isn’t really the kind of film that massively deserves multiple versions — it’s a divertingly fun action-thriller, not much more, but for that I think it merits a watch by fans of the genre. Of all the versions my preference is for the Director’s Cut — it packs a better punch than the tamed-down Theatrical, and while it loses the nice revenge parallel of the Extended’s alternate ending, I think it’s overall the most coherent experience.

Salt begins on Sky Movies Premiere tonight at 8pm, and continues daily until Thursday 7th July. I expect it’ll be the theatrical cut though.

If you’re interested in a full catalogue of differences between the versions, Movie-Censorship.com have three (unusually imperfect, sadly) comparisons to offer: between the Theatrical and Extended, Theatrical and Director’s Cut, and Extended and Director’s Cut.

Unthinkable (2010)

Posted on June 22, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #28
Gregor Jordan | 93 mins | TV (HD) | 18 / R

Star Wars’ Samuel L. Jackson, The Twilight Saga’s Michael Sheen and The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss star in this low-key thriller from the director of Buffalo Soldiers, Ned Kelly and The Informers. Sheen plays an American Muslim who alleges he has planted bombs around the country; after he is captured, Moss’ FBI team are brought in to locate the bombs; Jackson is a black-ops interrogator brought in to get the truth out of Sheen — by any means necessary. Including — or, perhaps, especially — illegal ones.

I say it’s a “low-key thriller” because, though the stakes are high, the vast majority of the action takes place in a deserted high school commandeered as a temporary military base, where Moss’ team work out of re-appropriated classrooms and Jackson conducts his interrogation in a sort of one-way-glassed torture tank placed in the gym. So there’s no 24-style thrills as people rush around the city/country hunting out bombs — Unthinkable is wholly reliant on the script and performances to draw us into its story, and its debate.

The debate in question is torture, and whether it’s excusable, and under what circumstances, and how far it’s OK to go. Though it’s grafted on to a story, it’s pretty clear that screenwriters Oren Moverman and Peter Woodward are as much, if not more, concerned with the issues at play than with the story they’re telling; the story, rather, is a decently dramatic way of drawing out and considering these issues. In my opinion, it works; at least, works well enough.

For some reason, Rotten Tomatoes only cites two professional reviews for Unthinkable (don’t know why, I know there are more — one’s quoted on the US DVD cover for starters), but the chosen pullquotes seem to sum up the opposing reactions I’ve spotted elsewhere, and indeed the opposing reactions a film such as this is predisposed to provoke. On one hand, one might find it “an entertaining and thought-provoking drama,” as does David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews; on the other, one might consider it “a clumsy polemic that bounces between the boundaries of stage-play debate and torture porn spectacle as everyone argues over ethics,” as does Sean Axmaker of Seanax.com. I’m far more inclined to agree with the former, and now intend to take Mr Axmaker’s four contentions one at a time as a handy way of shaping some more of my thoughts.

a clumsy polemic

As I’ve already insinuated, Unthinkable isn’t particularly subtle in its foregrounding of the torture debate. The thing is, a polemic requires it to be an “attack on someone or something”, which I don’t think Unthinkable is — I think it argues both for and against torture. Perhaps if the viewer is firmly entrenched in one viewpoint then the film will seem to support it to a polemical level; or perhaps they’d read it the other way, and see it as a polemic against their viewpoint. I don’t know which, though, because I don’t think it comes down hard on either side.

stage-play debate

I think such criticism also does it a disservice; or does the theatre disservice, because it seems implicit in this comment that something limited in the way a stageplay would be can only be simplistic and unworthy. Unthinkable takes place in a limited number of locations, true, but not so limited that it feels forced. Nor is it so flatly directed as to feel like a filmed play, nor are the performances theatrical in the negative sense.

torture porn spectacle

This is just rubbish. “Torture porn” has become an overused phrase; something readily grabbed to bash a film with. I’m not saying the sub-genre doesn’t exist, and I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but Unthinkable is not a torture porn film. Yes, it contains torture, and some of it is shown in some degree of detail, but it does not depict it as brutally as it could, and it does not revel in it. This isn’t torture for the audience’s enjoyment, this is torture as a point for debate — “is it allowable to do this to another human being to get results?”, etc. Which brings us to:

everyone argues over ethics

And? As I said, Unthinkable doesn’t try to hide that it’s a debate on torture, but nor does it use it in place of a plot. This isn’t an essay pretending to be a film.

There are, apparently, two cuts of Unthinkable. I watched it on Sky Movies and they showed the extended version, which is also the one on DVD/BD (or maybe they both are), which I can only imagine is the director’s preferred version. The only difference is an extended ending. Why a shorter one even exists is baffling, because that final shot is essential. There are films where an ambiguous ending fits — I’ll happily line up to argue in their favour should such a line be necessary (first example that randomly pops into my head: In Bruges) — but it wouldn’t work here, in my opinion, and so the final shot becomes a necessary tie-off. It’s much more important than simply answering a lingering question — it unequivocally presents the ultimate outcome of the characters’ actions. Like the rest of the film, it doesn’t seek to tell you whether this is right or wrong, but shows you where such decisions lead. Moralising is left up to the viewer. (Apologies if this is vague, but I don’t want to spoil it.)

