Rosemary's Baby

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  Roman Polanski
Screenplay:  Roman Polanski, based on the novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Starring:  Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy
Running Time:  131 minutes
Genre:  Horror

New York City, 1965:  Rosemary Woodhouse (Farrow) and her ambitious actor husband Guy (Cassavetes) move into a spacious apartment in a classy building, which has a dark history of murder, witchcraft and cannibalism.  Shortly after moving in, the Woodhouse's meet their eccentric elderly neighbours, the Castevets.  When Rosemary falls pregnant, she becomes increasingly suspicious of the Castevets, and convinced that she is being targeted by a Satanic conspiracy, of which her neighbours, friends, and even her husband are part.

This is possibly one of the most influential horror films ever made.  At the time, horror tended to be gruesome drive-in fare, or classier Gothic productions based on Edgar Allan Poe stories, or about Dracula, Frankenstein and other classic monsters.  In this film horror is brought bang up to date and into the heart of Manhattan, it's also aimed squarely at an older audience, Rosemary and Guy are young, but they are certainly not teenagers, and the film deals with pregnancy and middle-class ennui.  It also takes it's time, in a period where horror films rarely lasted much over an hour an a half, this has a generous running time of two hours plus.  It also doesn't look like a horror film, with the opening shots floating over New York City, with the opening credits appearing in pink copperplate lettering to the strangely eerie lullaby, the discussions about pop culture and news events, the evil Satanists worrying about stains on the carpet and having most of the film take place in broad daylight, this is more like a comedy-drama about a disaffected young woman.  The most memorable horror moments come in the genuinely disturbing surreal nightmare sequences, where Rosemary is attacked by a demonic creature, the morning after, in another deeply problematic scene Guy cheerfully informs her that he had had sex with her while she was passed out, he casually brushes off Rosemary's shock and distress at this.
The film is a very faithful adaptation of Ira Levin's book, in fact pretty much everything that is in the film is in the book.  The main difference is that at the end, the film still leaves it ambiguous as to whether anything supernatural is happening at all.  In fact the entire film could be read as it all being in Rosemary's mind.  This was because writer / director Roman Polanski had a strong aversion to the supernatural.  The horror in the film becomes more due to urban isolation and paranoia, a favourtie theme of Polanski's.  Rosemary is alternately abandoned or patronised by her selfish husband, she doesn't have a job, apparently, and spends most of her time rattling around on her own.
The film boasts some fine performances, particularly Mia Farrow, sporting an iconic hairstyle, combining frailty with steel.

Baby blues:  Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby         

The Devil Rides Out

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  Terence Fisher
Screenplay:  Richard Matheson, based on the novel The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
Starring:  Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Nike Arrighi, Leon Greene, Patrick Mower, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davis, Sarah Lawson, Paul Eddington
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Set in England, in 1929, the film tells the story of the Duc de Richlieau (Lee) who learns that his friend, Simon (Mower), has become involved in the occult and is under the influence of the evil Mocata (Gray) and his coven of Satanists.  As Richlieau and his friends attempt to rescue Simon, and another young initiate, Tanith (Arrighi), from the forces of darkness they find themselves in danger from mortal and supernatural forces.

During the 1930s into the 1960s, Dennis Wheatley, dubbed the "Prince of Thriller Writers", was one of the bestselling authors around, although he is now largely forgotten.  Specialising in adventure stories, thrillers and horror novels, and was best known for his books about Black Magic, of which The Devil Rides Out was the first and most popular.
The film itself is from Britain's legendary Hammer Films and is scripted by horror novelist Richard Matheson.  It's really more of an adventure story than a proper horror tale.  While it has plenty of supernatural goings on, it has a heavy focus on car chases, narrow escapes and fist-fights.  It moves along at a fair old pace, and is entertaining enough.  Christopher Lee gives a powerful performance in a heroic role, for once, and the supporting cast all seem to be having a good time.  While there are some memorable set-pieces, the special effects are not very good, with a scene involving a giant spider more funny than frightening.  Another odd element, that was apparently pretty common in Wheatley, is that all the characters are frightfully upper class, and everyone seems to live in huge mansions, when someone asks Richlieau if he can borrow the car, he breezily replies: "Oh, just take any of them".
This is a far from perfect film, but the script is witty, it's well-made, well paced, full of action, and Christopher Lee is at his best.  If you want a couple of hours entertainment, it's worth giving it a shot.

Christopher Lee fights the forces of darkness in The Devil Rides Out     

     

Desperado

Year of Release:  1995
Director:  Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay:  Robert Rodriguez
Starring:  Antonio Banderas, Joaquim de Almeida, Salma Hayek, Steve Buscemi, Cheech Marin, Quentin Tarantino
Running Time:  105 minutes
Genre:  Action

This film is a sequel to Robert Rodriguez ultra-low-budget debut El Mariachi (1992), but is also kind of a remake with a much bigger budget, because, although it follows directly on from El Mariachi, and events from that film are referenced, it follows the plot of the first very closely, and several set-pieces form the original are recreated on a much grander scale.  The unnamed Mariachi (Bandreas, replacing Carlos Gallardo from the first film) is seeking revenge on crime boss, Bucho (de Almeida), for the death of his one true love.  With the help of his American pal (Buscemi), the Mariachi wanders from town to town with a guitar case full of guns pursuing Bucho.

Full of stylish action and violence, which is graphic enough to be appealing to action fans, but not too graphic to be too disturbing.  Antonio Banderas makes for a great action hero, and Salma Hayek, who made her breakthrough performance with this film, is good as the bookstore owner who helps the Mariachi.  There is also a fun cameo from Quentin Tarantino.  This is the kind of movie that is just a fun action packed romp.        

Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas in Desperado

Exotica

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Atom Egoyan

Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan

Starring:  Bruce Greenwood, Don McKellar, Mia Kirshner, Elias Koteas, Arsinee Khanjian, Sarah Polley

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama

This dark, multi-layered drama focuses on the staff and clients of a Toronto strip-club called Exotica:  Lonely accountant Francis (Greenwood) is obsessed with a young exotic dancer, Christina (Kirshner), which arouses the jealousy of the club's resident DJ, Eric (Koteas), who is also in love with Christina.  Meanwhile Francis becomes involved with pet-store owner Thomas (McKellar), who runs a smuggling operation based around trading rare animals.

Back in the mid to late 1990s, Atom Egoyan was one of the leading lights of Canadian cinema, and this was the film that really made him a star director.  As with many of his films, various initially apparently unrelated stories, set in the past and present, interweave and coalesce into a whole towards the end.  The film conjures up a distinct feel right from the opening shot, as the credits play over a long tracking shot of a variety of hothouse plants and flowers while Mychael Danna's memorable, sinuous, Indian-influenced score plays and the opening line: "You must ask yourself, what brought them to this point?"  The decor in the Exotica club is full of images of jungle plants.  The film was marketed initially in some places as an erotic thriller, which conjures up images of the kind of cheap movies that come on late-night cable with dull plots and a couple of soft-focus sex scenes, and Exotica  really isn't that at all.  Given the fact that it is set in a strip club obviously there is a fair amount of nudity, mostly in the background, and there is a powerfully sensuous atmosphere in the film, but it is not a sex movies, nor is it really a thriller, although there are thriller elements in it.  It's a well-constructed film, with some great performances, and a fantastic soundtrack (including the best use on film of the late, great Leonard Cohen's song "Everybody Knows").  Not all the various storylines are resolved in the end, but it remains a haunting, powerful and deeply rewarding exploration of grief and desire.       

      Mia Kirshner and Don McKellar in Exotica

The Wind Rises

Year of Release:  2013
Director:  Hayao Miyazaki
Screenplay:  Hayao Miyazaki, based on the manga Kaze Tachinu by Hayao Miyazaki
Starring:  Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Hidetoshi Nishjima, Masahiko Nishimura, Stephen Alpert, Morio Kazama
Running Time:  126 minutes
Genre:  animation, biography

This animated film from acclaimed writer/director Hayao Miyazaki, tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi (Anno), who dreams of flying, and aware that he can never become a pilot due to his poor eyesight, decides to become an aeroplane designer, under the influence of celebrated Italian aircraft designer Count Caproni (Alpert).

The film tells Horikoshi's story from childhood until the end of World War II, taking in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and his doomed romance with the beautiful Naoko (Takimoto). This is a beautiful film, featuring some of the most stunning animation to be seen on screen. The film shows one of the main dichotomies of Miyazaki's work, an avowed pacifist, he has a fascination with the machinery of war, particularly aircraft.  The film depicts flight as a "cursed dream" evolving from pure, honorable motives, but corrupted for military purposes.

This shows the ability of animated film to depict drama in a way that live action film can't.  Moving between Horikoshi's dreams and reality, it's vibrant images make the past come alive.  It may be too slow-moving for some, and it's debatable how close it sticks to the real story (I'm no expert on the real story, but by all accounts it does take liberties with Jiro Horikoshi's real life), but it is a beautiful and powerful film, with a stunningly moving climax.  Miyazaki has said that he was inspired to make the film by a statement from Jiro Horikoshi that "All I wanted to do was create something beautiful."  By which criteria this film is a resounding success.      
  

Jiro and Naoko in The Wind Rises

The Martian

Year of Release:  2015
Director:  Ridley Scott
Screenplay:  Drew Goddard, based on the novel The Martian by Andy Weir
Starring:  Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Donald Glover, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie
Running Time:  141 minutes
Genre:  science-fiction, drama

This thrilling science-fiction survival story is adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Andy Weir.  The manned Ares III mission on Mars is aborted early due to a violent storm, during the evacuation, astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) is hit by a piece of debris and, presumed dead, is left behind on the surface of Mars.  Watney finds himself completely alone on a desolate planet, and faced with finding a way to get in contact with Earth, and keeping himself alive long enough to be rescued, with a rapidly diminishing supply of food, drink and air.

The film moves between Watney's desperate attempts to survive on Mars and the efforts back on Earth to retrieve him.  It's an exciting, straightforward story, which is gripping, despite the fact that it is basically about one man alone on a planet.  Matt Damon makes Watney a likeable and engaging anchor for the film, and he has strong support from a large and impressive cast.  It benefits from the switching back and forth between Mars, Earth and the mission's spaceship, opening up the narrative and making it far more than a one man show.  It's a deeply human film, about people trying to save one life.  All the conflict in the film comes from people arguing about how best to do that.

It is worth pointing out that this is a science-fiction film but there are no aliens or killer robots or anything like that, instead it tries to be relatively realistic.  Although it is worth pointing out that in reality, a Martian storm would only really be like a light breeze, rather than the raging hurricane depicted in the film.

By and large it is pretty faithful to the Weir novel and the dialogue is witty and there is plenty of humour to alleviate the tension, and quirky and amusing details such as the frequent 1970s songs on the soundtrack (the only music that Watney has available to him in his shelter).

Aside from a couple of moments of introspection there is little of the angst and despair that the situation might engender, which strikes a bit of a false note.  However this is a hugely enjoyable film.

 
    Matt Damon is The Martian

Alice

Year:  1988
Director:  Jan Svankmajer
Screenplay:   Jan Svankmajer, based on the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Starring:  Kristyna Kohoutova
Running Time:  84 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, surrealism

The famous children's story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been filmed many times including as a Disney animation and a 3D blockbuster version directed by Tim Burton in 2010.  However, it is fair to say that you have never seen a version of Alice like this one. 

One day, a young girl, Alice (Kohoutova), follows a stuffed white rabbit into a desk drawer and into the nightmarish "Wonderland", depicted as an endless number of drab, decaying household rooms full of disturbing and bizarre creatures.

