This was the last film that I saw this year, finally getting around to it in December; it was a good one to finish on. I don't think it was the best thing all year, but I liked it. I see it as more of a murder mystery than a horror film. It didn't really scare me, though the distress of being lost on a trek through the woods with a small crap tent and few defences against the elements was well realised, familiar as it is to many of us. ;) The film's single gory moment was successfully disturbing, though I think it was at that point that most of the audience, as well as the story's characters, started leaping to quite illogical conclusions and ceasing to think - it being, of course, that same failure to think which led to the film's denoument. All in all, it was the film's subtlety which was its greatest strength, with the little bundles of sticks and stones working impressively as a device for slowly building terror. While it's cliched to compare such tales to Hitchcock's work, that is genuinely what this reminded me of. The theme of voyeurism, of power shifts dependent on who is looking at who, and the shift in 'how real' reality is when one observes it through a camera, was beautifully played out. This was a delightfully intelligent piece of work, and thoroughly deserved its success.
In late September, I finally got to see Ravenous, which I had been looking forward to for some time. While it isn't the best thing to hit cinemas this year, I wasn't entirely disappointed; it certainly achieved its goal of being an odd little thing. Some of the humour worked and some of it failed painfully, but in a way the latter also contributed to the film's strength, in underlining the fragility and pathos of its characters. It was best when it was being gentle, nervous, slightly underplayed - Robert Carlyle's performance in the early scenes did Scotland proud, and showed there's life beyond the aging, increasingly self-cariacatured Connery - but somewhere towards the end it lost its way and began to thrash about in a repetetive way that never quite delivered on its promises. Nothing quite matched the pre-credits sequence for queasiness or uneasiness, though the flashbacks to a shellshocked battle were impressive. In places it dared more than most small movies do. In places it was beautiful. The central concept, by way of its study of human failing, and its failure to provide any straightforwardly sympathetic character, was impressive. It's just a shame that a lot of it seemed half-baked, when it could have been delicious.
Also that month, after much exposure to hype, I went with my friends to a midnight showing of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Here in the UK, the title meant what it said; I am curious now as to which bits were excised for the US audience; frankly, I'd be surprised if some of the jokes didn't really piss people off over there. The film was pleasantly irreverent, not only with its wider political and social commentary, but also at the expense of some of its own much loved characters. I particularly liked Big Gay Al's song, and his super failure to fulfil the normal conventions of such a plot. The overall story was considerably more coherent than I had expected. Ultimately, though, the film had two major flaws: firstly, that it was itself based around a fictional film which at times looked as if it would be more fun to watch itself; and secondly, that anyone previously exposed to Trey Parker's debut work Cannibal: the Musical might be inclined to scream after the first half hour - never mind the whole two hours - of hearing that song again repeated. It has been said that the mark of a truly talented musical writer is that all the songs should follow the same theme and blend together into one. However, when that happens across all of such a writer's work (including classic songs from the TV series like Kyle's Mum's a Bitch and A Jew on Christmas), I suspect it speaks not so much of talent as of an absence of ideas. Top marks to Trey (and Matt) for a fun film, but please think of a different tune next time. Uncle fucker.
I have now been twice to see The Thirteenth Warrior and I am happy. I think it's quite the best historical adventure movie I have ever seen. Vikings, cannibals, ancient Arabic civilisation and some free Mongols thrown in will generally make for an entertaining film, but I wasn't expecting anything special, especially as it was based on a Michael Crichton novel; I was quite taken aback.