Unthinkable has been largely missed as a direct-to-DVD effort, despite its moderately high-profile cast and relevant themes. It’s an effective thriller based around a debate that is perhaps simplistic, but also thought-provoking. It’s easy to dismiss torture in the abstract, but there are endless “what if”s and “how far”s that can change things. But should they? And so on…

Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance. (2009/2010)

Posted on June 19, 2011 by badblokebob

aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha / Evangelion New Theatrical Edition: Break

2011 #65
Hideaki Anno, Masayuki & Kazuya Tsurumaki | 112 mins | Blu-ray | 15

Just over a year since the preceding film made it to UK DVD and Blu-ray, and two years since this was theatrically released in Japan, the second part of creator Hideaki Anno’s Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy reaches British DVD/BD today. Continuing to re-tell the story originally visualised in the exceptional, and exceptionally popular, TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion, You Can (Not) Advance throws in more changes to the original tale than its predecessor, including at least one significant new character.

This is very clearly a second part. It hits the ground running, with no thought for those not up to speed on the characters and events so far. Indeed, there’s perhaps little regard for those who may be familiar with it anyway: certain significant events rattle past, the storyline spewing mysteries via dialogue we barely understand, so dense is it with references and allusions. In some respects that’s realistic, of course — why would characters explain, for instance, the Vatican Treaty to each other when they all know about it — but it might leave the viewer struggling to keep up. It’s not all like that, but there’s plenty of it; and when there’s few answers forthcoming within the film itself, the mysterious references feel even more opaque.

For my money, the first 40 minutes or so of the film are (by and large) the best bits. It opens with a barnstorming action sequence, a great scene for newbies and fans alike as we’re introduced to Eva pilot Mari, who didn’t appear in the TV series. That she then disappears for most of the film, only to make a thoroughly mysterious return later, is one of those explanation-lacking flaws. I’m sure it won’t look so bad once the next two films provide us with answers. Well, I hope not.

After that the film seems to trade one-for-one on character scenes and action sequences: ostensible lead character Shinji and his father have what amounts to a heart-to-heart, for them, in a vast cemetery; Eva pilot Asuka is introduced in another action sequence — different to her intro in the TV series, and I’d say not as memorable, though it’s still visually exciting. This is followed by some of the film’s best sequences: an “everyday morning in Tokyo III” montage is a beautifully realised piece of animation, depicting the commute to work/school under the backdrop of a megacity that can sink and rise as needed, moving into the school lives of our band of awkward misfit ‘heroes’. It’s not readily describable on the page, which is arguably the definition of properly filmic entertainment.

Then the gang take a trip to a scientific installation which is trying to preserve the oceans and their wildlife. It feels like animation shouldn’t be as effective for such a sequence as, say, the footage in a David Attenborough documentary, but nonetheless it feels extraordinary, in its own way. It also marks itself out with the interaction of the characters on a fun day out rather than their usual high-pressure monster-fighting world. And then it’s back to that world for another impressive three-on-one Angel attack.

I’m loath to say it’s after this that Evangelion 2.22 begins to slip off the rails, because flicking back through it after (the distinct advantage of watching something on DVD rather than in a cinema!) I struggled to find any point where I felt it lost its way or dragged with an interminable or pointless sequence. That said, this is where it begins to get more complicated. Much is made of the international situation, something I don’t recall from the TV series. It’s a neat addition — the world bickering over who has the Evas and how many — but it takes some following at times and the relevance isn’t always clear.

But it’s all building somewhere. For one, there’s another of the film’s best sequences — certainly, its most shocking, which readily earns the 15 certificate. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone yet to see the film, because it’s one of the plot points that differs from the TV series, but it involves the death of a main character in a brutal, deranged way. I say “death” — they pop up in the third film trailer that runs after the end credits, so there’s more to this yet…

Other than that, it sometimes feels like the story is meandering through thematic points that don’t engage as well as the character and action ones earlier in the film. Again, flicking back through, I couldn’t spot what I felt had slowed it, so maybe it functions better on a second viewing, knowing what ending it’s headed towards — at least one apparently minor subplot is, in its own way, vital to the climax, and the climax is certainly vital: unlike the first film’s ending, which was suitably climactic but clearly with story left to tell, this is a major turning point, a proper cliffhanger. Indeed, after a long stretch of confusion, it’s something of a gut-punch to reach such a dramatic point. I loved it, even if I felt I was missing some of the significance of the five minutes that led up to it.

And then, after the end credits, there’s a brief scene that throws another spanner in the works! Double-cliffhanger-tastic… one might say…

Oh, and we get an explanation for why Shinji’s still using a tape player in the near-future (which, you may remember, was a (minor) complaint I had about the last film).

The second new Evangelion film isn’t as straight-up enjoyable as the first. It starts incredibly well, but then it feels like its getting too bogged down in the politics of a world that hasn’t been properly established for us and in the intricacies of some thematic considerations — the latter is especially worrying as it was this that made the ending of the TV series so unsatisfactory, which in turn led to a pair of movies that, frankly, didn’t do that much better. But the ending did cause me to rethink my position a little, and perhaps a second viewing would find the whole film a better structured and more understandable experience.