The film marks the feature debut of Czech surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer after a couple of decades of short films.  He stated that he felt that previous adaptations of Alice in Wonderland had misunderstood the story by depicting it as a straight-forward fairy tale instead of a kind of dream.  As a result this film depicts Alice's experiences as a kind of surrealist nightmare, which seems to owe more to Svankmajer's imagination than Carroll's.  He also wanted to abandon the traditional fairy-tale aspect of good over evil, and thus his Alice is much more amoral and violent than viewer's may be used to.  Svankmajer's interests lay in stop-motion and puppet animation.  Svankmajer's interest in puppetry was very much rooted in Czech culture where, instead of being seen as minor entertainment for children, puppetry has always been considered a perfectly legitimate art form for adults as well as kids.  Wonderland is depicted as a series of bleak, cluttered rooms in a seemingly endless house where space itself seems to be elastic.  The rooms are populated by bizarre and disturbing creatures which range from bizarre hybrids of everyday objects to traditional marionettes.  In this world, the White Rabbit is a taxidermically stuffed rabbit who begins by removing nails from his paws and keeps his pocket watch inside his sawdust filled chest.  The Caterpillar is a sock with eyes and teeth, who sleeps by sewing his eyelids together.  Alongside this bread rolls sprout nails, slabs of raw meat crawl along the floor, and Alice shrinks by turning into a porcelain doll.

The only human character in the film, aside from an adult woman (presumably Alice's mother) who only appears briefly in the opening scene of the film, is Alice herself who also provides the ony speech in the film.  All the dialogue scenes are depicted as if being read by Alice from the book, complete with close-ups of her mouth reciting the words.

This is a startling and bleak film which removes all the sweetness and cuteness from the story, and makes the darkness central.  It might not be the best version of Alice in Wonderland to show the little kids, because they would probably end up with nightmares for weeks.  Even adult viewers might find it a little too much in places, if only for the sheer strangeness of the whole thing.  If you are familiar with Jan Svankmajer's short films than you will have some idea of what to expect.  Svankmajer has a sensibilty and an imagination which is like nothing else in modern cinema.  It is an unforgettable experience, which will creep into your dreams.

Go Ask Alice:  Kristyna Kohoutova makes new friends in Alice.            

Faust

Year:  1926
Director:  F. W. Murnau
Screenplay:  Hans Kyser
Starring:  Gosta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn
Running Time:  110 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, horror

This is a frustrating film in many ways because at it's best it is one of the best movies of it's period and deserves to be acknowledged as one of the great fantasy films, if it weren't for the fact that it is severely hampered by an overlong mid-section which verges between ludicrously melodramatic love scens and knockabout farce.

The film tells the familiar story of the devil, Mephisto (Jannings) who makes a wager with an angel that he can corrupt the soul of the scholarly and pious Faust (Ekman).  If Mephisto is successful then he wins dominion of the Earth.  Mephisto sends a plague to decimate Faust's hometown.  When all his prayers and medical learning are proved useless, Faust sinks into despair and cynicism.  He eventually raises up Mephisto who makes a bargain with him, that he will return Faust's lost youth and will do whatever he demands.  Faust soon decides to make up for lost time and basically sets out on a worldwide bender, with Mephisto enthusiatically helping him becomes some kind of 18th century Russell Brand.  Howver things soon swing out of control when Faust falls in love with the innocent Gretchen (Horn).

This silent film is subtitled "A German Folk Tale" and that is the best way to see it.  It is like a folk tale put on screen.  The script draws on the famous versions of the Faust legend by Johann Goethe and Christopher Marlowe as well as some older sources.  Modern audiences may have trouble with some of the exagerrated acting styles which were very common in silent cinema and were a perfectly legitamate style of performance at the time.  Murnaus, who is probably best known for Nosferatu (1922), was a superb visual stylist and the film still looks beautiful with many stand out scenes, particularly Faust and Mephisto's round the world flight on Mephisto's Satanic cloak, and the demonic figure looming over the town.  It's prevented from being a truly great film however by an overly melodramatic mid-section which concentrates more on a love story and adopts a much more pedestrian visual style than the earlier third of the film and the final scenes. 

However for the visuals alone this is a must-see for any fans of fantasy or horror cinema. 

Gosta Ekman in Faust.    



 

In the Dust of the Stars

Year:  1976
Director:  Gottfried Kolditz
Screenplay:  Gottfried Kolditz
Starring:  Jana Brejchova, Alfred Struwe, Ekkehard Schall, Milan Beli
Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction

This East German science-fiction film opens when a spaceship from the planet Cyrno makes an emergency landing on the planet Tem-4.  They have come to Tem-4 in answer to a distress call, however the Temians claim that the distress call was nothing but an accidental test signal and that there's nothing wrong, sorry to have called you out on a six year rescue mission, but you can just go off home now.  Ostensibly to make it up to the visitors, the Temians throw them a party.  However, the one astronaut who stays behind to guard the ship, Suko (Struwe), notices that his crewmates are all acting strangely on their return.  Investigating, he discovers that the Temians are in fact invading aliens, and have forced the planet's native inhabitants into slavery.

This movie comes across as a bizarre cross between Star Trek (1966-1969) and psychadelic comedy show The Mighty Boosh (2003-2007).     For the most part the film is extremely dull, but it is livened up by odd moments of hilarity, and the film is so colourful and cheap looking it's hard to not to feel a bit of affection for it.  It is very much a product of it's time (apparently flares were popular all over the universe, who knew?)  The spaceships look like plastic model kits and the aliens not only all speak perfect German they all look fully human (not even a Star Trek style weird alien forehead or a cute puppet, if you don't see one of these in a movie like this than clearly the film-makers aren't trying hard enough).  Instead the aliens seemed to consist of dancing girls and guys in red uniforms with the main boss (Ekkard Schall) lounging around guarded by men in leather skirts holding massive guns, dyeing his hair and dancing around to electro-pop.  Oh yeah, the dancing in this movie.  It's not a musical, but random dance sequences seem to break out throughout the film.  The main villain even breaks out into a dance on his own when he becomes quite upset by something.  He also, as mentioned before, constantly dyes his hair strange colours and wears a variety of bizarre costumes, no matter how serious the situation, it seems like there's always time for a costume change.  Also his main enforcer (Milan Belli) looks like one of the Bee-Gees.  The main villain also has a penchant for picking out tunes on his alien synthesizer.  Presumably a sequel could involve the aliens abducting Kraftwerk.  The heroes are a fairly bland bunch, who get bogged down in an underdeveloped romantic sub-plot.