Although I wouldn't consider myself an expert, there are very few people in this country who have studied more Old Norse than I have, and yet, though much of the early dialogue in this film was written in that language, it was absolutely flawless; a script as intense and tightly packed with wit as Casablanca or Kind Hearts and Coronets, yet written in a language that maybe only two hundred native English speakers, worldwide, would understand; and there were many more jokes between the different layers of translation, besides. My historian companions and I spotted maybe two historical flaws, both of which could have been explained away. Two. It was close to perfect. Despite my initial concern that we were going to be playing the Highlander accent game, Banderas made a passable Arab, and the script, acting and direction were extraordinarily perceptive with regard to the Arabic and Viking cultures of the time and their respective ways of looking at the world. This gave the film a strength of consistency and spirit which lifted it far above the ordinary studio output. The plot was simple, but deliberately so, shaped in a traditional manner, so that it could have been lifted from any number of sagas; the characterisation was rich and complex, creating a number of sympathetic heroes whose survival depended on one another. Although the Canadian landscapes weren't perfect, having strikingly inappropriate trees, that was easily overlooked, as they were superbly used; the cinematography and the epic pitch of the whole was reminiscent of the best work of Akira Kurosawa. The action, when it came, was genuinely gruesome, ugly, and intimidating, backed up by Banderas' subtle performance as a man with no experience of battle simply doing his best to stay alive; yet despite this, the tale was not one of despair and gloom, but of camaraderie and courage in the face of adversity, of the manner in which friendship, loyalty and human values can triumph over fear.
This is one of the very finest films I have ever seen, and I cannot recommend it enough.
A couple of weeks before that I went to see Wild, Wild West. To be fair, I was a little unsure about it beforehand, but figured it should make for a passable night's entertainment, if nothing more. Well, visually, I loved it. The steampunk atmosphere was effectively captured, the costuming, though in places feeble (as with the villain's assistants), was often spectacular and well worked out; most of all I loved the giant mechanical spider. I like to see intelligent tech work in movies, and the spider was impressive because its interiors were properly calculated and realised as separate sets. Everything fitted and was proportional to the exterior. I know it seems like a small detail, but so many movies fuck it up, it's good to see it done properly.
The two big failures of the film, though, were (a) the script, and (b) Will Smith. The former was weak beyond belief. The latter just can't carry a film; he doesn't have the charisma; furthermore, his character was such a wanker that it was pretty much impossible to sympathise with him, and watching him stumble awkwardly through stilted scenes was just an embarrassment. Kevin Kline, a capable actor who is almost always worth watching, downplayed his part terribly so as not to upstage the star (probably for fear of an Alan Rickman style career downturn), and Salma Hayek, who has more presence even while silent than Smith could dream of, was reduced to giggling inanely and making an effort to look dumb. This was a promising idea rendered into a complete mess.
Of course, the most talked-about movie of this summer, which opened here in the UK in July, was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I loved the original three movies for their sheer nerve and energy, and the bold simplicity of their plot. This one did not live up to expectations, but was still fun... I'm waiting for it to grow on me.
Most damaging, I think, was its playing to the crowd (especially kids), exemplified in the completely unnecessary presence of Jar Jar Binks and also in the way certain phrases and actions were overused. In A New Hope, light sabres were hardly used in combat, and I think that gave them an aura of mystery and power which was somewhat weakend by their perpetual flashy presence in this film. The Phantom Menace should have been more confident and gone boldly ahead with its own story, not caring about public opinion - had it done so, I suspect that opinion would ultimately have been more positive.
That said, I was impressed by Jake Lloyd's pivotal performance as Anakin, which steered wisely away from sentimentality and prsented a believable, refreshingly non-Americanised kid. I was impressed at the honest portrayal of the boy as someone older than his years (by modern western standards); anything else would have flatly contradicted his history as a slave. The emerging romance betwen Anakin and Amidala was played with courage in the face of ordinary age related prejudices.
I liked Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn; he was more sympathetic and less distant than I had expected. I also thought it was brave of the director to place the relationship between Qui-Gonn and Obi-Wan at the film's emotional core and then show so little of it; their final scene together had more impact on account of its brevity; it also really did look, at that point, as if they were lovers. But why was Ewan McGregor doing an impression of David Bowie playing Alec Guinness playing Obi-Wan Kenobi? Now that he's played an honest-it's-not Iggy in Velvet Goldmine, does he feel he has to complete the set?
Amidala was weaker than I had expected, which made sense on account of her age, but was still rather frustrating, and made one wonder why such a naive creature had been entrusted with so much political power. Darth Maul was disappointingly unscary, though his fighting style was cool and fun to watch. Darth Sidious, on the other hand, filled in the darkness at the heart of the tale with an elegant nastiness all the more resonant for being so understated. His presence makes the future of this saga worth watching.