In short, if you’ve always liked Evangelion then you won’t be waiting for me to tell you this is a must-see reimagining; if You Are (Not) Alone was your first experience and you enjoyed it, this is an essential continuation of the story — but be prepared that it’s not as simplistically entertaining. I didn’t enjoy it as much on this first viewing, but it may in retrospect pan out as the better of the two.

Evangelion 2.22 is out on DVD and Blu-ray today.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Posted on June 13, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #32
Anatole Litvak | 85 mins | TV

A film noir screenwritten by Lucille Fletcher, “based on her famous radio play” — I love how old movies have credits like that. It sounds like pure hyperbole, but in this case seems to be justified: the original play was broadcast in May 1943 but was so popular they chose to re-stage it with the same lead, Agnes Moorehead, a total of seven times up to 1960. Seven!

It’s easy to see how it would work on radio: the plot is primarily characters talking on the phone, though in this case there are flashbacks and visuals to flesh it out. And there are flashbacks within flashbacks too, just to keep us on our toes. Naturally it’s based around a series of mysteries related to our bed-ridden heroine, who overhears a threat on someone’s life and begins to wonder if it’s actually about her. So we wonder, what is her illness? Is it relevant? Is her paranoia a symptom? All are well played, mixed up with possible reasons and motives for her being murdered, which also shift around neatly.

Barbara Stanwyck portrays a not-very-sympathetic lead character, which makes the viewer question how we feel about her possibly being murdered. We should be against it, but she’s not nice, but she is ill, and her whole life’s falling apart down the phone… As if keeping us guessing wasn’t enough, our feelings are shifting in this respect too. Arguably it unravels a little late on — when Evans is explaining his part to her, it’s getting a bit implausible — but it’s all redeemed by the finale.

The film concludes with a hair-raising final sequence. I reckon it must be among the most tense, scary and chilling sequences in all of cinema, certainly that I’ve seen. It’s not so much the performances, or the shadow on the wall, or the screeching music — though they all contribute — as the fear of the actual situation: your home, your personal, private, safe space, being invaded, and the first you know of it is an all-too-solid shadow on the wall, coming up the stairs to get you… It’s horridly brilliant.

Most of Sorry, Wrong Number is very good. If that wasn’t enough, the finale cements it as a memorable must-see.

Funny Face (1957)

Posted on June 3, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #48
Stanley Donen | 99 mins | TV (HD) | U

Like Sabrina, Funny Face has Audrey Hepburn falling in love with someone old enough to be her dad. Fortunately, there’s enough other entertaining stuff going on to keep us distracted from that fact.

But let’s start with the negatives anyway. The plot, about a bookworm intellectual girl reluctantly being drawn into the world of high-fashion, falling in love with a photographer in the process, is as predictable as they come. It doesn’t matter, aside from the aforementioned fact that Fred Astaire is 30 years Hepburn’s senior and, though it’s obvious the characters are destined to get together, it doesn’t feel like the actors should. In fact, I’m not even really sure the characters belong together — of course they’re going to go that way, but the film doesn’t put a great deal of effort into making us believe it.

But the rest of the film does make up for that, with a surfeit of excellent humour, choreography, cinematography, light satire of both the fashion world and the intellectual world… Indeed, dishing out said satire in both directions means the film never comes across as either snobbish or anti-intellectual. It could well have dismissed the shallow world of fashion in favour of the depths of intellectual thought, or dismissed the dullness of philosophy for the glamour of couture, but it takes fair jibes at both equally — it’s not mean-spirited or cynical or dismissive, just… quite true.

All films look better in HD (when well done, naturally), but some seem to benefit more than others. Funny Face is one of those. It looks stunning — vibrant colours (especially in the opening Think Pink sequence), gorgeous location shots of Paris, the smokey confines of the intellectuals’ cafe… It’s a beautiful film. What it lacks in widely-remembered songs it makes up in the stunning visual sequences that accompany them. The opener may again be the standout, even though it features neither of the leads, but Hepburn’s barmy interpretative dance in the Paris cafe is also memorable, as is the three-way Bonjour, Paris!, or Astaire’s solo in the courtyard of Hepburn’s hotel, or their little darkroom number…

The cast are all great; specifically the three leads. Hepburn shows a perhaps-surprising affinity for dance (I wouldn’t say she’s known for it) and singing (she was dubbed in the later My Fair Lady); a rare film role for Kay Thompson as the fashion magazine editor, like Meryl Streep’s take but 50 years early (even the office looks familiar; which means they both look just like Anna Wintour’s — the more things change, etc); and Astaire is, naturally, brilliant.

Funny Face seems to have plenty of critics — mainly on the notion that Hepburn could be said to have a funny face. Pretty shallow reason to dismiss a whole film, if you ask me. While there are couple of bits that don’t wash with my appreciation — the age gap; I could take or leave the two scenes at the church — there’s far more to love about the film.

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