There are a couple of moments of random, pointless nudity in the film, which are kind of bizarre because, without these, it could almost be a kiddie sci-fi adventure, of the kind that were everywhere in the 70s and 80s.  At one point one of the female crew members breaks out into a completely nude dance, which is completely in  silhouette and looks like an x-rated outtake from a James Bond title sequence.  There are some interesting elements though.  Most notably the film has quite a strong Communist sub-text (the opressed proletariat enslaved by evil, decadent capitalists). 

If you're in the mood for a slice of bad, cheesy sf camp, then you'll be able to have some fun with this, but otherwise your life will not be notably worst off for giving it a miss.

Jana Brejchova and Ekkehard Schall have a close encounter of the funky kind in In the Dust of the Stars 

Wild at Heart

Year:  1990
Director:  David Lynch
Screenplay:  David Lynch, based on the novel Wild at Heart:  The Story of Sailor and Lula by Barry Gifford
Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton, J.E. Freeman, Isabella Rossellini
Running Time:  120 minutes
Genre:  Road movie, drama, comedy, romance

This startling film plays like a surreal homage to The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Elvis Presley.  Sailor Ripley (Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Dern) are a young couple deeply in love.  However Lula's deranged mother, Marietta (Ladd), is determined to keep them apart.  After Sailor is released following a prison sentence for killing a man in self-defense, he and Lula decide to run off to California.  However, Marietta is determined to get Lula back and sends her private detective boyfriend, Johnnie Farrgut (Stanton), to track the couple down.  To make sure that Sailor is kept away permanently, Marietta contacts her other boyfriend, the murderous gangster Marcello Santos (Freeman), to send a hitman after the couple.  Meanwhile, Sailor and Lula find themselves trapped in a dangerous and very strange world, as they travel through a twisted, nightmarish version of the southern US.

The film opens with a match striking and then billowing clouds of flame filling the screen, and it doesn't let up from there.  There is never a dull moment in this hilarious, romantic, shockingly violent and deeply weird movie.  One of director David Lynch's trademarks is his mixing of extreme violence, disturbing surrealism, with often genuinely touching sentiment.  Lynch described this film as being "about finding love in Hell".  A long time fan of The Wizard of Oz, Lynch made the film one of the touchstones for the Wild at Heart script, and the film's sense of hope comes from Sailor and Lula's conviction that there is something better over the rainbow and at the end of the yellow brick road.  Lynch also saw Sailor as an Elvis Presley figure and Lula as Marilyn Monroe, and Nicolas Cage does perform two Elvis songs in the film.   Nicolas Cage turns in a superb perfomance as the snakeskin jacket clad Sailor (which in the film he claims "represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom"), and is perfectly complemented by Laura Dern as the tough and sexy Lula.  The love story between the two is genuinely affecting.  They make love, dance and have long rambling conversations about pretty much anything that happens to cross their minds.  Laura Dern's real-life mother Diane Ladd is memorable as the insane Marietta, for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

The film is very different from Barry Gifford's mostly dialogue driven novel.  Although the film is far more graphically violent than the book, the book is in it's own way darker, with quite a bleak conclusion.  Despite winning the Palme d'Or for Best Film at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, the movie was heavily criticised on it's release for the violence and weirdness, but in my opinion, the fact that this tender love story is set amongst all this horror, darkness and violence makes it shine all the more brighter.  Personally I love this film, it's sexy, romantic, violent, tender, funny and bizarre, and is probably David Lynch's most thoroughly entertaining movie.  The film's ultimate message appears to be that in an insane, twisted, nightmare world, the only hope for survival is love.


"This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."
- It's hard to disagree with Lula (Laura Dern)

Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage hit the road in Wild at Heart           

              

The Ward

Year:  2010
Director:  John Carpenter
Screenplay:  Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen
Starring:  Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Laura-Leigh, Lyndsy Fonseca, Mika Boorem, Jared Harris
Running Time:  90 minutes
Genre:  Horror, psychological

This is a fairly average, low to mid budget horror film.  In the year 1966, in North Bend, Oregon, Kristen (Heard) is arrested after setting fire to a remote farmhouse.  She is taken to a psychiatric hospital and placed on a secure ward which she shares with four other young women:  friendly and artistic Iris (Fonseca), vain and arrogant Sarah (Panabaker), tough Emily (Gummer) and timid and childlike Zoey (Laura-Leigh).  On the ward they are treated by the sinister Doctor Stringer (Harris) who is using a range of experimental techniques.  Kristen soon discovers that the ward hides some very dark secrets when she learns that a large number of patients have mysteriously gone missing and never been seen again.  She also finds herself haunted by a hideous female figure.

This was John Carpenter's first feature film since 2001's Ghosts of Mars, and while it fails to rise to the levels of his best work, such as Halloween (1978), it remains watchable enough.  Set almost entirely in the claustrophobic confines of the hospital, with engaging performances from the cast, Carpenter opens his box of tricks and provides plenty of slick shocks and scares.  The problem is that everything feels very much by the numbers, with nothing that fans will not have seen countless times before.  A twist before the end is initially interesting but ultimately unsatisfying. 