In late July, I went to see The Mummy, and I have to confess it was rather a delight. I know that the reviews elsewhere have been, well, 'mixed' (to put it politely), but I wonder how much of that can be accounted for by the particular expectations of the reviewers, who seem to have perceived it entirely as an Indiana Jones style romp (in which regard it is entertaining, but falls flat in a few places, most notably in failing to centre itself entirely around one character); perhaps they were less familiar with the Lovecraftian genre which this is really far closer to. Admittedly, it didn't advertise that very well. Despite the twelve certificate, I wouldn't advise taking children to see this unless you're prepared to sit up all night with them talking through the scary bits afterwards; this is a horror movie. It knows its real genre well, and plays to it in a hugely entertaining fashion, managing to set up crucial moments like the reading aloud from the forbidden book scene worbidden book scene without seeming contrived. It is ably played by the three leads, with John Hannah's 'comedy' character a lot less annoying than I had expected, and all the characters possessing some degree of depth which makes them more sympathetic than the average horror protagonists. Fraser is typically charming in the lead, which contrasts nicely with the subject matter. The film-makers made a wise decision in letting him run around distractingly firing guns while in fact it is Weisz' character, a librarian with an interest in archaeology and ancient languages, who is more central to the plot. It's nice to see an imperilled heroine who is also the one most necessary to saving the day, rather than just a squealing sideshow. The film is let down a little by the unpleasant stereotyping of Arab characters in its early scenes (though it's probably nastier to the Americans), but redeems itself a little on account of the immensely cool tomb guardians quietly performing spectacular deeds in the background. The Mummy himself is well realised and marginally sympathetic. A lot of the budget has been thrown into special effects, some of which work spectacularly and others of which, especially later on, are a little shaky, but as always with these things, it's the story that really counts.
Earlier in June, I went to see the hugely popular and acclaimed The Matrix, and I have to say that I haven't seen such a pile of pants in a long time. Kafka's pants, maybe, but they still smell. This film gave the impression of being put together from a casual reading of the Cyberpunk roleplaying game, with a thoroughly hackneyed plot and a structure which involved interspersing fight sequences which I've seen done better in a hundred Hong Kong kung-fu flicks with overextended sub-Descartes laments on the nature of reality. To its credit, it was well cast, and I was pleased to see a heroine who really looked like she could handle herself, for once, but where the film tried to be clever was where it fell down worst of all. The Bosch-like imagery of 'tree'-filled fields (I won't go into too much detail for those who haven't seen it), which also bore a marked resemblance to some of Giger's landscape paintings, was rather beautiful and deliciously melodramatic, but was rendered ridiculous by what weren't so much plot holes as gaping plot voids big enough to drive a mainframe through. Suffice to say that the image of computers running their economy by hanging out one another's washing will live with me for a long time.
Prior to that, the last film I had seen at the cinema was
Pi, and I'm extremely glad that I did so, as I think this
will rank among my all-time favourites. Few things delight me as much as
seeing a truly brilliant movie for the first time, though this movie
was also frightening in a way reminiscent of Eraserhead
(it used some similar auditory effects). I'm not usually disturbed
this much by films. When it happens, I appreciate it. It felt very
personal to me because it explored subjects similar to some which I
have been researching myself over the past four years, though the angle
its protagonist took was mathematical, whereas mine is initially
linguistic (eventually, as with all science, it boils down to the same
thing). The 'madness' of the central character was convincingly realised
and extremely sympathetic; it was also a device enabling the tale to
break new boundaries, to get away with demonstrating more intelligence
than a mainstream audience would usually tolerate, and to be bold in
its statements and accusations. I shall never forget this film.
I have, here, only reviewed films which I saw in the cinema in 1999. Of course, I also watch films on video, though often rather late. On account of that, an honourable mention should go to Pleasantville, a gem of a film, a perfect little Bradbury-esque fable which just went to show what real science fiction cinema should be about; and likewise to The Opposite of Sex, which, while flawed in any number of ways, had yet a wit and vivacity about it which made for highly entertaining, satisfying viewing.
Last updated 13th May, 2005