It's not really a bad film at all, it's just bland.  Carpenter is a great horror director and has a legacy of some truly spectacular work, but here it just feels like he is merely going through the motions.  It's far from being the worse of his output but then it is nowhere near his best.  Fans will have seen it all before, but there is still enough to make it an entertaining enough diversion.

Amber Heard is about to be sent to The Ward

  

J. Edgar

Year:  2011
Director:  Clint Eastwood
Screenplay:  Dustin Lance Black
Starring:  Leonadro DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Damon Herriman, Ed Westwick, Jeffrey Donovan
Running Time:  137 minutes
Genre:  Drama, biography

This film tells the true life story of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.  In the 1960s, Hoover (DiCaprio) dictates the story of his rise to power to a succession of young agents.  In 1919, a 24 year old Hoover makes a mark by targeting alleged Communists after a series of letter bombs are delivered to prominent politicians and public figures in Washingotn D.C.  After being appointed Director of the Bureau of Investigation, Hoover's scientific methods of criminal investigation are brought to bear in the high-profile Lindbergh baby kidnapping case.  However, in the 1930s, when the FBI declares war on the "public enemies" (famous gangsters and bank robbers such as Al Capone and John Dillinger), Hoover becomes a household name.  However as time passes Hoover becomes increasingly paranoid and obsessed with surveillance, building up bulky covert files on countless American citizens (both guilty and innocent).  At the same time he is troubled by his repressed homosexuality, and desire for his best friend, Clyde Tolson (Hammer).

This is a film which is easier to admire than like.  It boasts a strong central performance from DiCaprio who has the difficult task of portraying a complex man from his mid-twenties to late seventies, it is well shot with immaculate production design and period detail.  Visually the film employs a palette which seems to bleed all the colour from a scene making it look virtually black-and-white.  For a film that mostly takes place in gloomy, cavernous offices, it gives it an appropriately somber look.  However, the film suffers trying to pack in seven decades of American history into about two and a quarter hours, which means that many important and interesting elements are either skipped over or ignored entirely (most notably Hoover's relationship with Melvin Purvis, who was at one time the FBI's number one agent  and became famous for shooting John Dillinger.  However, allegedly jealous at Purvis' fame, Hoover turned on him).  Another problem that the film has is the prosthetic make-up for when the actors play their older characters, DiCaprio's is fine, but Hammer's just looks comical, like a rubber mask.  Also the film is very slow at times.  Hoover promoted an image of the sharp-suited, square-jawed, clean-cut, gun-toting FBI "G-Man", but he himself was a man who spent his career behind a desk, and much of the film is basically people talking in offices.  Action is kept to a minimum, and that which there is strongly hinted to be a product of Hoover's own self-mythologising.

For a man who was preoccupied with the private lives of others, and was always hungry for fame and publicity,  Hoover kept his own private life a closely guarded secret.  The film makes it pretty clear that Hoover was gay but very deep in the closet.  In one chilling scene, Hoover tries to explain to his mother (Judi Dench) that he is not interested in women and his mother harshly responds that "I would rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son."  One of the most famous rumours about J. Edgar Hoover was that he was a transvestite, although this has since been discredited.  It's not even mentioned in the film. 

A film that is so focussed on it's central character means that the other characters rarely have much of a chance to make an impression.  Armie Hammer is impressive as Hoover's close friend, Clyde Tolson, which the film depicts as having  along term almost-romance with Hoover, Naomi Watts is underused as Helen Gandy, Hoover's long-serving secretary and Judi Dench gives a good perfomance as Hoover's sour, deeply religious mother.  DiCaprio plays Hoover with sympathy and sensitivity, no matter how unpleasant the things he does.  Hoover comes across as a bully and a power-hungry manipulator, who would do everything and anything to get what he wanted.  However, it is a testament to DiCaprio's skill and the film's script that Hoover emerges as a sympathetic, if not likeable, character.

This is an interesting enough movie, and makes a good attempt to explain an extremely complex man.  In fact, it is good enough that it is really frustrating that it is not better.

Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar

Yojimbo

Year:  1961
Director:  Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay:  Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, Akira Kurosawa
Starring:  Toshiro Mifune, Eijiro Tono, Suuzo Yamda, Seizaburo Kawazu, Isuzu Yamada
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  Action, period, drama

In around 1860, a masterless samurai (or "ronin") (Mifune) arrives by chance in a small village which is being torn apart by a vicious, long-running war between rival criminal gangs. When he learns of the situation, the samurai decides to hire himself out as a bodyguard (or "yojimbo") to one of the gangs.  However, he very quickly realises that the gangs are each as loathsome as each other, and so he decides to play both sides, setting them against each other and in the process increasing his fee.

The film was the second production from Kurosawa's own production company.  The first film, The Bad Sleep Well (1960) in which Kurosawa sought to expose the corruption of the modern world by setting the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet in the context of a modern Japanese corporation, had somehow failed to pull in the popcorn guzzlers of the world en masse, and had lost a lot of money.  For the company's second production, Kurosawa returned to the jidai-geki (period films) with which he had had his greatest successes.  Influenced by the 1928 Dashiell Hammet novel Red Harvest and the American Westerns which Kurosawa loved, Yojimbo proved to be a massive worldwide hit.

The film is a classic action movie mixing tension and dark humour with sudden bursts of kinetic violent action.  The film is visually striking with artfully composed widescreen images (it really has to be seen in widescreen on the biggest screen possible to work at it's best).  The violence is expertly choreographed into almost a ballet of action.  It also features Kurosawa's penchant for memorable action sequences set in the pouring rain (he was one of the few directors who really made effective use of the weather in his films).  One of the main reasons behind the success of this work is the lead actor Toshiro Mifune who creates an iconic presence as the sardonic taciturn samurai who regards the world with a wry smile and  remains nameless throughout (in one scene he is asked his name while gazing out of the window at a field of mulberry bushes and answers to the effect of "mulberry field... thirty... That's good enough.  I am nobody").  Mifune's character is smart, orchestrating the gangs against each other and watching the fun from a lookout tower, like a referee.  He also behaves in his own way with conscience and honour.  While he is not averse to killing for money, he also helps weaker or victimised people for no personal gain.  He also has a sense of humour, such as in the scene where, while spying on his enemies he puts his finger to his lips and sticks his tongue out when he learns how they plan to kill him.  He arrives in the village purely by chance and stays for no particular reason other than to make some money and because he apparently thinks it would be fun to give the gangsters a richly deserved ass kicking.  The character is almost a superhero, Kurosawa himself dubbed him "a samurai of the imagination".

The film has numerous blackly comic scenes, such as the image of the dog wandering around with a severed human hand in it's mouth, and is hugely entertaining for anyone who enjoys action and suspense.

The film was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Sanjuro (1962), which was also directed by Kurosawa.  It was also famously remade as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and less famously as Last Man Standing (1996).           

Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Year:  2011
Director:  Brad Bird
Screenplay:  Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, based on the television series Mission:  Impossible created by Bruce Geller
Starring:  Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton
Running Time:  133 minutes
Genre:  Spy, thriller, action

After escaping from a Russian prison, secret agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), a member of the top secret Impossible Mission Force, finds himself pitted against a ruthless terrorist (Michale Nyqvist) who has stolen the codes to launch Russian nuclear missiles and plans to use them to start an all out nuclear war.  However Hunt has the aid of Jane Carter (Patton) who has her own personal reasons for targeting the terrorist group, computer specialist Benji Dunn (Pegg), and IMF chief analyst William Brandt (Renner).  However Hunt and his team have been set up to take the blame for an attack on the Kremlin, and the US Government have instituted a "Ghost Protocol", which effectively means that they have disavowed all knowledge of Hunt and his team's existence.

This film is the fourth movie to be spun off from the popular Mission:  Impossible TV series which ran from 1966 to 1973, and is best enjoyed as a ride.  Shown in the IMAX format it is a delirious range of spectacular action set pieces, however it does get bogged down in the dialogue scenes.  It's full of narrow escapes and miraculous survival, however while the film is running it's too entertaining to really bother with plot details.  The movie is like a James Bond film.  It sets out to give the audience an entertaining ride with plenty of action and stunts and special effects and it succeeds in that.  The cast are engaging enough, especially Simon Pegg who injects warmth and humour into his part as newly minted agent Benji Dunn.  The main problem is that the storyline plays a little too much like a video game, and the villains never really make much of an impression.
It's an entertaining, enjoyable movie and it's a lot of fun.

Tom Cruise wishes he had taken the stairs in Mission:  Impossible - Ghost Protocol.

The Exterminating Angel

Year:  1962
Director:  Luis Bunuel
Screenplay:  Luis Bunuel
Starring:  Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Claudio Brook
Running Time:  93 minutes
Genre:  Drama, comedy, surrealism

Have you ever been at a party where all you want to do is leave, but for whatever reason, you have to stay? If so, then spare a thought for the characters in this classic surrealist satire from Spanish director Luis Bunuel. 

Following a night at the theatre, a group of wealthy friends return to the palatial mansion of Edmundo Nobile (Rambal) for a dinner party.  The servants have all made their excises and left for reasons, even they can't properly explain.  During dinner, sheep and a bear run around the hallways of the mansion.  Eventually all the guests find themselves inexplicably trapped in the mansion's music room.  There is nothing physically stopping them from leaving, and it's not that they don't want to leave, it's just that for some reason they can't.  Days drag on, food and water become increasingly scarce, the group become increasingly hostile amongst themselves and irrational.  Slowly they begin to suffer from hysteria, disease and hallucinations.  Rescue attempts from the outside world fail due to the same strange phenomenon that is preventing the guests from leaving the music room is apparently preventing anyone from getting into the house.  There is nothing physically stopping the rescuers and they want to get in, but for some reason they just can't.

This bizarre movie does not offer any explanations, and is filled with strange and disturbing imagery.  It is however unforgettable.  Here Bunuel attacks his favourite targets of the wealthy middle and upper classes and organised religion.  However he also broadens his satiricial scope to take in the ritualised nature of modern life.  As always with Bunuel the darkness is alleviated somewhat by comedy, albeit very black comedy, and some sympathy with his characters, even if they are not particularly likeable.  Shot in Mexico, on a very low budget this is still a very stylishly made film.  The idea of the film being largely set in one room, might seem dull and uncinematic but Bunuel and his cast and crew milk every drop of tension and humour from the nightmarish scenario.  

There's a direct reference to this film in the 2011 Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris in a scene where the time-travelling writer (played by Owen Wilson) describes the idea of the film to a bemused Luis Bunuel (played by Adrien de Van) who resonds:  "But why can't they leave?  I don't understand."

Still powerful, still troubling and still relevant, this will make the next party you go to seem not quite as bad.  In a weird way, the movie does end up making some kind of weird sense once you've seen it.  Even the sheep and crawling hand.  

      The partying never stops in The Exterminating Angel 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Year:  1998
Director:  Terry Gilliam
Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Alex Cox and Tod Davies, based on the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson 
Starring:  Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro
Running Time:  119 minutes
Genre:  Drama, comedy,

This film is a screen adaptation of the cult 1971 book by Hunter S. Thompson.  In 1971, journalist Raoul Duke (Depp) and his friend and attorney Doctor Gonzo (del Toro) travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas because Duke has an assignment to cover a prestigious motorcycle race, however they have equipped themselves with an astonishing arsenal of alcohol and illegal drugs, and manage to turn a simple sportswriting assignment into a prolonged binge of drug and alcohol fueled madness, as they tear Las Vegas apart and glimpse the dark side of the American Dream.

The film uses a barrage of visual and auditory techniques to recreate the experiences of Duke and Gonzo.  Director Terry Gilliam has a strong visual sense and the frequent use of TV screens showing footage from the Vietnam war and the anti-war protests give a sense of the wider world at the time. 

The development of the film was protracted and troubled.  Both Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone at various times tried and failed to get film versions of the book off the ground, and Ralph Bakshi at one time tried to do it as an animated film.  Eventually British director Alex Cox was hired as a director for the film, until he fell out with Thompson and was dropped, although he is still credited as co-writer on the film.

The film features impressive performances.  Benicio del Toro put on 45 pounds in nine weeks for his role and extensively researched the life of the real life attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta (upon whom the character of Doctor Gonzo was based)  and Johnny Depp lived in Hunter Thompson's home for four months and formed a strong friendship with the writer which lasted until Thompson's death in 2005.  Raoul Duke is pretty obviously Hunter Thompson (at one point the name Raoul Duke is referred to as an assumed name, and in another scene he recieves a telegram addressed to "Thompson").  There are also a number of well-known actors in small roles, including Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz, Christina Ricci, Ellen Barkin and Gary Busey. 

The tone of the film veers from wild comedy to genuinely disturbing sequences and creates a powerful and memorable viewing experience.        

Benicio del Toro and Johnny Depp take a trip in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Thing (2011)

Year:  2011
Director:  Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Screenplay:  Eric Heisserer, based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell
Starring:  Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Eric Christian Olsen, Trond Espen Seim
Running Time:  102 minutes
Genre:  Horror, science-fiction, action

Okay, first things first, despite it's title this is not a remake of the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing which itself was inspired by the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World, which were both adapted from the 1938 story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell.  Instead this is a prequel to the 1982 film.

 Antarctica, 1982, a Norwegian research expedition discovers an alien spacecraft frozen for thousands of years in the ice and, a short distance away, the frozen body of it's occupant.  A young American paleontologist, Kate Lloyd (Winstead), is sent in to help analyse the frozen body, which is sealed in a solid block of ice.  However, when the officious lead scientist (Thomsen) orders a tissue sample taken from the creature, aganst Kate's advice, the Thing begins to reawaken.  Before long it has burst out of the ice and is on the loose around the station, attacking the occupants until it is burned to death.  However, that is only the beginning, because Kate soon realises that the shape-shifting alien has the ability to infect it's victims at the cellular level, and to transform their cells into it's cells, and thusly perfectly imitate any life form, hiding unitl it is ready to attack.  She soon discovers that any one of the expedition may be The Thing.

This is a fun, tense blend of science-fiction and horror, which creates a strong sense of claustrophobia and suspense.  It also deserves points for not being  a remake.  The problem is that we have been here before.  It doesn't offer much that was not there in it's predecessor.  There are plenty of the nightmarish transformations and flesh tearing mutations that were such a hallmark of the 1982 version, but this time round they have kind of lost their shock value.  Certainly there is nothing to compare with the legendary stomach suddenly growing teeth or the severed head scuttling around on spider legs in the earlier film, although both of them are referenced.  It also has several nods to the 1951 film most notably in the alien defrosting from ice and also from the depiction of sinister and/or cowardly scientists who need to be kept in line by tough, pragmatic macho men, the exception being tough, pragmatic scientist Kate, whose character bears a very strong resemblance to Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the Alien movies.  The film does well, though in the depiction of the paranoia and claustrophobia of the characters, who if anyhtng are even more distrustful of each other than in the earlier film.  In the 1982 version a kind of blood test was used to check who was human and who wasn't, in this movie the only thing they can do is check people's fillings (which the alien cannot absorb and so spits out).  Which is bad news for anyone with clean teeth or porcelain fillings.

This is a fun suspenseful action film which comes nowhere close to eclipsing it's predecessor, but does at least complement it.   

Mary Elizabeth Winstead warms up in The Thing

Somewhere

Year:  2010
Director:  Sofia Coppola
Screenplay:  Sofia Coppola
Starring:  Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Michelle Monaghan, Chris Pontius, Simona Ventura
Running Time:  98 minutes
Genre:  Drama, comedy, Hollywood

This film is a slow moving but engrossing character piece.  Johnny Marco (Dorff) is a Hollywood actor who has recently become famous and now lives at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, drinking too much and indulging in random sexual encounters with various women.  He is also getting a series of abusive anonymous text messages.  One morning his estranged, eleven year old daughter, Cleo (Fanning), turns up for an unexpected, extended stay.  With Cleo around, Johnny is forced to rexamine his feckless, empty life.

As with all of Sofia Coppola's previous films, this movie deals with lonely, wealthy people.  However while her previous films (The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Transtlation (2003) and Marie Antoinette (2006)) deal with these subjects from a largely female perspective, this one deals with her usual themes from a male point of view.  Stephen Dorff gives a good perfomance as the outwardly successful but deeply unhappy Marco, and manages to make a potentially unsympathetic character engaging.  Elle Fanning is also striking as the intelligent, grounded daughter.  Sofia Coppola is the daughter of acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola and she has said that some apsects of the film, notably the sequence where Cleo accompanies Marco to a film festival in Italy and awards ceremonies, were partially inspired by her own childhood, although she has denied that the film is autobiographical.  It's obvious that Sofia Coppola knows the Hollywood lifestyle, and she herself has stayed at the Chateau Marmont, and the film critiques the lifestyle while also understanding it's appeal.  The character of Johnny Marco is treated sympathetically.  Often shot in a way that emphasises his isolation, his unhappiness is obvious on his face.  he knows that his life is empty and that he is in many ways just going through the motions, but he is trapped in a sense.  Cleo understands the pitfalls of her father's lifestyle and while she obviously adores and worships him, she is not blind to his faults and frequently finds herself taking care of him instead of the other way around.  She makes his breakfast and so on.  For his part, as much as he loves her, Marco cannot be the father that Cleo needs and he knows it.  At times the film feels a little bit like a Bret Easton Ellis story, although there is much less sex and violence and much more warmth and heart than you would find in Ellis' work.

A lot of the humour in the film comes from the depiction of the show-biz world.  This is not a behind the scenes drama.  Instead it follows Marco on the publicity trail as he tries to promote his latest movie doing photo-shoots with an actress (Michelle Monaghan) who clearly hates him, answering inane questions at press conferences and interviews and sitting in a make-up chair with his head and face completely plastered in gunk having clearly been forgotten about.

As with Sofia Coppola's other films, some people, particularly these days, may find it kind of difficult to be sympathetic to the self-examination of wealthy people trying to find meaning in a small, enclosed world.  The thing is that she is depicting the world that she knows about and lives in.  She grow up in a family that was practically Hollywood royalty, so the lives she depicts are ones that she knows about, even her one period film, Marie Antoinette, is still very much a Sofia Coppola film.  The thing is that there is a genuine warmth and heart to the film, as there is in all her work.  Ultimately the search for meaning, fulfillment and happiness is a key human concern that we can all relate to.       

      

Elle Fanning and Stephen Dorff in Somewhere

Midnight in Paris

Year:  2011
Director:  Woody Allen
Screenplay:  Woody Allen
Starring:  Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody, Michael Sheen
Running Time:  100 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, fantasy, romance, time-travel

Have you ever wished that you could escape from the present day and live in an earlier time?  This is the question dealt with in writer/director Woody Allen's 41st film.  Hollywood screenwriter and aspiring novelist Gil Pender (Wilson) takes a holiday to Paris with his fiancee Inez (McAdams).  Gil falls in love with Paris while Inez is much more resistant to it's charms.  In particular Gil imagines what the city would have been like in the Golden Age of the 1920s.  While Inez is distracted by her friend Paul (Sheen), a pedantic pseudo-intellectual who she idolizes, Gil takes to wandering the city streets at night, until one night, at the stroke of midnight, he is picked up by a vintage car and finds himself whisked back to the Paris of the 1920s.  Soon Gil is spending every night partying with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Allison Pill), Gertrude Stein (Bates), Salvador Dali (Brody), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Luis Bunuel (Adrien de Van) and Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo).  He quickly finds himself becoming increasingly disenchanted with both the 21st Century and Inez, especially when he meets the alluring Adriana (Cotillard).  However Adriana herself is in love with the idea of her own Golden Age:  Paris in the 19th century Belle Epoque.

This is Woody Allen's best movie in recent years and probably one of the best movies that he is made.  An engaging and effortlessly charming film, which is genuinely funny and directed with a light touch.  The performances are uniformly brilliant and there is a genuine sense of magic .  Despite a brief, half-hearted discussion of contemporary politics (Inez's father (Kurt Fuller) is a fervent Republican and not a fan of the French) this is timeless.  It both celebrates and critiques the yearning for some nostalgic, long departed Golden Age.  Woody Allen's earlier films are often seen as being love letters to his native New York, and this is an unashamed love letter to Paris and is more affecting and beautiful than any of his earlier New York celebrations.  There is a sense here also of Woody Allen rediscovering the magic of cinema itself.  

Entertaining and funny, this is a perfect romantic movie and will appeal to more than just Woody Allen fans.  This film is going to do wonders for the Parisian tourist industry.

Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson spend Midnight in Paris 

Melancholia

Year:  2011
Director:  Lars von Trier
Screenplay:  Lars von Trier
Starring:  Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard, Keifer Sutherland, Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Udo Kier
Running Time:  135 minutes
Genre:  Drama, science-fiction, apocalyptic

It's the end of the world as we know it in the latest laugh filled romp from controversial Danish director Lars von Trier.  Justine (Dunst) and her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) turn up two hours late to their own wedding reception, held at the lavish country house owned by Justine's sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and her wealthy astronomer husband John (Sutherland).  At the reception, Justine, who suffers from manic depression, alienates her friends, family and her employer with her increasingly erratic behaviour.  In addition, a large rogue planet called Melancholia, which had been hidden behind the Sun is scheduled to pass by (or more likely to collide with) Earth in fve days time.

The film is told in two parts, the first, "Justine", deals with the disasterous wedding reception and plays like a savage dark comedy, while the second, "Claire", deals with the characters preparing for the approach of Melancholia and is an intense chamber drama.  It's fair to say, that while the film belongs squarely in the field of apocalyptic science-fiction and the main plot of an object about to collide with and destroy the Earth has been done many times before, this is very far removed from the action-adventure thrills of conventional science-fiction cinema.  This slow-moving, somber movie even pulls the rug out from the audience by denying us even the suspense of wondering whether or not the planet is going to collide with Earth.  It opens with a series of surreally beautiful slow-motion images depicting Earth's destruction by Melancholia (von Trier said that he did not want the audience in suspense for the wrong reasons)   

Lars von Trier is one of the most controversial directors working today and tends to strongly polarise his audience.  In the press conference for Melancholia at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival he managed to alienate almost everyone by saying that he admired Hitler and the Nazis.  However he later apologised and claimed that he didn't mean it and it was just a joke.  Aside from his idiotic comments at the press conference, it's harder to ignore the fact that in Lars von Trier films the women, his lead characters are usually women, tend to have misery upon misery heaped upon them until they achieve some kind of transcendence at the end.  However, he is a talented film-maker and this movie is probably the most stunning and visually impressive of his career.  There is more than a hint here of the influence of the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky who did his own apocalypse film with The Sacrifice (1986).

The acting, as usual with von Trier films, is spectacular with Kirsten Dunst giving a career best perfomance as the unhappy Justine, a character who is never particularly likeable but is never entirely unsympathetic and she gets good support from Charlotte Gainsbourg as the stressed, but level-headed, Claire.  Also the unrelenting misery is leavened by a streak of welcome dark humour.  

Fans of slow and depressing science-fiction drama won't want to miss it.

Kirsten Dunst is electric in Melancholia